To Jesus Or Not To Jesus
That is the recovery
It can be very hard not to believe in Jesus. Or, to put it another way, it can be attractive to do so.
Of course, there are all the intellectual objections: E.g. If I had been born in Lebanon or China or even just to secular parents in the US, I would probably have much less of a temptation.
But that’s what it feels like: a temptation.
Almost like a temptation to drink. Which I used to do in order to feel better. To excess.
Anyway, to keep it simple, I was raised Roman Catholic by my mother. Plus, I’m a white American dude, and so Jesus is everywhere in the culture I encounter.
Again, it's kind of like alcohol — inescapable.
…It seems I can’t stop talking about drinking.
Well, because here’s the thing. When I was at one of the lowest points in my drinking career, having horribly negative, alienating, crushing depressions, I reached out to Jesus.
So to speak. I was painting a lot, and his image would appear here and there in the work. I even wrote to him once on a big piece of plywood I’d painted with surreal, quasi-religious imagery. And I think I felt comforted.
When I finally hit rock bottom, I went to my parents. My physical withdrawal symptoms were fairly mild, no DTs at least, since I drank mostly beer and wine. And even though I’d start early (sometimes in the morning shower), I spent a lot of time feeling hungover and not drunk at all. Socially anxious, panicky.
I went to my parents, and my mom laid “healing hands” on me and prayed to Jesus. Again, it was comforting. Even my atheist stepdad seemed into it — he’d been banging his head for years, not knowing what to do about me. So they said prayers, and I relaxed a bit, probably because it was my mom being nurturing.
That night, I envisioned a massive, greasy snake moving through the house, low and against the walls. And a guttural moaning ululated from the corner, like one of those demons in Jacob’s Ladder. I *knew* it was a demon, but it also felt like it was getting weaker, losing its hold on me as I lay there shaking off the toxins.
Flash forward through a year’s worth of sobriety. I had been praying throughout; I would recite the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary at night. It felt like a stabilizing thing, a way to be consistent each day and relay my gratitude to someone, somewhere.
I hoped for a girlfriend, but I don’t think I was “praying” for one, per se. Still, a woman pretty much just showed up at my door right around that time.
There were practical reasons, of course. We shared a mutual friend, and we were friends on Facebook.
The woman became my wife. And as it turned out, her father was (and still is) a deeply religious man. Born Again, he taught her the Rapture was true and nothing that he could really help her with; only God could do that.
The whole dynamic terrified her and ultimately led to her breaking bonds with the religion.
Quite a thing: There’s me with all of my Jesusing leading up to my recovery and through my post-acute withdrawal, and I marry a woman who has put all of her own Jesusing in the rearview mirror.
I have asked myself, though — because I’m being honest here — if I was the benefactor of a young woman’s religious upbringing. That’s what the pro-religion person would say, right? Clearly, this woman who came into my life (and the life of my five-year-old son, whom I was raising alone) had benefitted from religious values. She had been temperate in her youth. She didn’t have any children out of wedlock, like me. She was a serial monogamist with self-respect and a sense of self-determination.
However, if I can say one thing about my wife’s parents, without hesitation, they are good people who raised three children in a loving household. Despite the scare of the Rapture, my wife was loved, she was raised with values that transcend religion — to be kind, to have integrity. She then educated herself, first as an undergrad, then by traveling the world, then by obtaining her master’s. And she’s the beneficiary of good genetics. Both of her parents are even-tempered. They’re connected at the hip. There is very little dysfunction or addiction in my wife’s family.
Still, her father sends out daily scripture texts. For a while, I was a recipient but asked to be removed. My mother does it, too, when prompted. If I say, for instance, I have a wonderful life and can’t complain (which is true), she quotes the Bible: “I have come to give you life and give it to you in abundance.” Both of them think everything pretty much boils down to God and Jesus.
And it gets to me.
Here’s the thing. (If I may shift perspective a little to politics and culture): Many people who love Donald Trump (for instance) think he’s Jesus-like. Recently convicted for falsifying business records in efforts to cover up hush payments to a porn star he cheated on his wife with, his supporters nevertheless liken him to the Christian god. I’ve seen the memes with the angel over him consoling, “They said Jesus was guilty too.”
The problem with taking a complicated world and boiling it down into good and evil, Jesus and Satan, then, is that those poles are going to flip-flop based on your perspective. The internet and American culture at large abound with people who believe Satan is the Democratic Party. And/or that Satan is orchestrating things to give Trump hardship. And yet I know religious democrats who think Trump is Satan’s hand puppet, even the very Antichrist feared to opposed Jesus and take his place.
How can I invest in a mental framework that involves such arbitrariness?
And what does it have to do with my experience as a recovering addict?
I’ve spent years ruminating on whether my time crawling out of alcohol addiction and depression — and the subsequent good fortune of meeting my wife — were somehow divinely aided. Despite my intellectual pursuit of truth, encountering the works of Mircea Eliade, reading Reza Azlan’s Zealot, and delving into all things Sam Harris — from mindfulness meditation to neuroscience to free will — remnants of Christianity have remained. Doubts, really, that my intellect sufficiently forms the right outlook.
Not that I would tell anyone I believed in Jesus as my Lord and Savior if asked. And not that I would tell anyone I believed, really, in any historical accuracy in the Bible, beyond some passing truths perhaps about a man named Joshua who was (like hundreds of young illiterate peasant men at the time) a messianic aspirant. One who perhaps possessed some skills that set him apart, enough to be noticed and ultimately capitally punished.
But I would struggle nonetheless. Someone would argue their belief was only logical — Jesus either had to be a lying madman or everything he said was true — and it would catch me off guard. I'd question myself despite knowing the Bible is more story than reportage, written in a time long before fact-checking. Despite wondering by what accountancy we can be assured everything the biblical Jesus purported to have said and done was actually said and done, I’d wonder: And despite concluding there is none, and so the binary is false, I would still, somehow, doubt my lack of faith.
And then came Russell Brand.
As you no doubt have heard, Brand, a recovering addict himself, recently had a Christian “conversion.” Like millions, I was impressed with the comedian’s candor about his recovery and found many pearls of wisdom during his “guru” phase. An eloquent philosopher with seeming spiritual wisdom, Brand interviewed some of my personal heroes: the psychologist Gabor Mate, the celebrated historian Yuval Noah Harari, and many more.
And then, soon after he embarked on a long, right-leaning YouTube jag where he stirs the pot on conspiracy theories and racks up the views and subscribers, he dunked in the Thames to emerge anew as Russell Brand the Christian.
It really made me wonder, am I missing something?
In an Instagram post from May 2024, Brand asks rhetorically, “If Christ is not the perfect figure we need right now in an era of selfishness and greed.”
In response, I doubled down on my skepticism. I wrote:
No. The historical Jesus may have upset the status quo in his day and aptly condemned the money changers. Still, the modern typical follower of Jesus doesn’t see him as the leftist revolutionary you do. They practice the “prosperity gospel” and liken a reality TV blowhard real estate salesman to Jesus. What you’re looking for is perhaps mindfulness or even Dzogchen. To relinquish one’s ego doesn’t require a deity to relinquish it to, who then promises you your ego will survive death! Lol. That’s a loop, mate, that scared people have been exploiting for centuries. I think you’re grifting a little, Russell. Your YouTube hits went through the roof since throwing in with the right and your “conversion.” It all seems a bit coincidental. Anyway, stay sober, man. That should be your focus.
Of course, no one saw my response. Meanwhile, a top commenter on the video gushed, “Russell, the holy spirit is flowing through you!” Over 2,000 people agreed.
I understood how it worked, though. People who already believe in “the Holy Spirit” were thinking the same thing, or it made them think the same thing. Thus, they confirmed and validated.
But there was something in me that wasn’t satisfied merely knowing this. Something in me that was compelled to somehow “break through” to them.
I wrote:
You can induce the holy spirit, you know. Endorphins, oxytocin. Heck, Oxycontin. We might even say the Holy Spirit is like a ‘flow state.’ The words are coming, and the ideas sound cogent. The important part is the “holy spirit” is magical thinking used to understand or discuss something that doesn’t need magical thinking at all. Or, to put it another way, the reality is magic enough.
And, it’s true. I even tell my daughters this. They like magic, as most little girls do. Unicorns and fairies and, of course, the dreaded Santa Claus. And as they’ve gotten older, and no fairies could be confirmed, they’ve debated the finer points of magic, giving it caveats.
This is how religion works. Caveats are needed to bridge the gaps and close the loopholes, such as the “free will” fix to explain the problem of evil. The point is I show my daughters where I believe real magic can be found. How a tiny seed becomes a plant we can eat, how it knows to gather energy from the rain and sun, and the microbes in the soil to create life. How we tend to take these natural phenomena for granted while inventing other magic we can’t see or prove — things we have to chase instead.
Maybe it’s because we’re hardwired for the story. The seed doesn’t tell a compelling enough tale, while magical forests and special horses are much more interesting.
It used to be that we had more reverence for these natural processes and creatures. “Animism” describes the traditions and religions practiced by early people who lived closely with nature, typically before the agrarian revolution. Because once we settled and grew crops, nature became the drought or hail storm that ruined them, animals the pests that stole them, and our idea of the spiritual hardened into a vengeful god we could pray to to keep the crops safe. One we could even tithe with sacrifices.
Eventually, as it goes, Jesus came along and said, “Alright, guys — no need to keep killing animals. And for those of you still burying babies under the corner posts of your new homes for good luck, fuck right off. But, guys, seriously, no more sacrifices. That’s not what God is into anyway. That’s old shit. For now, be good to each other and see how that goes.”
Jesus was the first humanist, really. But he wasn’t powerful enough to enact the kind of transcendent change he could envision. He was killed instead. And today, the same people who would have likely rejected him are the ones who claim to hold him in esteem. He’s the unfortunate figure attached to values he never espoused or endorsed.
But why, is the pointed question, do I feel the need to say anything to anybody? Who am I trying to convince? Am I that poor doubting Thomas who just needs to accept the Christian reality and come back into the fold?
Wouldn’t that feel good?
For years, I’ve essentially kept the door open. I’ve listened to that heckling auditor in the back of my mind say, “You can come to Jesus as an intellectual, too, you know. Determinism really is God’s will. Oxytocin and endorphins are how we explain the Holy Spirit scientifically. And you knew your wife through a friend because God put that friend there.”
I’ve even said to myself, as any God-fearing Christian reading this is surely saying to themselves right now, “Ah, dear boy, that ‘heckling auditor’ IS God…”
Doubt runs through my every philosophical thought and dogs me through every experience that seems fortuitous.
Even as I avoid saying grace at family dinner because I can’t NOT think of the starving people without food at that same moment, and the implication that this is because they somehow chose the wrong god, or did the wrong thing, or weren’t grateful enough — the whole fucking conditionality of it — I still wonder if my father-in-law, in the midst of that prayer, is hip to something I am not.
And then I realize: I was always this way. I was born thinking I might’ve missed out on something. I grew up wondering what my friends might be doing without me. My whole life, I’ve suspected that other people know things I don’t. It’s not exactly paranoia, but a kind of reverse narcissism if you will. Instead of automatically feeling like I must be right about everything, I harbor the sneaking suspicion I might be wrong.
Some say it’s the curse of the Irish.
I say it’s genetics, and then it’s the connection between my bond with my mother and her beliefs. Nothing has made it harder to fully divest from the magical thinking of Christianity than this. Parents in general, yes — parents and authority figures like my loving and caring father-in-law. But biological parents especially.
Because here’s the thing. Here’s the real tricky bit: Maybe growing up and realizing your parents were assholes or something, or that they abused you — that would be horrible, of course — but that would be the more obvious reason to get off the hook of the religion you were raised with.
Having good parents, on the other hand, having loving parents who believe in and indoctrinate you, can make it even harder.
As can being an addict.
I suspect my wife, too, from time to time, still has some remnants of belief. But she’s stronger than I am. She’s more confident in her own mind than I am in mine. So, I follow her example.
It feels like its own kind of sobriety. It feels like not only was my recovery from alcohol, but it’s also been letting go of these last beliefs, tenuously connected as they are to my mother and my childhood, my addiction, and, of course, my fear of death.
I think of it now a little bit like that scene in Braveheart, of all movies (given its controversial director) — but nonetheless, that scene where William Wallace is about to be executed. Isabella of France comes to see him in the holding cell and offers him a pain pill. “I cannot bear the thought of your torture,” she says.
“But it will numb my wits,” he says, and refuses.
I like that and hold fast to it. I don’t want to numb my wits. I want to stay sober of body, sober of mind.
Of course, the whole thing never actually happened — Wallace and Isabella never met, nor had any stormy affair.
But it’s the message, you see. It’s the truth contained within the story.
The intelligence within the seed.
With love,
TJ
