I came across comedian Taylor Thompson about 5 years ago after she had released her first comedy special, Quarter-Life Crisis. She had been doing comedy since she was 16 and she is whip-smart and deeply insightful. She started out doing her act in mega-churches and was on the “church tour”, as she called it, at a very young age. She also has a late-night talk show. She has three siblings, and her mother died when she was 8 years old. That is when her love of church began to change. Neither she nor her siblings are straight, which I was surprised by. Not a judgment in any way; it just seemed unusual to me.
In an interview on NPR, she spoke of how her church, and the other evangelical churches she performed in, showed their true colors, both after her mother’s death and when she and her siblings came out. The insensitive things they said, things like “God has a plan” or “Your mother is an angel now”, really pointed out how cruel God was in their minds, even if they didn’t see their comments as cruel. She also said that even saying you agreed with same-sex marriage put you in a category that threatened your eternal soul. She spoke of one brother’s relationship as incredibly beautiful and caring, and was baffled by how so many people could see it as sinful. She, like so many millions of people around the world, is a victim of toxic religion.
I can understand how, if you were raised in a family and church and community in which these biases were taught daily, you could believe these kinds of things. I can see how years of being taught the same lessons about who God does or doesn’t love can train you to agree with this kind of hate. And most of us, regardless of our religiosity, has, at some point, been taught to believe that God is in control and will protect us from pain and suffering. At some point, though, we should be able to distinguish between hope and reality. At some point, our brains should take over and show us the plain truth about life and death. God gave us brains to work through these things, and one doesn’t have to believe the myths to still believe in God.
And yet, we are in the midst of a religious war in America. We have people who refuse to see the truth of evolution and actually believe that the earth and universe were created in six (or one) 24-hour days. We have states trying to infuse fundamentalist fake christianity into the public-school curriculum. We have millions of people believing that God chooses (some) of our leaders. I am a person of deep faith who also uses my brain. This is not an oxymoronic way to live. I can believe that Jesus is God in human form while still accepting that science is real. I can believe in evolution while still believing that God is the start of it all. God gave us brains so we can use them. If we don’t, that’s on us. Please don’t give up on God just because some of God’s followers say and do ignorant things. There are a lot of us who try not to be that way. You aren’t alone.
Prayer – Heal us of our willful ignorance, God, so that we might seek truth and knowledge that heals the world. Amen.