Humility

My first run-in with Christianity came in the summer my sister and I stayed with our babysitter's family during the daytime while our parents worked, when I was 7 and Lynn was 5. We both hated that family because of all the naps they forced us to take. My mom never understood how bad it was. Whenever I'd complain, "Mommy, they make us sleep too much," she'd laugh only because she had absolutely no idea that it was along the lines of 8 OR 9 HOURS OF NAPS. DURING THE DAY. DAMN THEM. THOSE ABUSIVE, LAZY PIECES OF YOU KNOW WHAT.

Even worse, and more relevant to the point of this blog entry, was the fact that this was a family of religious fanatics. At that age, I knew nothing about Christianity, or in their case, Catholicism. I just knew that there were crucifixes on every wall of every room of my babysitter's house, only I called them swords, and I really really wanted to pull one of those swords off of the walls so I could do battle with pirates. Yes, who would have thought that the isolation of lying under the covers during entire workdays would make me create imaginary pirate friends?

One afternoon when the babysitter and her family thought Lynn and I were sound asleep, they went to catch a matinee at the local theater. Those abusive, lazy pieces of you know what, they just left us home alone like that. Of course, I didn't care. I watched their car pull out of the driveway, ran back to the couch that my sister was sleeping on, pulled off her covers, and yelled, "IT'S PARTY TIME!"

The first order of business in my afternoon of unsupervised mischief was to explore the house upstairs. Lynn and I had only been downstairs, and the one time I asked if I could look around upstairs, they threatened to increase my daily nap time by 30%.

But of course, telling a child not to do something only fuels their need to be treacherous. After ordering my sister to stay put, I climbed up the stairs, wearing my sly grin, fully intending to jump on their beds and perhaps look for a stool that would assist me in taking down one of their swords on the wall for my fight with the pirates.

And I'll never forget what I saw the moment I cracked open one of their bedroom doors.

Covering an entire eight-foot high wall was a gigantic mural of the face of Jesus Christ wearing the Crown of Thorns, with bright red blood dripping down every corner of his face, his bloody eyes looking upwards, his bloody mouth agape in exhausting pain. It looked like this, only bloodier. It was the most horrifying and confusing thing a 7 year old could possibly see.

I screamed, slammed the door, then ran downstairs.

"LYNN!" I shrieked, shaking her shoulders. "LYNN. I WANT YOU TO ALWAYS LISTEN TO ME, OKAY?"

"Whyth?"

I started hyperventilating. "LYNN, SHUT UP, JUST ALWAYS LISTEN TO ME. YOU CAN'T TRUST ANYONE IN THIS WORLD BUT ME, OKAY? IT'S JUST YOU AND ME, LYNN. THE ONLY PERSON YOU LISTEN TO IS ME."

"Okayth."

"OKAY, SO LYNN, I WANT YOU TO PROMISE NEVER TO GO UPSTAIRS. DO NOT GO UPSTAIRS. PROMISE ME, LYNN."

"Whyth?"

I pointed to each sword/crucifix on each wall of the living room and replied, "BECAUSE THEY'RE FREAKS! LYNN! THESE PEOPLE ARE FREAKS! THEY'RE CRAZY! YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S UPSTAIRS."

"Don't yellth ath me anymoreth. I'm getting thscared..."

"I THINK THEY'RE GONNA KILL US. DO YOU KNOW WHY THEY MAKE US TAKE NAPS ALL THE TIME, LYNN? THEY'RE BIDING THEIR TIME. OBSERVING US. SHARPENING THEIR KNIVES AND WAITING FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO PUT THORNY HATS ON OUR HEADS SO WE CAN DIE LIKE THE OTHERS AND BECOME A PART OF THEIR COLLECTION. YOU CAN'T TRUST THEM, LYNN. ONLY ME."

Lynn started sobbing. I started sobbing too. "PROMISE ME, LYNN. DON'T GO UPSTAIRS."

"I promiseth."

...

That was a long time ago, before I grew up and found legitimate reasons not to believe in God, before I picked up The Brothers Karamazov at the local library during high school, before I participated in late-night dorm room philosophizing with stoner buddies in college, before Philosophy 101, before I plowed through the works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell.

Strangely enough, I still found myself today sitting at the end of a pew in a church, watching my sister get baptized. I say it's strange because of how I've grown into a very knowledgeable atheist, while my sister has grown into a very knowledgeable, enthusiastic Christian.

Preceding the baptism, Lynn had to get up in front of the audience to give a testimony about her journey. Her theme was "humility", and as she spoke, I recognized her speech as a sitcom cliche where the high school valedictorian stresses out about giving a memorable speech, only to toss it out at the last minute in favor of talking straight from the heart. In fact, there's a Saved by the Bell episode where Jessie Spano uses "humility" as her theme and finally credits Screech as the true valedictorian of Bayside.

Anyway. So I thought about all of this, giggled to myself, and then tried to make eye contact with Lynn in hopes of making her laugh too, but that's when I noticed the tears in her eyes. Her voice trembled and the small sheet of paper in her hands that she read her speech off of shook like a leaf on a tree.

Lynn would later tell me that when she saw me during her speech, she assumed the scrunched up look on my face meant I was very hung over. But that was only part of it. Actually, my arms were firmly crossed and my face looked strained because I was trying to prevent myself from crying.

She was so poised, so strong, so honest. She mentioned wanting to feel the same things deep inside that other, more experienced Christians have told her about. Every sentence proclaimed her faith, yet her voice quivered loudest when she looked down and admitted, "But nothing supernatural has ever happened to me."

Again, I thought about how different me and Lynn had become. While Lynn stood up in the front, telling people about God, revealing a combination of both confidence and vulnerability, I sank into my pew in shame.

I became embarrassed at the realization that my goals in life have so much to do with making people love me. Why else do I always fantasize about being a stand-up comedian? Why else do I want to be a writer? Why else do I never show people when I'm in a bad mood?

Then, when Lynn spoke about how before finding God she was all about shallow things like self-improvement, I thought about all the self-help books I've owned throughout the years, and how any obnoxious Christian would claim that the greatest self-help book of all time is the Bible.

I laughed at that thought, and then, all of a sudden, I felt even more shame. Here my sister was, taking an important step in her life, and all I could do was think about how her experience related to me. Me, me, me. Me.

Minutes later, after I had gotten over myself, the pastor dipped Lynn into the pool of water, thereby concluding her public declaration of her faith. I still found myself a little sad because of how different the paths in our life have become -- not because I felt morally inferior, but because I felt like I was no longer going to be the only one in the world she could trust (there I go again, thinking about me, me, me). From now on, she's got her God. Now that's humility.