Seven days without eating. I didn't see anything. They said I would, or at least I that would have some kind of revelation and feel closer to God if I just believed enough. I felt mostly depressed and hungry. I remember waking up once chewing on my pillow--I had been dreaming I was eating cereal.
I guess I did feel somewhat spiritual, though. I never knew I could make it seven days without food, consuming only water, no juice or sugars for energy. I guess it was kind of like a science experiment, and that kind of firsthand, experiential knowledge can make someone feel quite edified, if you will, when the experience is over.
Before coming to Japan 6 years ago, I was in a weird state of affairs. Like a Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of sorts, I would go from binge drinking, flipping tables, having random sex, and breaking into factories with my friends at night, to trying to maintain the image of a self-righteous church angel, beyond fault or criticism during daylight hours. Both of these dynamics were caused by the fact that I was always criticizing myself unremittingly and without mercy, in my own mind. This isn't to say that I never had fun--there were a lot of laughs, and moments I will never forget. This is only to say that when a person is divided inside, it's going to show up on the outside, too.
I remember riding in the backseat of my friend's car, slouching down as the early afternoon sun burned through the window. We were going to a Casiotone show in Chicago. I had the usual pre-party guilt and anxiety stomach ache, and was looking up at a steeple, or what I remember to be one now, while Destroyer's "Sick Priest Learns to Last Forever" was playing on the car stereo. I was full of all kinds of conflicting feelings. I knew I was leaving for Japan in two weeks, and according to my "Christian conscience" I shouldn't drink at all, but according to the "devil" on my shoulder, I should relax and have fun.
Well, what happened was what always happened when these two voices got to bitching at one another too loudly for me to stand it: I drank until they shut the fuck up, and I blacked the fuck out.
Now, let me pause here to acknowledge the fact that some of you might not fully understand this. That might be partially my fault for not being able to explain it too clearly. Basically, I was raised in an extremely religious environment, with a severe father, and a mother afraid to speak out and stand up for herself. I believed that in order to be loved or worth something, you had to "be good," according to everyone else, and ultimately "God." If you weren't "good," everything would fall apart. Your life would be ruined and everyone would laugh at you or be glad they weren't you. the problem, though, is that I never could tell what "good" was, it's definition seemed to change as often as the person talking about it, or the God promoting it and demanding it.
Prior to coming to Japan I was excessively neurotic in regard to being "good." I deleted videos from the internet of myself drunk at parties. I get re-baptized by some psychopath at a shitty hole-in-the-wall church in Dyer, Indiana. I stayed away from parties (sort of). I started going to church again sometimes. I fasted several times. I was absolutely paralyzed with paranoia that any one of my past failures or future slip-ups might cost me my trip to Japan, which seemed to me to be my one possible salvation from the shit pit of what I perceived to be less than satisfactory feelings, people, places, jobs and situations I was surrounded by. I saw Japan as being proof that I AM SOMETHING, and I am something special and GOOD.
Back to the show. In typical fashion I told myself I would take it easy, but the anxiety, depression and inner torment chose for me and I pounded them down like a champ. By the end of the night, after screaming at some former friends who I felt had done me wrong to fuck off, I was drunk and in bed with a girl who I had really just met for the first time that day.
Cue the shiny plane--and a new life. After a nervous two and a half weeks of wondering if I was going to be a father, my feet were safely on the ground in Okayama, Japan. My friend who I had spent the night with seemed to be okay, and even supportive of the whole trip. Relief is not quite the right word for it. I was finally here. Still religious, still extremely uptight and nervous, but no one could say that I didn't make it. I did. Everybody else could just stay back at home now and be boring, while I explored this new place, by myself, on my own, with nobody judging me.
The blacking out and having all this crazy shit happen over and over in binge cycles began to trail off more as I stayed in Japan. I had a few bad nights, and some heavy depression for quite some time, but something kept peeking its head through. A kind of light. But it wasn't one of those shitty religious Sunday school kind of felt-board lights. This light was beautiful because it was real. And there was no religion to it at all. It was the light of my own self, and my own reason, and my own life, but also something much bigger and more cosmically significant and interwoven and connected...something like a father, but not quite. Something like a mother but not quite. Mostly, something like me. Some feeling of somebody that really really loves me, but yet is not me, but yet...is.
From going to the hot springs and realizing that there was nothing wrong with my body, or anybody's body, for that matter, to seeing people get blasted drunk and not worry about it so much the next day, to grown, respectable people making jokes about sex, love, and marriage, my programming, both religious and "Western" began to melt away. Sliver by tiny sliver, layer by imperceptibly thin layer, I was beginning to heal from the poisonous religious and cultural programming.
Actually, I got more into Christianity than ever after coming here, but something was always fake, and I could always feel it. I was trying to be something I just couldn't genuinely be. When I finally set off to finish reading the Bible from start to finish (I had been rigorously studying, memorizing, and basically reading the whole thing for years "out of order") and "prove" once and for all what life was all about, I ended up reading and thinking myself right out of it. And right out of my religion.
I remember walking down the street one strange day, thinking about what it means to "live by faith." A thought came to me that had visited several times prior: "Even faith in the Bible is the product of a man deciding in his own mind whether or not something is believable." This shook me. Maybe logic and our own minds, guts, and intuition are all we have, for better or for worse. If God and the Bible were really "infallible" and united, why were all these fuckheads claiming to be church leaders and to be "in tune with the Spirit" disagreeing all the time? That was it. It began to unravel.
Next I dove into attacking the traditional Christian conceptions of hell, and then, finally studying the Bible as a historical text, the same way I would have critically approached the Koran or any other "holy book" which I was not personally or emotionally tied to. Bear in mind all these thoughts had been approaching me in an ever-narrowing spiral since I was probably about twelve, but it took coming to a new land 8,000 miles away to fully catalyze them, it would seem.
During my time as a "pious lad" in Japan, I was approached by a friend who helped organize Japanese chapel weddings. "Chapel weddings" are Western style weddings done here in Japan for couples who want a ceremony that is more "like the movies" and less like the traditional Japanese (Shinto) ceremony. They need a "western face," so they hire foreigners to read Japanese from a script and throw in some English here and there, with all the signs of the cross, I now pronounce you's, and charmingly imperfect Japanese they could hope for. See, it's romantic. When my friend asked me to do a couple of these, I initially refused. I thought it was potentially "blasphemous" and I didn't feel "called to preach." Plus, the majority of the couples were agnostic/Buddhist/atheist, so I felt it was not a good idea.
Well...Well...Well. Here I am today, three or four years later, joyfully marrying people I have never met in a second language, and feeling the power of joy and happiness in doing so. What's funny is that it was my judgement before understanding, literally my "prejudice" that had kept me from trying these weddings before. It was fear. These weddings are fun, and I can say all the lines from the very bottom of my heart, because you know what? It's a mystery but it is something like when Ayn Rand was being interviewed by Tom Snyder years ago, and he asked her about phrases like "thank God" and "God bless you." Rand replies:
I like what that expression means...thank God, or God bless you. It means the highest possible, to me.
Tom Snyder says "God bless you" at the end of the interview, to which Rand replies in kind. I've got goosebumps now sitting here listening to it and thinking about it, but I digress.
Here now, on August 21st, 2016, I know that the only book I need to live by is my reason, my mind, my guts, and my intuition, as that is all, for better or for worse, we are given to navigate this life, and though imperfect, it does a pretty good job. The question kept coming back to me when I was a believer, "if God gave you a brain and a mind, why would he then expect you not to use them?" Even if God really did do that, that would be a God I could never serve, even if hell was the punishment.
After leaving religion, I feel closer to "God" than ever. After seeing the Bible for what it is, I can now gain valuable insights from it. After leaving behind the toxic ideas of a wrathful and vindictive "Father" in the sky burning his kids whom he says he loves (how could I respect someone who is not even as good as me as a father?) I can now love and accept myself more than ever. Fuck that old man in the sky that wants me to be miserable. Here I am. Alive.
As prophesied by the song in the backseat of my friend's car that funny, sunny Chicago day, this sick priest is, every day, through anarchist friends, long debates, spiritual reflection, and spilling my guts out on stuff like this, learning to last forever.
Amen.