Last night for the first time this week I was feeling like a normal human being. I could not feel the knot at all, though I admit to not looking for it very hard. My mouth ulcers (largely psychosomatic) weren't bothering me as much. I looked at something funny that had nothing to do with politics and I laughed and laughed. The stuff I wrote was political, but it was also more lighthearted and silly than I'd been able to come up with in a while, writing for pleasure more than writing as catharsis. I started wondering if maybe I didn't have more to contribute than reporting on my howls of pain.
I only had one beer, and even then it was just as a food pairing. I felt tired rather than spent. Sleep did not come easily, but it came.
At 4 AM I woke up shaking again. That answers that question. I'm not even to the point of having nightmares to write about. Just symptoms.
I got a good six hours of sleep. Six hours is a clinically normal and healthy amount of sleep, but not for me. I come from a family of people who sleep a lot. When I'm healthy I sleep somewhere between eight and ten hours a day.
Moving on.
I have always been the sort of person who struggles with religion. I was raised to believe that "good Christians" do not curse God to his face for being too merciful. I have grown to believe that God will forgive me for this. We forgive when we are not threatened, we forgive when we are not afraid. We cannot threaten God, and the God I have constructed, with much help from others, in my mind, that God does not feel fear.
The God I believe in does feel pain, every hurt of every human, more deeply and acutely than we do. The God I believe in is not a remote monolith. Jesus wept. And in this way I can still believe.
I will not be going to church tomorrow. The church I go to, I am pretty sure tomorrow they will be talking about God's message of love and forgiveness and healing. And that is God's message, but right now I do not think I can stomach it. I am hearing the message of the Jesus who cursed a fig tree to never bear fruit again, the Jesus who said... no, wait. I can't quote that verse. They will say I am a terrorist for quoting the Gospel.
So I struggle. But I do not struggle with my faith because of "Christians who voted for Trump". Because I do not believe such a thing is possible.
Look, I'm on dangerous ground here. I don't want to start another fucking holy war. We've had far too many of those over the years, and this is to the eternal shame of humans and of Christianity itself.
At the same time, I have ask myself: What are the fruits of our commitment to what we term "theological diversity"? Some of these fruits have been wonderful, sweet and succulent and divine. But, I am sad to say, most of the fruit has been rotten. What is known as "Christianity" in America is dominated by those who preach avarice, hatred, and ignorance in the name of Christ.
I call out to God for justice, and in return he asks me what I know of justice. I am rebuked.
These people who we refuse, on principle, to call heretics, who we pretend are our "brothers and sisters in Christ", do they defile God's name? Very well then, they defile God's name. We all do, in our own ways, and we forgive and are forgiven as God has taught us. Do they defile God's people? Yes. They do. This we cannot continue to tolerate.
Many Christian leaders have shown strength in this time. Many have spoken out strongly against the ideals Trump stands for. Their followers have ignored them, and so these leaders must still be judged. That they have spoken up in a time of crisis is commendable, but that they have failed to instill in their followers the values of Christ is their failure. We may forgive them as we ask God to forgive us, but let us not now continue to repeat their failures.
To be a Christian is to sin. Constantly, all the time, we sin. We fail to live up to our beliefs. I hold that the "Christians" who voted for Trump are not failing to live up to their beliefs, they are fulfilling them. Because those beliefs are avarice, hatred, and ignorance. Those are not Christian beliefs, and Christians do not preach them.
