Once Upon a Time: True Stories of an Aspiring Writer

26: The Christian Discrimination Realization

IN THE BEGINNING, there was light.

And by that I mean I found the meaning of life at an early age. No, really.

My parents enrolled us in Sunday School at a local church. Each day we'd head to a large multipurpose auditorium and sit by grade. Our instructor, Connie, would lead us in some sort of lesson and then she'd say a prayer. Afterwards, we'd separate into our classrooms for craft projects and other fun lessons. Afterwards, I would step outside and life suddenly felt full of meaning. Why couldn't everyone be Christian? Loving thy neighbor, making friends in the Sunday School classrooms, and getting together to celebrate all the wonderful joys in life that the Lord gave us?

Vacation Bible School became the norm, too. Summer mornings were filled with many bead crafts, a bundle of coloring pages, a dash of Veggie Tales, and of course, helpings of relevant bible stories that somehow fit into a theme, like 2000 Ark Avenue or Beach Trekkin'. Even after VBS ended, the souvenir music tapes lived on during car rides for months to come. If you were looking for a peppy song about searching for the Water of Life, a rap song about the three guys in the furnace whose names I can't spell, or a musical retelling of Noah's Ark, those tapes were the place to look. My parents had more than enough of those tapes as summers went by.

I loved the Christmas Eve services as well. Our pastors really got into it, and the highlight of the evening was the telling of the first Christmas, where they'd dress up like barn animals and walk down the aisle in search of a stable. Then we'd come home from the services and decorate our little "Jesus tree" in the foyer, with foam ornaments we'd gotten from church that represented the birth of our Lord.

Unfortunately, we left the church before I went to middle school. My parents didn't like how the program made us attend classes several times a week once you became a teenager (er, even though we're always supposed to make time for God first?). I became interested in other time wasters, such as a potential relationship with a cute guy in my class, chat sessions with friends, and math homework. I never stopped believing in God, but religion just wasn't a focus in my life.

When I was a sophomore in high school, Danielle came into our dorm room one day complaining about a homework assignment. "We have to read the Bible!" she said. "I don't know, like why are they making us read about religion?"

I remembered reading at some point that schools were allowed to teach religious texts as literature, and I supposed this was what they were doing here as well. When I went on to senior year, the unit was the same. Our assignment was to work on a Bible story wiki. I was assigned the story of Adam and Eve, and later the story of Job. We were meant to look at literary connotations so we could understand references that might appear in life and literature. As I read, I soon became reabsorbed by the ideas of what it meant to be fallen and in the implications behind it...where the entire world started. Working on a wiki page also allowed me to be able to recap stories for myself. I'd never felt so knowledgeable. Maybe this was something I should get back into.

Unfortunately, I soon became disillusioned with modern Christianity.

During my first semester of college, I took an American Religion course. An assignment was to visit a religious service that was not your own and write a brief report on your observations. So over the fall break, I visited a Baptist church nearby and was re-introduced to how nice the community could be. Nice families sitting together as the church leader, dressed in casual jeans and a top, led them in catchy, modern songs and a very interesting PowerPoint presentation about why Christians suffer. They also promoted Operation Christmas Child, a program in which you would fill a shoebox with items and send it to a child in need. You could also decorate the box to fit your taste. What a nice community!