Chapter 7: In which the anxiety returns

It was my first job after college. The layoff wasn’t personal, my boss assured me. You were doing a good job. 9/11 just happened and the economy is in the crapper. You understand.

In my naivete, I believed him. Five years later I would ask him for a reference and be turned down. “To be honest, you weren’t fired because you were the most junior member on the team. You just weren’t ambitious enough.” was what he said.

Ah, I see. Good thing this was never brought up while I was working for you.

The really crappy thing is, he wasn’t wrong. Remember how I was anxious about programming in college? It didn’t stop after I got a job. Now that programming was a source of income, it got worse.

I was anxious before work. I would stand in my apartment alone (my wife had already left for her job) with a knot in my stomach and listen to heavy metal music to make it go away. I don’t think it occurred to me to pray. Why would God be interested in my job situation?

At work I was anxious because I didn’t have my own cubicle. I sat in a room with five other guys and I was anxious because I felt like people were watching me. I left at five o’clock on the dot every day. And I really only worked seven hours a day because I took an hour for lunch.

Then, when I got home I was anxious because I was figuring out how to be married, which was a stretch for me since my wife was the only girlfriend I ever had. And we both worked, so the apartment was a mess. Which made me more anxious. I mean, my parents was practically a hospital, because my mother got really anxious every time the slightest thing was out of place.

All of this combined to make an environment that was downright anti-productivity.

After getting laid off, I went through three software jobs in five years. The third one lasted almost four years, but after two mediocre performance reviews they let me go.

The next job was the one that stuck. I decided to be proactive and take on work without being asked. This strategy was a big hit. My confidence was boosted, and I’m still at that job after almost six years.

Why the big difference? I don’t know. The increased performance did correspond to an increase in time spent praying, going to church, and reading the Bible. Of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation, but the fact was these things did put a damper on my anxiety level.

I started to think I was getting the hang of things. I was getting pretty good at this Christianity thing. My wife and I joined had joined a church and started attending a bible study where we made a lot of friends.

We decided it was time to become parents. We decided to take a casual approach, and just stop trying to avoid pregnancy. We didn’t want to become pregnant right away, you see. We figured we had a while - people didn’t get pregnant right away.

Two months later we were proved wrong.

Chapter 6: In which I become a "Real Christian" (tm)

The full story of how I met my wife is a story best left for another time. For now, let’s just say that finally having a girlfriend made me very happy. And gave me a perfect excuse for why I wasn’t doing all the other things I wanted to be doing. I had obligations, you see.

My girlfriend sympathized with my angsty feelings about Catholicism. She herself was a recovering Baptist. Being a Baptist (or Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc. etc.) was different from being a Catholic, she told me. Baptists had just one rule: believe in Jesus and you’ll go to Heaven.

This was patently absurd, I explained to her. I can kill someone and get to Heaven because I believe in Jesus? It didn’t seem fair.

Well, yes, you can, she explained to me. But if you REALLY believed in Jesus, you wouldn’t want to kill anyone. All of this was in the Bible, you see.

Ah, the Bible! THAT’S where it fits.

Now here’s where it gets murky for me. Somehow I went to believing this was ridiculous to believing it myself. I’m not sure how it happened, only that it did happen. And on May 11, 2001, two weeks before I got married, I became a Real Christian.

I can hear the skeptics smirking (a skeptic’s smirk is so intense that it can actually be heard). I became a Real Christian two weeks before I got married to my wife, who’s also a Real Christian? Who comes from a family of Real Christians (who sympathized with my feelings toward Catholicism, but were quite disappointed that I didn’t share their beliefs). That’s certainly convenient.

But it was sincere! I don’t have it in me to pretend to believe in something. Too much effort, I suppose.

Being a Real Christian was tremendously freeing. No more worrying about going to hell. I believed in Jesus, so that, as they say, was that. And, since I wasn’t required to go to Church, I wasn’t going to go!

My wife was perfectly fine with this arrangement. You see, she was a Real Christian too, but she didn’t care for going to church. Her father is a pastor, and growing up in that environment had turned her off to going to church. So, we got to spend eternity together, and also got to sleep in on Sunday mornings. Who could ask for more?

But then I started to feel guilty about not going. No worries - my wife had explained to me about this. I was Being Convicted. For the uninitiated, most Protestants believe when one becomes a Real Christian, the Holy Spirit (Catholics will know this character from the Sign Of The Cross) takes up residence inside of you. Somewhere above the stomach and below the cockles of the heart, I think. And, if you start doing something God doesn’t approve of, the Holy Spirit makes you feel bad about it. In a good way, of course.

This time, the solution was much easier - I didn’t have to stop doing something I enjoyed doing, I just had to start doing something I didn’t enjoy doing. And this time I could pick where I wanted to do it! So I started Church Shopping, and my wife continued sleeping in.

I visited a few churches. Then one day, I visited a Protestant church belonging to a denomination called the United Church Of Christ. And a shudder passes over the conservative members of my audience.

Unbeknownst to me, this denomination had a reputation for being Liberal. But their beliefs seemed to jive with me, so I continued going without my better half.

“How was church?” my wife asked with a yawn the first time I returned. “What did the pastor talk about?”
“Oh, she talked about---”
“She?”

You see, in the Baptist churches my wife attended as a child, women were not allowed to be preachers.

“But wait! Don’t Protestants have just one rule? Believe in Jesus and go to Heaven?”

Well, yes, silly goose. They have only one rule for getting to Heaven. There are, however, many other rules, which, while not required for salvation, are considered to be what the corporate world would call “best practices”.

My wife went to Church because she was interested in hearing a woman preach. And she kept going. Life was good.

Then I got laid off.

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Chapter 5: In which I am still anxious

ag·nos·tic

[ag-nos-tik]
noun

1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause,as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. Synonyms: disbeliever, nonbeliever, unbeliever; doubter, skeptic, secularist, empiricist; heathen, heretic,infidel, pagan.
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
3. a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic: Socrates was an agnostic on the subject of immortality.
4. Me.

I’ve alway been a fence sitter. I am cursed/blessed with the ability to see all sides of a situation. I’ve never registered with a political party. I give people the benefit of the doubt. And I couldn’t be an atheist or a Catholic, so I settled for being an agnostic.

My parents took the news surprisingly well. I suppose they thought I would grow out of it. My mother didn’t try to force me to go to church. And, as I was living on campus, we didn’t get the chance to get into arguments about it very frequently.

It was tremendously freeing. I could do what I wanted. I still had a moral code, but it was my moral code. And yet... the anxiety remained. And got worse.

(That was more foreshadowing, in case you were interested.)

I was a computer science major. This meant that I wanted to be a software engineer, which is someone who makes computer software. I had dabbled with computer programming as a child and thought I was pretty good.

Then I got to college.

There were people here my age who were way better than me. So I decided I needed to get to work. I did this by spending a lot of my free time thinking that I should take on a programming project, and worrying about what would happen if I failed. Then I would play video games. Or watch my friends play video games. Or get depressed and lie on my bed listening to Fade to Black (a song by Metallica which, it seemed, was made for this sort of situation).

This was counterproductive.

I got some programming done, to be sure. When I could get out of my own way long enough to do it. But not much.

Then I fell in love.

Chapter 4: In which I realize there is no twelve step program for people like me

Stopping was harder than I thought. Impossible, in fact. Which got me thinking - I can’t be the only one with this problem, right? Surely there were other Catholics terrified of going to hell for committing a mortal sin, right? Wrong. No one else ever discussed it or seemed to care. Again, I’m in the maze, population: me.

Pretty soon I get to thinking - why does God care so much about this? Surely I’m not hurting anyone. This is what is known as “picking at a thread”. Pretty soon, the stifling sweater of Catholicism that I had been wearing for so many years started to unravel. Why would God send people to Hell? Why does he allow bad things to happen to good people? Good things to happen to bad people? Annoying things to happen to average people?

Once I got my driver’s license, I got the privilege of deciding when I went to Church. Since missing it is a no-no, most Catholic churches are magnanimous enough to give you a lot of choices of when to go. I remember sitting in my parent’s 1986 Chrysler Lebaron, not wanting to go in, but being convinced I would go to hell if I didn’t. I have no idea why it never occurred to me to skip and go to Confession instead - if the subject had been brought up, I probably would have voiced my concern that God might see through such shenanigans and send me to hell anyway. One of the caveats for Confession is that you have to be truly sorry. Gotcha!

Eventually, I went off to college. Uh-oh, I hear the conservatives say. College - the place where innocent minds are exposed to New Ideas, which are almost certainly not Correct. I discovered the Internet, and discovered Usenet newsgroups (a forerunner of today’s web forums) and found that I wasn’t the only one with questions. In fact, some people had more questions than I did - like did God even really exist? Offline, I also made friends with people who had the same sorts of questions.

I didn’t go to church once in college (I may have gone a few times when I went home, I don’t remember). About midway through the year, I announced to my parents that I was an agnostic.

Chapter 3: In which I become anxious

Catholicism became, for me, a maze. A dark maze, with walls that shifted whenever they were found. At the exit of the maze was either heaven or hell. Which one? I didn’t know. Again, no one seemed to know what would get a person to Heaven, though it was generally agreed that Mother Theresa was what gamblers call “a sure thing”.

All this caused me a great deal of anxiety. What I couldn’t understand is why no one else seemed to be in the maze with me. Hadn’t they been listening in catechism class?

(Those last two sentences are what we writerly types call “foreshadowing”)

Things reached a boiling point around eighth grade, when I discovered what all boys discover around that age. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not going to spell it out for you.

Life was good...except, you will recall me saying that ANY form of sex outside of marriage was a mortal sin. One day, sitting in catechism, it was revealed to me that what I had been doing, was regrettably, a form of sex outside of marriage.

This presented a dilemma. I didn’t have a driver’s license, so I couldn’t get to confession myself. And I didn't think that confession was offered as frequently as I was going to need it. What if I died in between? Then I’d be in a real pickle.

Well, if it was a mortal sin, I’d just stop doing it.

I’ll pause a moment until you stop laughing.

No, really. Stop it.

I asked my mother to take me to Confession. She was very confused, since we had just been last week. But she took me, and that was that. Phew!

Or so I thought.

Chapter 2: In which I am born, and my religion is chosen for me

I arrived March 20th, 1979, in the second most common way. A few weeks later, I was baptized Catholic, which is my parents religion of choice. My mother is so Catholic, she still follows Papal edicts that have been repealed - namely, the one that forbids eating meat on Christmas Eve. My father is a bit of an enigma, since he doesn’t say very much about anything. He goes to church, whether out of belief or obligation I can’t say.

First Penance followed baptism. First Communion followed First Penance. Confirmation followed First Communion. In between was Mass. Every week, unless I was sick. And, let us not forget the Holy Days of Obligation, which are extra days that Catholics are required to go to Mass. Christmas, Easter, etc. The only variety in this schedule was when we went to Mass while on vacation. Then, I could wear shorts to church. Scandalous!

And on top of that, catechism class, in which we learned about the joys of being Catholic, and how God loved us so much, that he would condemn us to an eternity of fiery torture if we missed church once, engaged in any form of sex outside of marriage, or committed any one of a host of infractions known as “mortal sins”. Lesser sins, or “venial sins”... well to be honest, I’m not sure how they fit into the picture. There was no conversion ratio - 10 venials to a mortal, for example. To be fair, I may not have been paying attention.

“But wait!” I hear the non-Catholics cry. “If missing church once condemns you to hell, how could ANYONE get to heaven? What if you’re sick? What if you sleep in? What if you just really, really don’t want to go?”

Fear not, gentle reader. For God gave us the gift of...Confession. Simply shut yourself in a small box with a priest and tell him what grievous offence or offences you may or may not have committed. He’ll say a prayer. You’ll say a prayer. He’ll tell you some more prayers to say after. And, hey presto! Forgiveness! Salvation is once again yours!

Now, if Sunday morning dawns, and you’re sick - well, mortal sin requires full consent of the will, friend. So no hellfire for you! If you slept in - well if it wasn’t on purpose, you’re probably in the clear, but perhaps you should nip over to the confessional just to be sure.

But... (with Catholicism there is always room for one more “but”) what if you commit a mortal sin and get in a fatal car wreck on the way to church?

My catechism teacher didn’t have an answer for this one. To be fair, she didn’t have a theology degree.

I could go on. Catholicism is rules on top of rules. Now, what most Catholics do is this: they pick a few rules that they are really good at following, and hope that’s enough. And I don’t fault them for that. It’s really the only sane choice. For instance, my parents are good at going to church regularly, not eating meat, and dropping an envelope in the collection plate. On top of that, they’re generally decent folks. They’ve been married 30+ years, and, to my knowledge, have never murdered, committed adultery, or stolen anything more than the occasional supermarket grape (strictly to see if the whole bunch was worth buying, mind you).

Now, for some reason, this perfectly reasonable, sane choice never occurred to me. If there were rules, then I was going to follow them all, dagnabit. The only problem is, no one seemed to have the official list...

Chapter 1: In which I introduce myself, and copy the way that Winnie the Pooh names chapters.

heretic

[n. her-i-tik; adj. her-i-tik, huh-ret-ik]

1. A professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church.
2. Anyone who does not conform to an established attitude,doctrine, or principle.
3. Anyone who disagrees with one of your core beliefs.

Ok, ok...so I made up the third definition. So sue me - but it fits. If you haven’t grown up in Protestant circles, you probably haven’t heard the word used very much. Which is funny, because the Roman Catholic Church used to be a very big fan of applying it to Protestants.

Up until about a year ago, I would have had few qualms about using the word myself. What changed, I hear you cry? I’m glad you asked, dear reader. Many things changed.

About ten years ago, I went through a period of what now seems like temporary insanity in which I became...what should I call it? A Christian? A Protestant? A Fundamentalist Christian? I’m no good at labeling things. And about a year ago, I started becoming...an agnostic? A liberal Christian? A deist? My soul, if I indeed possess one, seems to have an “under construction” sign hanging on it. Enter at your own risk, and for pity’s sake, wear a hard hat (OHSA and all that - you understand).

Now in order to make you understand my story, first I need to understand it. And I’m not sure that I do. So at the risk of being cliched, let’s start at....the beginning.