Warning: If you are prone to strong negative emotions and judgments when hearing unorthodox and potentially "heretical" declarations, turn back NOW!
I'm God. No, seriously, I think I Am. Yeah... well, hang on a bit, and I'll try to explain. I want to address everything, all at once, my life, the human experience, the meaning of existence, and the dizzying circus of my own mental perception and interaction with the whole. How can I boil down my experience growing up with my dad and it's deeply interwoven religious training component. I'm not exactly sure how to summarize my ideas here in a single blog entry, but I think, if I had to boil down my overall direction into a one word, one question, one answer, it would be "God." Three words? "I am God." Let's see if I can get there, with a surprise ending for you, my lucky reader. Save your thanks til the end. :)
Today I caused pain for someone close to me. I probably do it every day, for someone. I could argue my case, but that's how I hurt my friend. I see that I'm always defending myself, even though I'm tragically at odds with myself or rather, my selves.
After I went forward with the circumstances of Sandy's death and whereabouts http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/09/california.body.found/index.html some suggested I was an accomplice to murder. Aren't we all accomplices to the entire human experience? My dad grew up in this country, in this culture, in a Christian home, in a Christian nation, in a society that worships money, individualists, and violence. By purchasing and participating in this society, all of us are accomplices. If we did not work to stop it, we allowed it through inaction. Of all the people in America in 1987, I was the only one that saw what my father did. I didn't stop him, ultimately, but I was trying. All of human history is complicit in the making of Ernie Christie Jr, Sandy Turpin's murder, and my traumatic childhood. I should ask the "accomplice" crowd if it's sinking in on any level that they are accomplices through their own passivity, not only to Sandy's plight but to the suffering of a whole world, using accusation as a way to salve the shame of their own helpless inaction. Can I let you in on a little secret? I don't think turning the tables on my dad would have been an easy manner. There were great risks. I didn't want to get killed. What's your excuse? We as individuals don't know how to find out who's being abused, and we don't know how to help. True. But do any of us spend any time trying to figure out what could be done? How many of us are even trying? How many of us have the time? Aren't we all too busy working our jobs to pay our loans and keep our houses? Are the rich to blame? I think I'm to blame for allowing there to be rich and poor in my world. I'm certainly not doing all I can to even the playing field. I didn't stop my dad from overpowering Sandy, but I don't do anything to stop CEOs of large corporations from living high off of the sweat and misery of their armies of minimum wage slaves either. I didn't do anything to stop my country's government from murdering millions of civilians in Iraq.
Why is it offensive for me to suggest I'm a god? Because none of us want to carry the shame of selfishly denying benefit to others when it is in our power. We want to feel justified. How dare I acknowledge my power and lift the curtain of plausible powerlessness to which we all cling! I'm sorry. I know it might trigger shame to think about what we're not doing. I personally would not be able to read a blog like this, but I think people are generally better than me and less likely to take things personally than me. Well, no, that's a lie. I know my writing will offend. Who cares?
I'm offended by anyone who judges me over Sandy. Do you know why? It's because such judgment automatically puts me in a cross. I think we should choose one of two paths of thought about the crimes I witnessed. Either I should have done everything I could to save her or I should be excused from any responsibility. If you think I should have saved her, then I think it would only be fair for you to devote your life and finances to saving someone or something. If you want to get away with living your life in complete denial, then please allow that I was perfectly within my rights to watch and not intervene in Sandy's death.
Of course, I'm only offended because of some expectation of fair treatment. Clearly, my dad taught me that life is inherently unfair; he said as much on many occasions. Jesus even teaches that Heaven requires accepting less than our "fair" share for the sake of love. Philosophically, I agree. How about this? I totally failed to stop my dad from killing Sandy, but I don't want to blame anyone for being oblivious to the suffering they do not see. How about we all just try to evaluate ourselves and our own contributions with the greater good of others in our minds? How about we learn from our mistakes? I'm writing a blog. Yes, the rest of my life might be ordinary, but I try to love people as much as I can without allowing them to run over me and beat me into the ground. Can I let you in on another secret? Do you know how people can be kind of selfish, ruthless, and uncaring? I've known a lot of cruel people. On the whole, my dad was just like everyone else.
My dad used to say "If you don't get to Heaven in this life, nothing will change when you die." What in the world did he mean? I've spent a lot of years pondering his ideas about salvation. I don't believe the way I used to believe, but there is a sense in which I was saved. Through faith in something greater than the world of me and Ernie Christie Jr, I managed to hold on to hope for something greater for me. I learned to suffer and wait. I learned that I was capable of choosing my path, even when I didn't feel like I had a choice at all. I've been saved by Jesus in that I didn't just follow my dad's path completely.
Now, he believed in Jesus as an actual being with a personality and a plan for our lives. I believed the same until after my dad died. Then, I began to think about all the things God "saw" when I was growing up. Sure, I never stopped my dad, but neither did God. Whatever impact I had on my dad was god-like in its proportions. I never saw God adjust the situation at all. At least I started telling dad he was wrong. At least I convinced him to stop hitting women. The only gods in those private moments in my childhood home were my dad, me, and the ideas of "God" in our heads.
For me, the only useful application of religion is done here, on Earth, while we live. I turned the other cheek thousands of times. In one sense, that got me hit a lot more. In another sense, perhaps I had a positive impact on the whole course of things. Either way, following Jesus kept me stuck there loving him, and following Jesus gave me the strength to survive it. But in the end, I'm the one who was there, made choices, and now carries the weight of it all.
© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III
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