The important role religion played in my life, as a vaguely Christian agnostic

Reflections on visiting Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity House, Kolkata

“Peace begins with a smile.” -Mother Teresa

This past Sunday, Denise and I visited Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity House. I’ve recently reflected quite a lot on the role of religion in my life, and the combination of the visit to Mother Teresa’s home, and the extreme, base poverty that we have glimpsed throughout the country, led to a long rumination session.

I’ve never been quite sure that Jesus was literally the son of God. I’ve never necessarily thought “well yes, God is quite the literal creature portrayed in Christian religious texts. He has emotions and very deliberative plans and intentions.” There have been times, on and off, throughout my life, where I have identified as a Christian. However, I’ve never been sure. I’ve never had unwavering faith, which pretty much disqualifies me.

However, Christianity has played an important, even transformative role in my life. This has come from my interaction with four different institutions. The first was a church in my home town, which had a number of youth outreach programs. Overall, I’d say my interactions with them were, to be blunt, counterproductive. At age six, my mom picked me up from their Kiwanis program to find them teaching me a song along the lines of “I’m no kin to the monkey, the monkey’s no kin to me.” Brainwashing kinders to not believe in evolution. Classic. I once again found myself involved with the church in middle school, when I attended their weekly youth group. It was all fun and games until the youth pastor explained that homosexuality was an abomination. Gay rights were what got me interested in politics. I was defending gay marriage before I was in the double digits. You tell me your God thinks homosexuality is an abomination and I say no thanks, I’ll take the hell hounds. Plus, even at age eleven, I could already tell you one thing with utmost confidence- there was no way any deity could sustain itself for eternity on hate, vengeance, and conceit. Even then I was not about to be sold on any God that wasn’t all about love. 

Mother Teresa's Tomb

Fortunately, this wasn’t the end of my relationship with Christianity. I began attending a local Methodist church in eighth grade. They hooked me. The central themes to every sermon were love and tolerance. And through the youth group I developed strong relationships and engaged in a variety of service projects. This included the Sierra Service Project [SSP], through which our youth group journeyed to Native American reservations each summer to build and repair homes. 

SSP was one of the highlights of my youth. It was the closest I ever felt to a literal Christian God. It was at SSP that I built a relationship of prayer and communication with God, and it was at SSP that I learned to see God in every day life. You see a group of American teens, taking a week of their summer to labor in the heat, surviving on PB&Js, sleeping on gym floors and showering in locker rooms, and you know there has got to be something greater than yourself, than your minute world. It was through SSP that I learned how to get closer to God through service. Because helping others, reaching out to those in need, and participating in rewarding community service, allows you to see a higher purpose than your own life, allows you to see that love, after all, really is all you need. An attitude of love binds us in solidarity to every one of our 7 billion fellow humans. And an attitude of love refuses to let us overlook the suffering of others. 

Third and fourth came in the form of my Catholic education, at Mission College Prep and now at Georgetown University. The Catholic nature of Georgetown has been a mixed bag, in terms of my relationship with religion. I mean, religious organizations play a huge humanitarian role internationally, however I sometimes wonder how much more could be done, if people worried less about unborn fetuses and more about the ample suffering of living humans. As an international health major, interested in reproductive health and rights, I often get frustrated when my university refuses to cover contraception in their student health insurance plan, or when they refuse to recognize H*yas for Choice. However, I have also seen the role that Jesuit values play in shaping our campus community. I have seen a huge focus on Interfaith service and religious pluralism. And I have seen our very own Jesuits stand up against politicians who call themselves “Catholic” while drafting budgets that disregard the plight of poor Americans. 

Prior to that however, I attended Catholic high school. At Mission, despite the occasional heated debates over gay marriage, the Catholic backbone of the school played a key role in my development. Between the participation in community service, the reflective and intimate retreats, the inclusion of social justice in the curriculum, and the daily prayers and intentions offered, I honestly believe that it made me much more of a “woman for others,” as the motto goes. 

While I no longer participate in service for God, Christianity was the vessel through which I developed a greater sense of obligation to humanity at large, a greater sense of solidarity with dissimilar peoples. And there were so many other crucial lessons I learned while at Mission, many of which take a lifetime to learn. For Christians, it means constantly striving to live in Christ’s image. But one can embark upon the same journey through any religion, or even without religion. One friend of mine, an unwavering atheist, claims that her atheism is just as much of a belief and value system. For her, the fact that she has just one corporeal life to live, makes her strive that much harder to live it fully, and to better this world. She has no get-out-of-jail-free card in the form of an afterlife or Kingdom of Heaven. Her atheism has given her a higher purpose in life.

Now don’t get me wrong. The ultimate credit goes to my parents. Prior to Sierra Service Project, or my first mass at Mission (when I thought I heard the priest saying “uterus,” not knowing what “eucharist” meant), my parents had served as my greatest teachers and models. However, there are a lot of influences in a child’s life, and the various Christian institutions and people in my life reinforced the values my parents had instilled in me. My parents are some of the most loving, welcoming people I’ve ever met in my life. Sure, my mother has never sugar coated a thing in her life, and my dad may be a rascally Jersey boy, but they are honest, extremely hard working, and steadfastly loyal and committed to the people in their lives. Our door is always open (figuratively and literally, thank god there is minimal crime in Cayucos). People are always stopping by, coming into our home, and while we may not be Martha-Stewart-status hosts, their love and acceptance of others is sincerity epitomized.

India is vibrant and colorful, its culture is rich and multi-faceted, yet its also a land of extreme discrepancies. India is hard. India makes you confront things about yourself and your worldview. I’ve only been here for three weeks, primarily as a tourist. I’m sure my entire view of the country and the people will continue to shift and expand throughout the duration of my internship. Yet already, I’ve learned and changed and questioned myself and the world.

You don’t have to seek it out. Opting to walk instead of hopping in a taxi, or spending any time at all at a railway station is enough. Whole city blocks smelling of urine, heaping piles of trash on the sidewalks, and wide eyed children, with dirt-matted hair and rags for clothes, are permanent urban fixtures. At its worst, I’ve found myself shying away from the outstretched arms of beggars. Avoiding even brushing against people. As though I don’t even want them to touch me. I feel so ashamed, because there have been times when, faced with extreme, degrading poverty, I felt disgusted before sympathetic. Like I said, you are forced to confront things about yourself.

To some extent I knew this going in. Already, my experience has been just as challenging as it has been exciting. But I’m up for the challenge. I’ve already found limitations to my comfort zone, and this experience will only serve to expand those boundaries. And the challenges, the awareness, the confrontation of my own limits and deficiencies, will undoubtedly be invaluable, rewarding, and transformative. They will, inshallah, help me along the long path to become the better person I strive to be. I mean- I’m twenty. I have ambitions and ideals, but I am still an egocentric young adult, more focused on her own day-to-day than the lives of those in far corners of the world. This experience, in allowing me to understand another sliver of the world, in forcing me to question and question and question, can only be for the better.