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Nonfiction: Proselytization, an essay on personal belief.



Listen here you heathens! I know the path! I have been shown the secrets! Let all doubt be stricken from your mind! Follow, for I give absolute truth!



Proselytization: 

I have been one to proselytize on multiple occasions and subjects through my years. The subject and passion has changed and shifted over the course of my life. The saying is that every seven years you become a new person. To me this is evocative of a constant cycle of caterpillars, butterflies, caterpillars, butterflies, on and on. I think the truth is far more granular, gradual, and subtle than that statement implies. It is not always a fresh or clean start, it is bits coming and going piecemeal until nothing the same is left.

Once, I called myself a Christian. Vigorously, fervently, with passion. I would not be spit from my Lord’s mouth for being lukewarm. (Revelation 3:16) I would be the Jesus-freak. (https://youtu.be/kbB0QrBIs9k)
I spent my youth in the church, I listened to Christian radio, watched Christian movies, and read Christian books. In my teenage years I began teaching those barely younger than me about the stories and promises from space-daddy that I had barely finished being taught. The concept of disbelief was a whispered horror. Atheists were a legitimate threat that made me fearful for our society and nation. What was someone that did not answer to a god capable of? If they didn’t believe in a punishment after this life, they were monsters who could rape, steal, kill, all manner of terror, because what need they fear?
I taught the children that the church asked me to teach the words the church had asked me to teach them. I lived in a world where only those who thought and believed as I did, or some very similar variety, would receive eternal life with all of the other good children. Everyone else was doomed to eternal torment in some Dante-esque hell. Everyone but us were fools who needed to be shown the light. In hindsight, there may have been those in my church that held more moderate beliefs, but few moderates will speak against the fanatics.
I believed and firmly argued the creation myth as it was written. The earth was just over six thousand years old. Evolution was a lie, or at least human hubris trying to explain something beyond what the bible had already lain forth as truth. I studied arguments to defeat those who would challenge my, correct, infallible, biblically supported beliefs. The perfection of the flagellum was proof of design. Casting aside miles and miles of texts that disagreed while hunting those that corroborated my existing stance.
Slowly, and not confirmed or denied to be within seven years as predicted, I began to change. I can’t point to the first or the last moment I began to question my faith, nor do I recall the exact moment I renounced it. I refused baptism when my peers were doubling down on their promises to the Hebrew Lich, thanking him for his kindness. I stopped taking communion. I stopped believing. I still said I did, I lied for years. I lied to my parents, my peers, and my teachers in the church. I spoke the words, I followed the rules and paths given to me. I taught children his words. But the flame of prosethyzation was long gone.

This period was side by side with the teenage trajectory of rejection of parental dictates. It could be believed that I denied communionion because I was rebelling. In truth, the whole act felt wrong. It all felt so wrong.
            
This time coincided with an unfortunate downside playing out from how I was raised and educated. I was homeschooled. My main mode of interaction was through the church. This led to a unique arrangement in my social life. My “church friends” all had school friends. They held whole other mysterious lives. I was a once a week social engagement to them, wrought by circumstance of our parents bringing us to the same building. To me, they were all I had, my whole teenaged social life. I did Boy Scouts, at church. I did choir, at church. I did drama, at church. You catch my drift.
Through it all, and to this day I do not know if I was an outcast or just had the standard teenaged experience, I felt like I did not belong. I was awkward. My mind was full of lustful thoughts, put there by the devil as temptation of course. I was confused. I was angry. I was… probably a bog-standard teenager. I grew to despise and revile those around me. They were fools, living myopic, empty lives.

The next major era of proselytization began with my rebirth as an atheist. I came forth from my chrysalis a new man. I saw the light. I rejected gods, and I rejected the men who made them. I hated my “church friends”. I was enraged. I had been lied to, for so long, and deceived by all who I had trusted. I was not loved by space-daddy, nor my one day a week “peers”. God did not exist, and he never had.
There are so, so many dead gods strewn through the history books. I studied and studied Christianity in my fervor to defend it, it never occurred to me until later that the more I understood, the less I wanted anything to do with it.
So I began my second biggest prosethyzation campaign. God is a lie. Christians are hypocritical fools. Religion is self-deceit. I spoke these truths with the same vigor with which I had once spread those same lies myself. When a Christian is filled with this kind of passion, they are described internally as being “on fire for God”. I don’t know the commonplace phrase for the vigor of the opposition to the church.

This is the man I was in my first few steps into adulthood. I was on fire, and ready to burn down the church. I deeply regret this time in my life, not because of the thoughts or beliefs I held, but because I was so, so angry. Anger is a poison you drink hoping another will die. Socializing became even more grotesque feeling, because I had yet to build out a world beyond the church. Vaguely concealed, I went about stinking of hate.
I hated them, for reasons that weren’t entirely their fault, but it leaked through the cracks all the same. This is a chicken and an egg concept to me in hindsight. Was it me being shitty that made them treat me like shit, or were they shitty to me so I treated them like shit. In truth, nothing so overt occurred. There was no singular catastrophic event that brought it all crashing down. It was just a bunch of teenaged relation-shits.
Life goes on. I eventually earnestly entered school myself, and loved college life. I met people who were not, nor had ever been “Jesus-freaks”. I found interests and activities that did not involve the church. I moved on.

Seven years? Could have been… I gradually stopped poisoning myself. I learned to stop hating. I stopped proselytizing against the religious. I came to accept the positive role religion can play in people’s lives. I do not believe, and I never will. Religion can be a dangerous and destructive tool. But the fire has died down, and I can accept it.
Acceptance. Mindfulness. Meditation. I had rejected religion, but where do the non-religious get their belief, their faith, their moral code? I built my own. I took what ideals I respected wherever I found them, and made them my own. I am responsible for my own choices, words, and actions. No god, no judgment. I seek to make the world a better place. I seek to be open about myself and struggles. All mankind is of the same material, seeking to be loved and cherished and remembered. I am responsible for me.

So we come to the more modern age. I built a new world for myself based on the me I grew to become. I learned to love others, and keep those near that built me up, rather than tore me down. I learned to let go of my hate. I made purposeful my attempt to love my fellow man. I learned, slowly, to love myself.
I am aware of my cycle of belief, proselytization, and cooling. I have learned to be more subdued in my fiery devotion to the ideals I come to revere. In building my ideals, I stole intemperately from Buddhism. I loved reading the writings of the Dalai Lama. He spoke of his own belief structure without the threat of torture inherent to all of the Abrahamic religions. He stated what he believed, and how it helped him. And he offered his view with the hope that it would help others, or that they could find something that did help. There was no judgment. I was allowed to take the philosophy and leave behind the theology. I was allowed to love, without the morbid sadness of knowing that those I loved, if they didn’t believe correctly, would be punished for eternity.
           
Alongside the shift in my theological paradigm, I came to other new viewpoints that required I temper my urge to proselytize. I became a vegetarian. I do not want to contribute to the suffering in the world. The meat industry is inhumane and incredibly destructive to the environment. Ethically sourced meat is difficult to find and expensive. I ate meat because I liked to, and I had to decide whether the suffering I created by allowing myself that luxury was worth the detriment I was contributing. An essay by Plutarch, a greek philosopher from about thirty BC, called “On the Eating of Flesh” was the final nail in my decision. (http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/plutarch01.htm) He spoke about all of the factors as to why he chose not to partake, and his ancient reasoning was perfectly relevant to today’s world. I made the choice to reduce my impact, a decision that impacts only me, made for myself. Vegetarians are known for their… vigorous beliefs, so I am careful not to offer my feelings on the subject without being asked. A very small flame of proselytization, carefully tended.

I have also grown slowly to understand more clearly my own sexuality. As hinted above, I felt many sexual temptations in my religious days that I was told came from the devil. My internal dialogue was lustful, and desired things that showed man’s evil nature. The topic of my arrival to polyamory would require a dedicated discussion to do it justice. In summary, and with the promise that I will elaborate on the subject some day, I am a polyamorous person. To me, this is my sexual identity, as much as heterosexual, homosexual, or any other personally held identity. This realization, and the painful emergence from the constrictions of how I was raised and the societal expectations there-in, has been a journey. It took effort, but breaking free from the chrysalis, and emerging as a man true to self has been worth the struggle.
This has of course brought a new era of carefully tempered desire to share; the latest age of proselytization. Every gay man I have ever known has loved the discussion of which of the “straight” men they know are actually closeted; hiding in their secret mind's eye a lust for the touch of a man. I partook in similar diversions. I had always felt this way, others must feel it as well. Everyone must, and obviously they are hiding it from themselves and others, just like me. I pondered personalities and tells, who was the most poly, and who was genuinely, ludicrously, wired for monogamy.
Unlike homosexuality, polyamory is an element of sexuality that has not received widespread societal discussion as of yet. There are very helpful books on the subject; through the journey it took study, discussion, and even a relationship counselor specialized in the topic to reach a functional and respectful place in my relationship and marriage. (https://tinyurl.com/opening-upbookhttps://tinyurl.com/morethan2-polybookhttps://tinyurl.com/sexatdawn-book)

This awareness of my own phases of proselytization, the inception of a new belief, the passionate fire, the desire to spread the flame to any who will listen, the slow cooling as reality and time press the idea into more realistic shapes, makes me particularly sensitive to observing this tendency in others. I grate against those who have the same fires burning that have long since burned out in myself. The fires of my youth flared brightly, and I am scarred from the burns they left on me. The sight of the same flames in others causes a discomfort that requires introspection and meditation to allow me to approach in a way that is understanding, calm and not reactionary.

I don’t know what journeys of belief I will take going forward, all I can do is be aware of the memetic passage of paradigms from one mind to another. I was raised to be one thing, and now I am something else. I have built myself from the bits and pieces of my choosing. No entity holds responsibility for my thoughts or actions but myself. I look to respectfully share myself and my view with those that wish it.

I am more careful and respectful now, or I seek to be. No longer will I build a pyre so bright as to blind or burn others or myself. We are all on our own journeys. The topics of religion, politics, sexuality, these are all massive pieces of identity that we are given or choose on our path. Other’s may not follow the same road as me. Whomever we all are now, let’s check back in seven years. Perhaps we will pass one another on our journeys, or perhaps we may recognize the steps another takes as a place we were once ourselves.



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