The Game

I can't buy into Christianity at all anymore. It worked for me for a long time, and I don’t judge anyone who is still in it—but I can’t do it. I now see it as a lame perversion of what life is all about. I am NOT claiming to know what it’s about, but it has to be about more than what I learned in Christianity.

I'm talking about American Christian culture and all that comes with it, not necessarily the simple belief in Jesus.

Church is good, it helps people. That is, it’s good if it’s working for you. My upbringing in Christianity perfectly prepared me to play the game of life the Christian way, and for many years I played beautifully. I probably scored more than anyone I knew playing the game—I "sinned" less, I studied more, basically I became the MVP--but then I caught a glimpse of something false about the game, as if there was more to it than I had been led to believe.

What I’m understanding now is that the game is not the real deal. It’s a baby-talk mechanism designed to keep us inside the ballpark so we don’t go outside the fence where real life is, where it’s scary and much more difficult to stay out of trouble. Church is about helping people keep their lives in line and it's about keeping people in line. It's about power.

I think your standard American Christian keeps God at arms length and tries to please him in incredibly compartmentalized ways. Occasionally they might even allow Him to incrementally change their lives. They're happy thinking they’ve pleased Him, and maybe they have, if that’s where they’re at. I think He knows it’s lame, but loves them anyway and let’s them do it. It’s good for them, and they’re happy inside the ballpark eating hot dogs and thinking life smells like freshly-cut grass.

What if it's about so much more. What if, instead, it has something to do with the person behind it all. That presence. The real deal. The One we placate with our church-going and our good-doing. What if it has something to do with a willingness, an openness with that Being, rather than all this bunk we set up to try to get everyone to please God and get to heaven. What if God doesn’t care about whether or not I “sinned” today or yesterday—What if all He cares about is my control, my willingness to be known by Him, allowing myself to be messed with and ultimately loved.

As for me, for some reason, I saw the end of it. I was called out of the game, sent out of the park, and THAT, I can tell you, I was unprepared for. Maybe, listening to my soul, I climbed over the right field fence in some insatiable desire for more, for one second convinced it had to be true. Who knows, maybe I was thrown out--God weary of my antics.

Or, maybe I'm in Iowa, and I willingly walked straight out into the cornfield, into the place where God is. I can tell you, there’s no game going on out here.