Advice For Men: Question your faith
“Will my dad go to hell if he isn’t Catholic?”
Faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is doubt with a positive attitude.
When the nun explained the sacrament of Communion to my CCD class, I had many questions, especially about the miracle of transubstantiation, which occurs when you receive the Holy Eucharist at the climax of the Mass.
I don’t want to assume everyone belongs to an ancient religion with billions of dollars’ worth of incredible Italian real estate, but CCD is the snappy acronym for the very 16th-century-sounding Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, a centuries-old education program for children.
Usually, I just doodled during class while a teacher, usually a super enthusiastic Catholic volunteer who was more than happy to take an hour out of her week to teach tiny heretics about The Mother Church, or one of the Sisters (Agnes? Francis? Gertrude?) droned on about the Catechism.
I used to share a theory that nuns were mean and stern because they were bald. One day, I was kept after class for misbehaving, and as I stormed out of the church’s small school, I saw two old sisters laughing and smoking cigarettes in the distance. Laughing.
This particular nun (Elizabeth? Mary-Ann?) would endure my theological inquiries without emotion. My questions were generally ignored.
Did the crown of thorns hurt? Like, really hurt?
“Will my dad go to hell if he isn’t Catholic?”
“Jesus said love thine enemy, but was that just a suggestion?”
“Does God hear all my prayers, or do some go to voicemail?”
Eventually, I wore her down. The usual answer to complex Catholic mysteries is “have faith.” And transubstantiation is one of Catholicism’s greatest mysteries. But I managed to get an answer from the nun that wasn’t the usual boilerplate.
Once you’ve eaten the sacrament, you see, Jesus is part of you. That is the miracle. The bread and wine transform into His actual, literal body and blood. “Communion.” Like magic. We were told this was a time to really, really pray to Him, because He was inside you.
So I asked, “How long?” I asked that a second time, and a third.
That’s when the flinty nun responded, “Twenty minutes.”
Which, I would realize later, once I had grown up, was exactly how long it took for the Mass to end, and the slow walk to the car to begin.
I did not like Mass because I had to wear a clip-on tie and comb my hair. I thought it was boring. But I did like the costumes and the bells and the sacred gold chalice.
The Catholic church we attended in the Northern Virginia suburbs was new, built in the 1970s. The altar was in the center, like a theater-in-the-round. Hanging over the altar was a giant crucifix. A lean, hairless Jesus hung from it, nailed in place. His head hung in exhaustion from his tortures. But I always thought he looked like he was listening.
So, during those twenty minutes, I silently addressed Jesus directly. My fingers interlocked. I was respectful but determined. I asked him for advantages—passing tests without having to study, victory against my little brother in all things—and stuff, you know, junk, as if he were Santa. The prayers of my childhood were singularly concerned with quid pro quo: if He gave me what I wanted, I’d return the favor with hosannas. Eventually, I grew up, and the only times I’d ever say His name was when I’d get a letter from the IRS.
***
The Eucharist itself is a tasteless, almost plastic-like wafer. I remember sitting in the pew and silently concluding two things: French onion dip would improve the flavor, and it was probably a sin to think about ways to make the wafer taste better.
Jesus suffered, after all, and so the least I could do was endure a little blandness.
During my first Communion, I didn’t even think that this smooth cracker with a cross on it was the actual Eucharist. Catholics love tchotchkes. I had a drawer full of rosaries and devotional scapulars, and plastic statues of saints who I’d use to fill out the ranks of my Star Wars action figure collection.
Naturally, I thought the first Eucharist was one of these tokens, a little something to help me remember this event forever. So I put the souvenir in my pocket.
When I showed it to my mother later that day, she exclaimed, “You put Jesus in your pocket!”
My dad chuckled because he was the son of a Baptist preacher. I grew up Batholic, which means the Baptist side of me knows how to sing and the Catholic side of me really loves incense. Yes, I was raised to be a Catholic, but I was also dragged to Baptist services in addition to the hours I spent at Mass. I also spent 12 years in CCD, which is like after-school bible study for Catholics who aren’t “in it to win it” enough to enroll in Catholic school full-time. My dad probably had something to do with me not being whisked off to Holy Roman Hogwarts.
Catholics and Protestants had spent centuries murdering one another, but you wouldn’t have known that from my parents. My dad explained to me that Jesus doesn’t care where you worship; a cathedral, a parking lot, whatever. That seemed fair to me at the time. I didn’t really question it. During Mass, I would watch him pray as intently as he did at the church services where he grew up.
There were times when my dad couldn’t help himself and would sing Catholic hymns with a bit of born-again oomph. I was taught to “make a joyful noise” when I was worshipping at First Baptist, and that’s why, to this day, I excel at karaoke. Catholics don’t really sing. They sort of dutifully mumble. Once, after Mass, a choir member approached my dad with an offer to join. He warmly whispered, “I’m sorry, but I’m a Baptist.”
He assured me that Jesus pays attention to anyone who prays to him. Anyone. Anywhere. At anytime. The broken, the blessed. The Son of Man hears you pray in Mass or during Baptist services. He bends his celestial ear to Lutherans, Methodists, and Mormons. He is with you as you kneel at the foot of your bed, or walk to school, or sit in the backseat of a car. He hears every wish and every plea. Jesus is standing by, the sole operator of an infinite call center floating in the cosmos. Even more importantly, he told me, Jesus loved those who didn’t pray to him. He loved those who didn’t believe.
And you, he told me. Jesus loves you.
Another time, he slyly told me that Jesus would forgive my sins if I asked him, and that took the pressure off of me having to sit in a small closet with a priest and confess all of my childhood misdeeds.
As a teen, I once informed my father, after reading a book, that religion was the opiate of the masses. He sighed and told me to watch television. Years later, when he was sick, I told him I was praying for him, and it made him smile.
***
My mom was a devout Mexican-American Catholic, but not so devout that she wouldn’t marry a nice white Baptist boy. Hell, her father-in-law was a preacher, my granddad. But she was the popular principal of my CCD school, so the Catholics assumed my soul was still salvageable.
She was also a bit of a radical, a member of a generation of Catholics who believed in social justice and wanted to modernize the church. I’m sure she dreamed of a female Pope one day, but settled for folk music during services. This is why, on the rare, mortifying occasion that she would substitute teach my CCD class, she’d try to push the boundaries.
There was a time when we listened to U2's 1987 classic album The Joshua Tree, hunting for Christian themes and lyrics. She played it on the church's only record player, easily thirty years old. The turntable wobbled. She was so excited, and it mortified me.
These are the opening words from the hit “With or Without You” that was getting a ton of play on the radio and MTV:
See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
I’ll wait for you
My mom paused the song. “See the thorn twist in your side,” she repeated. The class stared back at her with glassy eyes. Catholics are obsessed with Christ’s suffering. Baptists are obsessed with salvation. At that moment, I was obsessed with the Angel of Death.
Then there was the class where she played Jesus Christ Superstar.
Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera about the last week of Jesus Christ’s life. It’s the best musical Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever helped create. It was one of the first times in my life when I really paid attention to the lyrics, which were by Tim Rice. It’s a hard-rockin’ hippie caravan of love child pop tunes about Western Civilization’s most enduring story. The musical’s primary thesis is that Judas simply didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah. He doubted. He betrayed. He suffered. In the musical, Judas believed in Jesus’ words, but not his divinity.
The musical blew my mind because of all the ’70s rock and roll screams, the hot licks, and the sympathy for Christianity’s great villain. It also offered up a Jesus who was human. A man who could be tender, joyful, and afraid. Loving of society’s misfits. Overwhelmed by the agony of being human. Impatient and tired. He gets angry at His father for His fate, suggesting that it is His choice to die on the cross, anyway. When Judas betrays him, Jesus is weary. Heartbroken. He loves Judas because His burden is to love all mankind, even though we don’t deserve it.
To this day, I perform an intense and personal karaoke version of the power ballad “Gethsemane,” which is also the name of the Garden where Jesus begs his Father for mercy before he’s arrested. It’s very moving.
I eventually answered my own theological questions without any nuns' help.
Here are a few:
The crown of thorns was likely very painful.
Baptist heaven is like Catholic heaven, only Catholic heaven has a daily fish option.
“Love thine enemy” is not a suggestion. It’s an impossible commandment that humans can barely fathom.
Jesus does not answer prayers. But he hears them all as he broods over this broken world.
Judas failed his friend. But Jesus forgave him, anyway. He forgave us all. To be human is to fail. It must be exhausting to have to forgive your cruel children, century after century. I am a grown man now, and I do not believe in hell. I do not believe in heaven, Catholic or Baptist. I do not believe in God.
But I have faith anyway.
Advice For Men: 51 things I’ve learned
