Gotta Have Faith

I've been putting off writing a deep, introspective blog post about my understanding of religion and my faith journey. One part of that hesitation has been the obvious lack of time to create a post containing the depth and nuance that I'd like to give this topic. The other part is a bit more latent: I'm afraid don't quite know what to say about faith. All of this changed last week when I joined one of the churches that I organize in Baton Rouge, St. Mary Baptist Church.

Now let's take a step back from that previous post and I'll try to explain why I was a bit hesitant to write about my faith.

To say that I grew up in a church would be an overstatement; I have attended Baptist churches all of my life and was taught at a young age about Jesus Christ, Christmas, Easter, Moses and that sort of stuff. But I was never a sing in the choir, Sunday school every week type guy. You see, my Mother and Father both were "7 day a week" church goers growing up but they became very relaxed about church when my brother and I were born. Their philosophy was to teach us to be good people, expose us to where they got their foundation for morality and then let us choose. Much of that probably wasn't by design since both my parents worked two jobs and went to school in addition to raising me. When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I was Baptized and became a member of a small Baptist Church in Detroit which wasn't the church my parents attended. It was a completely spur of the moment type thing. But I went to church for about two years and did those church type things like vacation bible study, join the church basketball team go to Sunday school, and yes even sung in the choir.

But it didn't last long. I didn't feel as if I belonged at the church I attended and I felt the socioeconomic differences between myself and the other kids were too glaring. Even at church, which claims to have a focus of "come one, come all", where God was the subject, I still felt glares and discomfort of not being within the ranks black middle class and Jack & Jill crowd. It was even more uncomfortable to have adults whisper about me as 10 year old around my clothing and "Where are my parents and why aren't they members?"

So like many people who rebel against organized religion, I let the opinions of the few develop MY opinion of the whole.

I'd like to say that I was a "free thinker" or a "Universalist" from age 14 till about 22. But in reality, I really just was a contrarian. Oh sure, I believed in God and even in Jesus, but I read more and more about scientific creation, Hinduism, Buddha, and cared less and less about joining a brick and mortar church. You could do it all from home, as I thought. Then I began to believe that it wasn't me and it was everyone else. I even went to a Mosque to watch people pray while I lived in South Africa. What was it that attracted people to worship? How could these people surrender themselves and their egos? The mosque in South Africa looked nothing like the churches I saw in Detroit, but yet there was something strangely familiar. There was a community and there was a level of trust and commonality between the members and what was being learned. It was a sort of faith that was as different as Durban, South Africa is from Detroit but as familiar as memories of a forgotten song. I believed in a higher power, but I didn't exactly know what.

I'd actually have to credit two of my exes in college for actually getting me to go to a church and challenging me to develop a larger world view on faith. I wasn't a member nor had I gone to church consistently, but it did get me thinking again that the world was not centered around Branden and his needs. These initial thoughts about God in college gave me the seeds of an intellectual curiosity that helped me challenge (and support) some of my thoughts about "prosperity preaching",  doubt, the role of the church in politics and communities and tolerance. It also helped to give me an anchor when I was down on my luck and hopeless in 2009. I had something to tell me that I would be okay and not to give up faith.

Faith is what ultimately brings me to where I am today. This may not be the most articulate sentence ever but I like having a tradition and community that centers my morality and values. Faith to me is the notion that I can have as many questions as I'd like and I don't need to have specific answers. If I were to continue this test analogy, faith is failing the test and understanding that the failure is not the end of the world but merely a lesson. Faith in a higher power for me isn't about believing God will make me a millionaire or that I won't get hit by a car and become a paraplegic , its about knowing that I'm not alone in the world even when I feel like it.

That was one of the biggest draws of joining a church in my new home of Baton Rouge: feeling connected to the community, to a tradition and to people around me. And while I will not be separated from what I've learned intellectually about different religions, I'm starting to understand that faith does not equal religion and does not equal a "one size fits all" approach. I believe in tolerance. I believe the commonalities that exist between the Abrahamic exist to bind us together and be bound as brothers. And I believe that it's okay to doubt and relearn. Doubting leads to self discovery and self challenge. It also can lead to the strengthening of faith as it has done so for me. At the end of the day, faith and this "spiritual growth" is more about a focused belief that the things that I learn and I see matter for a bigger picture - one that I'm not aware of how it looks but is being built piece by piece.