A few years ago, I came across an article from GQ that instantly attracted my attention, and then brought up a feeling of sadness.
The piece was titled ‘What Would Cool Jesus Do?’ and was a behind-the-scenes look at Hillsong Church in New York. For those who’ve never heard the name, Hillsong is a global mega-church that started in Australia but now has branches all over the world. It’s a modern, energetic, youthful church and a bit of a phenomenon in the Christian world; their songs are sung in millions of churches every week, and they even had their own major theatrical movie.
As an ex-Christian myself, I had once been a big fan of Hillsong. I had performed their songs onstage thousands of times over the years, enjoyed their live concerts, and visited their congregations in Australia, South Africa and around Europe. Now that I had moved away from my old belief system, I was interested to see a secular perspective on the church.
Like any large organisation with mass exposure, Hillsong is an easy target to criticise; but the GQ piece seemed interesting, fair and quite well-balanced. It was written with humour, poking fun at some of the fashions and cultural markers of the group; but it was also kind, pointing out moments of real beauty, power and grace.
The article also included a short video featuring the pastor of Hillsong New York, Carl Lentz, who at one point says this:
“I don’t have the right to have a bad day spiritually. I don’t have the right to be seasonal with my faith.”
And this was the line that made me feel sad; but not especially surprised.
If you haven’t grown up in church you may not be aware of this, but Christianity (or more specifically, the brand of Christianity that I was brought up with) holds a foundational belief that humanity is broken at the core, and inherently sinful.
In other words, there’s something wrong with you from the moment you’re born, simply because you’re human.
I was taught that without Jesus we can never be our full selves. We made a clear distinction between sinners and saved, between the churched and the un-churched; if you aren’t a part of the church, you can’t possibly be living your most fulfilled, happy, meaningful life (and if you think you are living a fulfilled, happy, meaningful life, you must be mistaken… sorry about that, most humans).
These ideas had a big impact on the way I saw the world. As a Christian, I had been rescued from my in-built human brokenness; now I was supposed to be an example, a light to the world, attracting people towards the faith that I had. If the world was broken, then we should appear to be fixed; after all, that was the whole point of the Good News we were selling. As another curious Hillsong visitor said in the GQ video: “Everyone’s so happy… why am I not happy?”
This led us to believe things like Pastor Lentz in the video: that we were not permitted to have a bad day anymore, because people were watching us, and we had to show them that our lives were better now. If I did have a bad day, I felt guilty: obviously I’m not close to God today, or I’m missing some spiritual discipline, and I need to get my act together so that I can be a better advertisement for the faith I represent.
This whole attidude reminds me of a job I used to have. I worked in a supermarket as a teenager, and one of my main tasks was known as ‘facing up’. I’ll let Past Me explain what that meant (in his fancy green uniform):
(That took a distressingly long time to draw…)
I feel like we were doing a similar thing with our religion. Our main goal became to look attractive to other people, and so we ‘faced up’ our lives: we put on a public layer of faith and certainty and happiness and confidence, when behind the front was a way more complicated and mixed up reality.
We turned Christianity into something sanitised and safe and bland and removed from real life; and in this environment, we often felt like we had to act completely fine all the time and never have a bad day, which subtly taught others to act in the same way.
The worst thing is, we were all secretly thinking that everyone else had it all together. We were surrounded with happy people, and suspected there was something wrong with us for actually not feeling happy and certain all the time; and because we assumed we were alone, we never admitted those feelings. Instead, we followed the example and tried to fit in with the crowd.
I have to be clear that I personally know Christians who have a faith that is honest and earthy and real, and who are open about their struggles and doubts. Some of them are leaders and still heavily involved in church life, so I’m not painting everybody with one easy brush here.
But I do feel genuinely sorry for all those who feel unable or unallowed to be real, and who feel pressure to live up to a certain standard; people who are expected to live ‘clean’ and ‘pure’ lives, to give the church a good reputation and never be negative about it, to always be available to help, to sacrifice their spare time and relationships and personal interests, to preach only the accepted beliefs and hold the party-line, to kill any doubts, and to always give more, do more, serve more, and produce more.
One of the reasons I stopped going to church was that I couldn’t live this way anymore. I was tired. I wasn’t even being honest with myself. When I was growing up I was taught to push down every doubt that tried to surface, because doubt was seen as an ‘attack from the enemy’; and so I didn’t even really own what I believed.
Having a bad day spiritually has to be permitted. Because here’s the truth: it’s natural to have bad days, it’s natural to change, it’s natural to go through seasons and it’s natural to doubt. More than natural, I’d even say that all of those things are healthy and important. Denying them just creates a culture where we all learn to pretend really well.
In the last couple years, I’ve found a lot of beauty and peace in Eastern philosophies, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. I still hesitate to write publicly about these ideas, as they are so new and fresh to me. I don’t have a large amount of knowledge or experience here, but some of the teachings often feel like a complete antidote to the way I was brought up.
In church on Sundays we were taught to stir up good feelings: to pray loudly, to sing passionately, to speak against our challenges and to declare that we were happy, healthy, and victorious. Negative emotions were the sign of an attack from the Devil, and we had to fight back against those feelings. As a member of the band, I was part of creating an atmosphere that helped people to feel hope, faith and excitement. We wrote anthemic songs with simple, uplifting lyrics, and heart-pounding drum builds that stirred up passionate cheers of joy from the crowd.
In contrast to the Christianity I grew up with, Buddhism teaches that the suffering we experience comes from our constant attempts to be rid of it; to ignore and cover up our negative feelings, while desperately clinging on to the positive ones. From my understanding of Buddhist philosophy (and please feel free to correct me), it’s not the particular thought, feeling or circumstance that causes pain; it’s our inability to allow those feelings, to fully experience them, and to let them be what they are.
Even when we are happy, we worry that the positive feeling will disappear. We can become trapped in a constant cycle of dissatisfaction, always seeking the next thing that we believe will make us happy, and always disappointed when that happiness inevitably fades.
Robert Wright, author of the fantastic book ‘Why Buddhism Is True’, uses the acronym ‘RAIN’ to describe the process for dealing with whatever we’re feeling in a particular moment.
First, we must Recognise the emotion: notice what we are feeling in this moment, whether it’s sadness, worry, anger, satisfaction or anything else.
Second, we Accept the emotion: not trying to change it in any way, but simply allowing it to be what it is.
Third, we Investigate the emotion: taking a closer look at how we feel, noticing how the emotion presents itself in physical sensation, and viewing it all with kindness and a compassionate attitude.
The final step is Non-identification with the emotion: realising that this emotion is not who we are, that it is temporary, and that we don’t have to get stuck inside of it. It is simply the feeling that is present at this moment, to be neither dismissed nor clung onto. We don’t have to attach ourselves to it, or fight to push it away.
I’ve found this RAIN acronym to be an incredibly helpful and meaningful way to begin practising a new way of living with the rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions that can travel through my mind in a single day. Although I’m not always successful, and I have a lot to learn, it feels far more natural and peaceful than simply attempting to stir up passion and happiness through sheer force.
After I stopped going to church a few years ago, I craved honesty. I’d had enough surface-layer stuff, and I’m blaming myself here before anybody else. I simply couldn’t admit to feeling completely alone and unfulfilled some days. I couldn’t share my deep doubts and frustrations. I couldn’t even begin to understand what I was feeling, and I didn’t find any honesty in the ready-made set of answers that we repeated in church every week.
Even though I don’t call myself a Christian these days, I still consider myself a spiritual person. But something important has changed for me: I want a spirituality that is completely okay with all the shit.
I don’t mean just acknowledging the shit and then cleaning it up with a prayer or a few magic confessional words; I mean fully experiencing and sharing the tough, day-to-day, real life stuff, without trying to tidy it up or make it fit into a ready-made box at the end.
I want a spirituality that doesn’t just talk about how beautiful and good and hopeful life is, but also how rubbish and confusing and uncertain it can be too. I want an uncensored, unsanitised, unsafe faith, where disagreements and differences of opinion are celebrated instead of shut down, where I can be fully myself instead of trying to be more like everyone else.
I want a spirituality that doesn’t get offended if I don’t believe in God, or if I have to use ‘bad’ language to express how I really fucking feel right now, or if I laugh at something completely inappropriate, or if I don’t want to smile and look happy and jump around anymore; a spirituality that isn’t based on my apparent passion, commitment, energy, or how ‘on fire for God’ I seem to be.
Personally, I can’t find that at church anymore. Some people can, and that’s great! Instead, I find it in my closest relationships, in sharing a few beers with people I can be fully myself with, in learning new things as often as possible and hearing different opinions to my own, in reading about philosophy from other cultures, in moments of brutal honesty and raw authenticity, in allowing myself to express what I’m feeling without self-censorship, in art and music that engages with every aspect of life and takes me somewhere deep, in moments of quiet and reflection, and even in uncertainty itself.
Those things have become ‘church’ for me. I’m no longer trying to separate myself from the world, pretending to have found the answer to humanity’s problems; instead, I’m trying to learn how to be part of the world that I’m actually in, and to engage honestly with the world inside of me.
And the best thing?
I’m allowed to have as many bad days as I need.
And so are you.
