I had a feeling this was going to be a difficult Easter for me. I’ve been pursuing a kind of metamodern spiritualism, part of which involves coming to terms with Christianity. I left that religion like a house on fire. It really did a number on my head.

But a few years trying to be an edgy Reddit atheist wore thin pretty quickly. Defining myself by what I’m not, repeating the reasons why, over and over. Expecting people to accept a position that life is meaningless and we should just be brave about it started to feel asinine.

After a while, the anger goes away (mostly) and you learn to forgive the religion you grew up with and start remembering the good things you got from it. All those extra aunts and uncles, a taste for the transcendent.

I’ll even give my steel man version of Christianity: It produced my dad and my grandfather, my father a Baptist deacon, my grandfather a Methodist elder. They were wise. That’s the main thing I ask of a religion, can it produce wise men? It doesn’t always, but it can.

I’ve had that very same revelation about Rastafarianism. I can’t buy the theology, but I cannot deny Bob Marley, or the Nyabinghi mystic in the movie Wah Do Dem – excellent little indie movie set in Jamaica. Norah Jones is in it, briefly. (Mystic scene starts at 58:30. Full movie on YouTube here. I think it might also be on FreeVee).

So yeah, my war against Christianity is long over. I’m sad so many good people feel they have to leave, for reasons similar to mine. But I’m not at war with it. I hope it becomes something that won’t require you to reject science, or embrace extreme positions. Something like it should exist. It has good bones.

I really admire the work some of the metamodern thinkers who have tried to find a bridge to Christianity.  But I don’t think I can follow. Some things just may not be compatible. I see philosophers try, I see forward-thinking, open-minded Christian ministers try.

And often I see Christians who just can’t seem to go there, giving those answers that just don’t satisfy, and suddenly I’m 14 again, trying to reconcile a religious conundrum and getting answers that amounted to double-talk.  

So I was in a mood this week.

Then I ran into the Easter jokes and videos of the type I used to watch, atheists dunking on Christians, not convincing anyone, arguments in the comments. With Israel and Palestine on my mind all the while, I just was not in the mood for a religious holiday.

I tried to be a good sport. After all, I go to a church where you can be an atheist if you want, or a non-theist neo-Platonist Daoism-curious whatever the hell I am at the moment.

I mean it’s Easter. How are you not going to have a story about the Resurrection? We have Christians too. We had an Ostara sermon for the neo-pagans last Sunday.  

Didn’t even make it to the sermon. It was the children’s story that got me, the story about Jesus and the tomb, animated in the style of the Veggie Tales, so very cute. And I got so angry I had to pretend I was having a migraine (didn’t feel like much of a stretch) and leave early.

Not sure why I got so mad. I’m still figuring it out. Something to do with the ethics indoctrination maybe. Religions have to do it if they’re going to survive. I’m not one of those guys who says they shouldn’t. But maybe there are fair and unfair ways to go about it?

Is it fair to use cartoons to indoctrinate children? Cereal companies aren’t allowed to anymore. Is it fair to preach hellfire and brimstone at kids who’ve been thinking with their hormones all week at summer camp?

And what about those Hell Houses or whatever they’re called, those things I had to cover with a smile for the local newspaper, the ones churches put on for Halloween instead of haunted houses? Where the kid doesn’t listen to their Christian friend and winds up in hell? And it’s supposed to be scary-good fun and cute because the kids are actors. Is that fair?

I honestly don’t know and I’m tired of thinking about it right now. I just feel like Easter fell on a bad day for me this year. If they could pick a day on the calendar and not make me worry about the phases of the moon or whatever, maybe I’d be ready, but it seems to sneak up on me every year.