God on My Side

I saw a new documentary the other day: Andrew Denton's God on My Side. Essentially, Denton, who is an Australian interviewer/chat show host, starts with the idea of the "clash of civilisations" thesis and pictures of Islamic fundamentalists selling Osama Bin Laden t-shirts. Then he decides that maybe he will have a look at the fundamentalists a little closer to home. He goes to the Convention of Religious Broadcasters in Gaylord, Texas.

The movie has been criticized as kind of a weak documentary, because there is not much editorialising or analysis. Denton just walks around, interviewing people and mainly letting them speak for themselves. He is interested in them, in which they believe and why they believe it. He is interested in faith and where it takes us.

There were things I really hated about that convention. All the merchandising, for a start. I'm more of an overturning-the-tables-of-the-money-changers kind of a girl rather than a buy-a-t-shirt-saying-I'm-a-believer kind of a girl. Let alone a buying-a-Noah's-ark lollipop kind of a girl. But the fact is that a lot of the personalities at the convention have considerable charm. And they certainly seem to believe in what they are doing.

I was kind of confronted by how attracted I still am by that kind of Christianity. The fact is that I can be kind of a sucker for people who speak with conviction. I doubt so much, myself, that people who knows exactly what they believe, well, I am kind of incredulous about them but at the same time it makes me doubt myself even more. I can be very wishy-washy that way.

For a while there, I listened to those people and I really wondered about myself. Why does their unearthly serenity make me feel kind of sour? What the hell is wrong with me? Why can't I just believe those things? It would solve a heck of a lot of problems for me. How come I hardly pray any more? Do I really think I'm so much better than them? For a while there, I really wanted to be them.

They seem to have such faith that God is good and that everything will come right in the end. I want to believe that. I do. But somehow, between the time my sister was raped, the months I spent interviewing refugees and listening to all that suffering, my experience of infertility, seeing my Big Dude, the best man I know, sick every day, my friend with the daughter with Huntingdon's Disease, I lost that kind of faith. My neighbour told me yesterday that she has just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and it is spreading. She is 22 years old. I do not know how these people can see all this stuff and go on with such faith.

Sadly, listening to them didn't make me believe in their version of Christianity, though. I just kind of envied them. I'm like a person with a toothache who really, really wishes that she believed in the tooth fairy because it would be so comforting.

And actually, I sort of wonder if what those people believe actually is Christianity. I mean, I do remember what it was like to believe in a God who was all tied up with family values and patriotism and that kind of thing. Those were all good things, and it seemed natural that they came in a package. But, to be honest, it doesn't seem to have much to do with the Jesus of the gospels.

I mean, is their family values Jesus the same Jesus who told a man not to bury his own father? Who told his mother and brothers that his true family were those who obeyed God? Who apparently didn't either marry or have children? Does all that patriotism really come from Jesus, who seems to have been content to co-exist with the foreign empire occupying his country? Does that simple message they preach, with its straightforward, bullet-point rules, really come from the Jesus who preached in the form of stories, parables, riddles and questions? The Jesus of the gospels, to me, is quite enigmatic. There is light and shadow. There is mystery. So why is this form of religion so... glossy?

And the sorry fact is that a lot of the other stuff was kind of damning. You know, I'm genuinely happy for them that they know that Jesus loves them and that they are on their way to heaven, but is there really any excuse nowadays for showing women who have had abortions pictures of little fetuses? For believing it's okay to beat homosexuals around the head with bible verses? How would they like it if I beat them around the head with all the bible verses about God's attitude to rich people?

And once the interviews got onto their beliefs about the End Times, those people totally lost me. It's really quite something to listen to someone who thinks that the solution to problems in the Middle East is to nuke Iran and who believes that, if we do, everything will be okay because Jesus will rescue the Christians in the rapture before everything turns to shit. Pity about all the other billions of people, huh?

And, you know, I really don't mind what they believe. I really don't mind if people believe in fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist Islam or that their healing chrystals are talking to them. I mean, I have believed in some pretty silly things myself, and I'm sure I still do. It just worries me how much power these people seem to be accumulating.

There was this very nice woman, a former Hollywood star, who spoke with great conviction. She wasn't one of those never-had-any-experience-of-suffering-and-therefore-apparently-lives-in-cloud-cuckoo-land kind of people. She'd had eight failed marriages and nine miscarriages. That's a lot of pain right there. But she seemed very concerned that we should all know that her kind of Christian is not boring. She's right. These kinds of Christians are not boring. They're a little fucking scary, that's what they are.

Maybe my wishy-washy faith isn't as bad as I fear, even though I would like it to change. As Mark Twain said,

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.