Relating to Christianity

Sometimes, you do things without realizing what you're doing. A while back, about the time I started going to Hillel, my best friend from home asked me what exactly I'm doing. She asked, "Are you trying to find G-d? yourself? what?" I couldn't really give her an exact answer. I don't need to "find" G-d; I figured out He's real years ago. I don't need to find myself, I already know who I am. Later, I came up with a better, more concrete answer: I'm trying to figure out who everyone else is, and how I fit into that. One thing she and I never talked about, though, was the religion I've left.

A week or two ago, I realized that much of the last three years have been about figuring out Christianity and how I relate to it. In some way, I will always have a relationship with Christianity: I grew up celebrating Christian holidays, nearly all of my family members are some kind of Christian, and I have Christian friends.

I'm finally to a point in my life in which I can accept Christianity as a valid religious tradition that can make people's lives better, it's just not mine. Figuring out Christianity is something I had to do, because if I kept on relating to it the way I did in high school, I would probably lose a lot of friends and sever ties with my family. In high school, I thought of Christianity as out-dated and ridiculous for the ways it conflicts with science. I thought of kids who still went to church as either ignorant or not in control of their own lives. I just wanted everyone to wake up! But I am the one who needed to wake up. You can be a Christian and an intelligent person. You can be a Christian without giving up science. It's just taken me a long time to see that.

The one thing that is most difficult for me, and that I still haven't fully figured out, is how to relate to the Catholic Church. There is so much to criticize in the way the Church operates. I don't need to list them here; if you read the news, or really if you've not been living under a rock your whole life, you know what there is to be critical of. It's taken a lot of time and effort, but I've figured out that I have to distinguish between the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. In certain areas, this gets messy and might not even be possible to do. But if I don't try to make that distinction, I won't be able to be friends with my roommate or to get a long with my dad's side of the family. Like my dad has said, you don't have to agree with everything the Church does to be Catholic. I just read a Pew survey that supports his claim.

I probably won't ever totally get over my problems with the Catholic Church. The problems don't just exist in the history of the Church, they continue every day and I don't believe they'll be resolved. The Catholic Church is the one thing that I believe can't be changed. It's sad to say but I really think it's true. The Church is deeply rooted in tradition and they eliminate anyone who tries to alter that tradition, even if the change is going in a direction to stay on par with the rest of society. The Church is too complicated and has so much money that changes that my liberal mind hopes for will never happen.