I Am The Blog

Christmas hits home, part I – Nothing fails like prayer

I hope everyone has had or is having a happy holiday season, no matter what you do or don’t believe!

I’ve just spent Christmas with family. I had a very nice time overall, a nice break from the craziness that has been my life the past year or so.  I have to say though that I am getting more upset and frustrated by religion. I tried not to be affected with it and ruin my visit with my family, because it was so wonderful to get to see everyone and have some great times with people I don’t get to see often, but now that I am back home I need to vent.

The next couple posts I do will be the most personal I’ve done since my very first post. I will get back to blogging the Bible soon, and plan on doing it several times a week now. I’ve been inspired by recent events to ramp-up my exploration of the Bible (more on this in a future post).

My mother is apparently getting more religious as she gets older. She said a prayer at dinner the first day I was home, and the only day we had dinner at my folks’ place. We never, ever used to pray before dinner. This used to only happen at my grandparents’ house. Since my grandfather passed away some years ago and my grandmother is getting older, we no longer have Christmas at her house. This may partly explain the situation (a desire to carry on tradition), but there have been other hints as well that she is going back to the fold, so to speak. Quotes on email signatures, little asides on the phone or in emails, etc.

But since my brother is openly not Christian (he’s another religion), I thought it was very rude, or at least unthoughtful, for her to lead a prayer. The prayer started "Dear Lord" and I don’t believe mentioned Jesus specifically, but if she’s the one praying it’s obvious that she’s talking about the Christian God and not a general, unitarian sort of god or about my brother’s religion.

She doesn’t know that I’m an atheist, so I haven’t decided yet whether or not to say anything to her. I may talk to my brother about it first to get his reaction. The problem with talking to my brother is that he isn’t areligious, although he flirted with this for a while. He is actually active and, from what I can tell, a strong believer in another, alternative religion. So we share an anti-Christianity point of view, but do not share a rejection of the supernatural in general. Since we differ, I do not talk to him much about religious matters as I once used to. He tends to be more open with his life and personal matters than I am, and I do not want him sharing my beliefs with others in my family (at least, not just yet).

I think he’s pretty much onto me though. A day or two later, when no one else was around, he brought up a funny line I had made up off the cuff once from "O Holy Night". The line "Fall on your knees", while I was still more on the Christian side of the spectrum, struck me as somewhat out of place. Why should we fall on our knees to God? So one year several years back, when I was more on the atheist side of the spectrum, I just came up with the line "Down on your knees, And beg for your supper". It doesn’t quite go in the beat, but it reflects my feelings at the time: why should people be going on our knees, a sign of submission, to a supposedly loving God?

And I’m fairly certainly he and I share the belief though that religion is a private matter and should not be forced on people. I think that was what I objected to most with my mother’s prayer. I am deeply saddened and disappointed that she is turning to religion more in her life, and don’t know if there’s anything that I can or should do about it. That is more of a personal issue that I won’t go into here.

But her beliefs aside, I am upset and do not find it acceptable that she feels she has a right to impose this on others, especially family. It would be different if she didn’t know my brother wasn’t a Christian, but she does. So she specifically did something we didn’t used to do that might make my brother uncomfortable. Was that a very "Christian" thing to do? I think praying around my brothers (or others who may not share her beliefs) is something that would be a legitimate thing to bring up to her. It’s a difficult decision about whether to do this, though.

I’m too afraid that it will be one of those stories where my relationship with my mother and/or other family members will worsen if people start getting wind of my unbelief. As I mentioned in my first post on this blog, I at one point considered becoming a pastor, for goodness sakes! I am not sure of my sister’s beliefs, but she wasn’t there for that first dinner. I know her significant other is either a very weak Christian or an agnostic/atheist, but I’ve never dared to bring up the topic. But everyone else either is very clearly, or is seemingly, either vaguely or strongly Christian. So finding out that I no longer believe in God, much less that I have this blog and am actively posting elsewhere in the non-believer universe, would be a shock to many.

I will talk more about my religious experiences over Christmas tomorrow in Part II, in which I will describe my thoughts on seeing a family member becoming a pastor, another wanting a new religious-based political party, and a nephew in the early throes of Christian indoctrination.