by: Kristy Kruger

Coming to terms with a Catholic upbringing

I’m not a religious person. I was raised Catholic and I was very Catholic. As a teenager in Texas, I participated in “Hike for Life,” a march against abortion, and alienated myself from my peers at an all arts high school by igniting debates for my mission to save the unborn. I even posted a sign on my locker that used rows of black stick figures each figure representing 1,000 deaths, comparing the casualties of every major war with the “war on abortion” sweeping the competition. I crossed myself and thanked the Lord before I brushed my teeth. I was grateful to have a toothbrush and toothpaste. On the night of my senior prom, I ate ice cream with my date and was home by midnight. Then I went to college in Los Angeles.

My roommate was a black girl from Oakland who laughed when I told her I was a virgin.

“I’m saving myself for my husband,” I said. “It’s a present.”

If only you were there to see Lina’s face when she realized I wasn’t kidding.

On my first day of school a group of students came by my dorm room with sodas and ice cream. They were called the “Campus Crusaders;” A group of clean cut, Christians with a strong sense of values. Seemed like just the type of new friends I was looking for. They invited me to join them so I did.

But after attending a few of their services it became clear that the “Campus Crusaders” were all about quantity, not quality. It was our mission as a group to save the campus, if you will, convert as many students as possible and be disciples of the Lord.

Now you can say what you want about Catholics, but Catholics are a lot less pro-active. I might have been taught that everyone was going to hell, but I was never really taught that I should do anything to help or save them. That’s a job for Protestants. There’s no “hope” in Catholicism. You’ll be lucky if you ever make it out of purgatory.

Also don’t forget that Protestants prefer the cross. A blank cross. Catholics are more keen on the crucifix. Jesus in agony, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and a crown of thorns, nails through his hands and feet, bleeding. Just in case you forgot. Their sunny Protestant disposition was totally lost on me. I wasn’t used to smiling or feeling good about myself at church. It felt unnatural. During the second service, we sat in a circle, each person sharing a positive prayer for the day. I said, “We will all be rotting corpses someday, so Lord, please help us make the most of today.” Catholicism provided me with a certain cynicism that didn’t go over well with my new Christian friends.

Now, I wasn’t a total dud. Despite my pious upbringing, I exhibited a bizarre sense of humor at an early age, telling my Mom that I had scoliosis when I was seven as part of a two-pronged April Fool’s joke. Cussing was also my one guilty pleasure. I even listened to Depeche Mode and secretly liked the song “Blasphemous Rumors,” – “I don’t want to start any Blasphemous Rumors, but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor and when I die I expect to find him laughing.” I forgave Martin Gore, assuming that he was confused; he was really thinking that “life” has a sick sense of humor, not God. When I sang along, I would substitute the lyric for him.

As the semester began to kick in, I found myself wanting to bail out of the “Campus Crusaders.” I had converted no one and just didn’t feel comfortable with how positive everything was. It was like I was hanging out with a bunch of hippies. But seeing as half of them lived on my floor, the “Campus Crusaders” became increasingly difficult to ignore.

On Sundays, they would drop by one right after the other, strategically staggering their visits.

“Hey Kristy, church service is starting in 15 minutes if you’d like to come.”

“Hey Kristy, church service is starting in 10 minutes if you’d like to come.”

“Hey Kristy, church service is starting in 5 minutes if you’d like to come.”

If I left my dorm room, I would come back to multiple messages on my door.

“Hey Kristy, sorry we missed you at church.”

“Hey Kristy, church was a blast! Wish you were there.”

“Hey Kristy. Maybe we’ll see you next week. God loves you!”

The “Campus Crusaders” became the most annoyingly persistent group of Jesus freaks I’d ever known and it was clear that saving my soul had become their mission statement. I was beginning to regret ever having accepted ice cream from them. It’s as if when I did, I unknowingly signed an exclusive agreement granting them ownership of all my Sundays in perpetuity.

Now I had a long distance relationship with a boy in Wichita, Kansas who proposed to me before I left for school. Warren and I were madly in love and if I had ever thought about giving the “gift” of my virginity to any man, it was him. Turns out, lots of girls on my floor were having sex, Amy, Shelly, Keisha, Morbid. I began to get curious and found myself having “impure” thoughts.

I asked my Resident Advisor, a stoner from Malibu, what I should do about these “impure” thoughts and he gave me a handful of condoms and told me to have fun. Well, Warren was the man I was going to marry, so what did it matter if we started a little early? Warren came to visit me and when he did, I gave him the “gift” of my virginity while listening to Billy Joel. How pathetic. Surely the only college freshman in 1994, (outside of the “Campus Crusaders”) to lose her virginity at all, let alone while listening to Billy Joel.

I told Warren that this was a one time thing. Just so we knew what it was like, then we would wait until we were married. But it didn’t really work out that way. After thrusting myself into the fiery pits of hell, there was no turning back. We had sex three times the next day and five the day after that. Each time of which afterwards, I rolled over while he held me and literally imagined my body burning in flames. My parents shaking their heads in disappointment.

And then we stopped. The guilt I was feeling was so wretched that it far outweighed any physical pleasure I could possibly experience. Warren eventually broke up with me, during which I acted like a complete crazy lady and told him he couldn’t break up with me. I gave him my “gift” and was now no longer a virgin.

“Do you realize what you’re doing to me? I am going to go to hell for this!”

And I was. According to everything I had been taught, I was definitely going to hell. No amount of Hail Mary’s could possibly take away the strikes against me. I was a sinner. A dirty, impure-thinking, pre-marital sex instigating little hussie and I was headed down a dark, secular path of no return. St. Peter would take one look at my record and send me on my way. Sure, if I had married Warren, then maybe, just maybe I could hope for purgatory. But now that was clearly out of question, there was no way I could even get accepted there. Nineteen years old. My whole life over. Kaput. Done for. Was there any real point in going on?

After Warren broke up with me, I was devastated. I felt as though my lives had been ruined – this life and the afterlife. The “Campus Crusaders” came to the rescue, sending notes and flowers to my door. They stopped by frequently with ice cream to check on me, knowing I was ripe for conversion. What is it with Christians and ice cream? “God loves you Kristy! God loves you!” they would tell me.

But it wasn’t God’s love that I wanted. It was Warren’s. And in my current dark mental state, their offerings seemed little more than bribes to get me back to their church services. They didn’t really care about me. They certainly didn’t know I was a dirty whore engaging in pre-marital sex and they weren’t my real friends.

All of the other girls were running around, having guilt-free sex and in the meantime I couldn’t get over the fact that I was going to hell. I had no one to blame for Warren leaving me, so I blamed God. Despite what the “Campus Crusaders” said, I began to wonder if God really did love me. And if he loved me, then why did he trick me? Why did he ruin my life and why is he sending me to hell?

I remembered in a Catechism class of mine when I was ten years old, I asked my teacher what would happen if you had sinned, but died in a car crash on the way to confession. Would you still go to hell? She said “yes.” There was no way I was going to confession with this mother of a sin. It was far too embarrassing. So, clearly I was going to hell.

Feeling rather confused about everything, I decided to sign up for a religion class second semester. Now, I’d never read the Bible. Catholics don’t seem to do that. I think our priests just make up stuff, tell us to save the unborn and send us on our merry, or not so merry, way. So, I figured it was best to start at the beginning and take a class on the Old Testament.

And it was there in my religion class that I learned all kinds of shocking and offensive things. First of all, it became clear that the Bible wasn’t even written by God! Apparently it was written by a bunch of dudes and we’re not even sure who they were! And, there were all kinds of contradictions – “I love you” – “I’m going to plague your village with locusts and leprosy.”

And what was his beef with Abraham? “Abraham, I know you say you love me, but I’m feeling a little insecure about it. So, if you could just tie your son up and stab him, then I might know you really mean it.” And don’t even get me started on Job. Poor Job! He must have been in a very dark place to tolerate that kind of treatment.

Who

the hell are we worshipping? This guy’s crazy! I mean he’s got all kinds of issues – jealous, possessive, low self-esteem, unclear boundaries, and severe dementia. I had gone to a campus counselor right after Warren broke up with me and these characteristics looked a lot like warning signs I read in a pamphlet at the student health center telling you that you’re in an abusive relationship. No wonder the Catholics weren’t reading out of this thing. They didn’t want us to know the real deal! They knew if we knew the first thing about this “God” guy that no one in their right minds would ever worship him.
The guy’s a total egoist! He’s worse than Snoop Dogg! Telling us to sacrifice lambs and children. He sounds satanic! When I get to hell for pre-marital sex, I won’t be the least bit surprised to find this sicko there.

I felt totally betrayed. People living to be 985 years old? Give me a break! What am I, stupid? First Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, then the Easter Bunny and now this? What was heaven anyways? Just something to make us feel better? Something to make us feel like our lives weren’t completely pointless? Like we were all going to meet up in some happy never never land after we die? It started to sound a lot like a Grimms Fairy Tale to me.

There were already a couple of things I wasn’t happy about in Catholism, like the fact that I wasn’t going to see Snowball in heaven. Animals don’t have souls. Having crept out from under the iron fist of my father, I realized I never had to go to church if I didn’t want to, so I stopped going altogether. Then, I began conducting a series of small little tests to see if God was real.

“God, if you care about me, then turn my television set on right now.”

No response.

“God, if you are real then bring back John Lennon from the dead and have him come over to my place for dinner at 7.”

No response.
OK. Obviously God didn’t care about me and wasn’t real.

I began a slow rebellion. It started with no longer capitalizing the word “god” in my journals. Oh, if I wasn’t on the road to hell before, I clearly was now, if there indeed was such a place. The first time I did it, I was so surprised that the big earthquake didn’t hit California that very moment. And it was liberating.

Well, if I was able to do that, then what would happen if I said I hated God? Oh God, could I really do that? Oh, I can’t do that. He’ll kill me. He’ll strike me down with lightening for sure! OK, if I can say “I hate God” outloud then he definitely isn’t real or he’s a total spineless loser that I wouldn’t want to worship anyways. Okay, here goes.

“I hate you God.”

Nothing.

“I hate you! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU GOOOOOOOOOD!”

Nothing. God was definitely not real or a horrible listener or once again, a total spineless loser that I wouldn’t want to worship anyways.

Now, I’ve got no qualms with Jesus. Any man that turns water into wine is, well as the Doobie Brothers would say, just alright with me. It’s just his followers that have me a little creeped out.

In the fall of my sophomore year, I thought maybe I should try another religion. So, I took an Eastern religion class. Now all of my artsy friends would beg to differ, but I found those religions to be just as whacked as the Western ones. The basic concept of karma was too much like Catholicism, implying that you have done something to deserve the bad things in your life. Hey lady, if you weren’t such a whore in the 1700s then maybe you wouldn’t have brain cancer today! What kind of sense does that make?

Karma also claims an evenness of sorts that I just don’t buy. That for every good there is a bad. But I don’t think the world is that fair.

And Buddhism was just way too out there. “Om. God is everything. God is the tree. God is the fly. God is the plastic spoon.” I mean this religion sounds like the musings of an acid trip. See, this is the kind of stuff that happens to you when you go around isolating yourself and fasting all the time. You start to think crazy. These people need to eat some sandwiches, that’s what’s going on here.

In that class I was also forced to read a copy of the “Bhagavad Gita,” conceivably the most boring book ever written. At least the Bible had some excitement in it. Every other sentence was “Peace. Om. Om.” The book claims that “Om,” used in meditation, is the syllable of the universe. Says who? Somebody just made that up, and everyone came “Om-ing” after. I was so incredibly bored that I decided to skip to the last page to see if the book went anywhere or did anything remotely interesting at all and wouldn’t you know it, the last words were “Peace. Om. Om.” How linear. Lamest book ever.

In college I was taught to think critically and thinking critically doesn’t involve taking out the parts of a religion I don’t like and choosing to ignore them. Thinking critically means seeing these religions for what they really are, and having done that, I can’t in good conscience be a part of any of them. I am always amazed at my friends that are feminists or gay, but still claim a home with a religion that as a whole promotes sexism and homophobia.

It also overwhelms me how many people comfort themselves during traumatic experiences in their lives by shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Well, it’s all part of God’s plan.”

Ya.

Sure.

Great plan! Thanks for the Parkinsons!

Have these people ever really looked around this place? There is no plan. Come on, let’s face it, some things that happen in life are as random and unfortunate as who gets a record deal.

Today, you should see people’s faces when they ask me why me and my current live-in boyfriend of eight years aren’t married and I respond by telling them: “Because I don’t believe in marriage and I don’t believe in God.” They look as if they want to step away-like the lightening is going to strike right there. They don’t know the big secret: the lightening isn’t coming.

Now, I still believe in being a good person, of course. But what does God have to do with that? You know there is such a thing as a kind, friendly and caring atheist. Maybe there’s even more kind, friendly, caring atheists than believers when you consider all the innocent people whose lives have been taken in the name of God.

I don’t think there is a God. And if I’m wrong, then I hope the higher power running the show is as great as everyone says and hopefully it would realize that I was a good person, mostly, and that all this religion stuff can be a little confusing.

Of course I was so religious that I still talk to God. Constantly. God, why is there a line at the post office and why are you killing all those nice people in Indonesia? And I even pray sometimes too, like when I think my plane is going to crash. But, it’s more for old time’s sake, taking me back to a simpler time when I was young and naive and believed everything my parents taught me. But now, God is little more than an imaginary friend that I talk to when I’m lonely, scared or confused.

My father always told me if something was too good to be true than it probably is. Well, an “afterlife” sounds just too good to be true. It makes me sad to think that the people I lose in this life I will never see again, but I know that telling myself anything different would be a lie.

If there is one thing I agree with in Buddhism it’s that “life is suffering.” I think the real reason people believe in God is to make themselves feel better about the pointlessness of life. To make them feel like there is some great reward waiting at the end of all this mayhem. The human ego is far too great to accept such an anti-climactic outcome.

Religion is just us wanting to make sense of something we don’t know the first thing about. No one wants to look at life and say that this right here, this is all there really is. This is as good as it gets. It’s a depressing thought. But it is. This is it. So there. Mass has ended. Go in peace, love yourself and serve whoever you want with at least some discretion. Be a good person because you want to if you want to, not because you think it will get you into heaven or because you hope it will come back to you later. Help old ladies with their groceries. Now go drink a martini and have lots of fun, guilt-free sex. Peace. Om. Om.

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