Wrestling With Organized Religion: Should Christianity Be a Solo Pursuit?

Last updated on: June 24, 2013 at 7:37 am by Andre E. Johnson

Wrestling With Organized Religion: Should Christianity Be a Solo Pursuit? 2013-06-24T07:37:00-05:00 Andre E. Johnson

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I seem to always be trying to fit in to something, somewhere.

Shortly after I had my daughter I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans—the big ones. No luck.

Once my daughter started school I tried fitting in with other mom’s—in Pre K they were artists and organic farmers who made their own clothes.

In other words, I didn’t fit in.

Now that my daughter is in grade school the mom’s I meet are all different—which makes fitting in sort of a non-issue. Unless of course, I join the PTA, which I will not likely do. Mostly because I’m sure I just wouldn’t fit in.

Lately I’ve wondered why I didn’t leave this desire to “fit in” behind, in the cafeteria in seventh grade when I definitively decided teasing my bangs was a line I just wouldn’t cross.

I thought I’d given up “fitting in” once and for all.

When I first became a Christian I unwittingly rekindled my love affair with “fitting in” when I joined the church.

The first church

The first church I joined was easy for me to fit into. It was comprised of a bunch of ragtag twenty-something artists in NYC, of which I could’ve been the poster child. It wasn’t until I moved south, to Texas, to the buckle of the Bible Belt that I became conscience of a struggle to fit in.

In a recent session with my Spiritual Director (see my last post for more on that), we talked about religion being something I put on, like a dress. It was a dress I fit easily into at the time of my ‘conversion,’ but which, lately, has been feeling a little snug. Like, two-sizes-too-small snug.

I became a Christian in my mid-twenties, and in the years, months and even weeks leading up to my baptism, I was flirting with disaster.

It was the sex, drugs and rock and roll version of disaster, and I thought Christianity would shoehorn me out of a destructive lifestyle. I put it on like a dress; it covered my past transgressions and gave me purpose and identity. But there was more to my decision to become a Christian.

I had begun to develop an awareness of God’s presence and activity in my life.

This awareness grew in power and frequency the deeper I dug into my community of Christian artists, and the deeper I dug into learning who the God of the Bible really was.

But more than 10 years later, I’m realizing that this dress I put on, the religious aspects of Christianity, is not necessarily what Christianity is about. In my attempt to fit in, I seem to have squeezed myself into something I am now outgrowing.

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