The Fear That Lived in the Unsaid

The bible was my first literary experience. Bonding with my father on weekends involved reading chapters of the bible. I learnt big words, storytelling, imagery and tragedy. The story of Noah and the flood was scary. I would close my eyes at night and imagine the world full of water. That story scared me. It was fear that manifested physically. I remember loving the rainbow so much. From the Bible story, the rainbow appeared in the sky for the first time after the flood as a covenant that God would never use floods again to destroy the world. This symbolic reassurance was important for me. The expectation as a Christian was to see God's might and his dislike for sin, then his ability to show love and compassion. I exist in the unsaid. I am terrified that God will use a tragedy to punish my family and me if I do not do as the Sunday school teacher says. I am in acceptance of the fear, and I assume everyone else exists in the same fear. Every time I see the rainbow, I remember this story that reads like a horror movie. Then I remind myself of the promise in the bible and feel calm. 

I remember one time there was a visiting music group from Congo. This group sang and danced, and their lead was a young boy my age or younger. I was captivated by his confidence when he addressed the congregation, and when he danced and soloed during that service, something shifted in me. I felt this strong attraction. He was all I could think about during that service. I thought about that boy for the entire week. I remember feeling excited and scared every time I thought of him. This was my first crush, and I was not ready for the emotional ride I found myself in. It is a beautiful sunny Sunday morning; the preacher is going on with the sermon. I am locked in. I open my bible as directed; I go through the passage with the preacher. He starts to interpret it, and I am listening. In a few minutes, my mind is occupied by different thoughts, but at the same time the rhythmic pattern of the preacher and the interpreter is like background music. I catch myself and get this sense of guilt; I whisper a prayer for concentration. Pentecostal churches tend to have these lengthy prayer sessions where everyone prays loudly. Everyone seems to be having raw, honest moments. Some wail in earnest while for others tears flow freely down their cheeks in silence. 

I close my eyes and wait to experience it. I begin a prayer; I can tell I am performing. A silent mind is unfathomable to me. My mind is never silent. I think I am possessed. This inner voice has to be a demon distracting me from praying or listening to the word of God. The only time my mind goes silent to date is when I physically engage in an activity. This back and forth trying to be present and drifting into thoughts was a common recurrence. The same thing was happening in school, but I never felt guilty for daydreaming during a lesson. 

As a child, I enjoyed going to church but not for reasons my Christian community would have assumed. My favourite thing about church was the community. It was where I met adults in professional careers because both my parents were more into small businesses. 

There was one church we joined after a move, and the pastor was a doctor in a government hospital. When we were sick, he would always be the one to treat us. It made me so happy because I was deathly afraid of doctors until he came into our lives. I also enjoyed activities such as day trips and retreats. My mind never wandered off during bible study when the preacher had organised it like a lesson where I could write down points. I was a very competitive child, and bible trivia was where I came alive. I remember being in competition with this boy whose dad was a church elder. He was like me and didn't like to lose. We would go head to head until the rest of the group would just stop participating and pick a side to root for. Safe to say the Sundays he won were devastating to me. 

After my primary school national examination, I joined an Anglican Girls’ boarding high school. This was the first time I was ever on my own. The school only catered for two denominations: Catholic and Protestant. In my earlier years, I had attended a Sunday school in an Anglican church, and that is how I chose to go the Protestant way. Up to this point in my life, I had not attended a church service that was not in a Pentecostal church. If you know anything about Pentecostal churches, they are not ones for strict procedures and protocols. Everything is guided by the Spirit. Therefore, services tend to run longer because there is not a strict adherence to time. Here things were different. Services were guided by the liturgy. We read prayers from a book. There was even a procession when the student leaders and clergy entered the chapel. The school had assigned columns where we sat depending on our classes. It was all new to me, but it was where I belonged. I loved that I knew how the services would be. I found the protocols so charming. I had learned about the Apostles' Creed during religious studies in primary school but never recited it in a church setting. Pentecostal churches do not have the same practices as liturgical churches. You can imagine my shock and excitement finding out that there was an Apostles' Creed for a normal service, Trinity Sunday and Eucharist. The predictability of it all was soothing to my ever-wandering brain.

For the longest time, I was in denial about the level of Indoctrination that was part of my religious upbringing. This struggle was because I associated the word heavily with cultism and intentional manipulation. There was no way it was indoctrination because my parents were very realistic in their approach to the church. We believed in modern medicine; my dad never shunned his friends who were not actively participating. This was how I looked at it. However, the more I grew and was exposed, I realised it was never about the insanity practised in cults, but the lack of questioning and bypassing simple critical thinking. Religious studies curriculum in high school focused a lot on the prophetic books of the Bible. A common recurring theme was judgement and repentance to avoid punishment. This was another period when the bible instilled fear in me. I was a young, curious person in a new, unmonitored environment full of exposure. Here I met other girls from different backgrounds whose view of life was not influenced by religion. Girls whose confidence was not bowed by religious humility. I was inspired by them. In this place, there was a choice to either attend a service, go for entertainment which played secular music, sleep, hang out with friends, etc. I had a friend who would pick between all these activities effortlessly, while I being elsewhere and not the church service made me feel like God was going to punish me. The only protection I have had from religious indoctrination is my curiosity. My curiosity wins every time in whatever situation. I was only curious about the entertainment, and that is where I started going. Here I could listen to secular music as much as I wanted and even dance to it. For the remainder of my time in that school, I became an entertainment girl and would enjoy service on Sundays and for the first time in my religious life, my soul found balance free of fear. In this period, my view of religion, church and the bible was not impacted much. In this period, I found ways to appease the inner voice that was just my curiosity. My life decisions were not influenced by fear of making God angry if I did something that was not very Christian-like. 

When I joined university, there was newfound freedom to explore life and my beliefs in the real world. Philosophy classes were a great turning point for me because the first thing I learnt was how to think critically. This is where my curiosity was affirmed because I was told that questioning everything was expected. One major shift for me was learning about ethics and morality away from the religious sense. The metric of what was good was not measured only from the bible. I no longer experienced any cognitive dissonance when judging people. I could reconcile someone being a drunkard and still a good person. This is where I started to see the hypocrisy in churches. I started to see how money influenced the church, and I would feel some type of way because I was not one to condemn the church. My parents had raised me to be an independent person. My brothers and I were raised equally. I had never seen or experienced any form of gender discrimination until I was an adult. Therefore, themes of sexism, misogyny and feminism started to naturally occur in my life. The knowledge, experience and exposure were how my worldview was altered. The level of approved brutality in the bible became a problem. The treatment of women as secondary in the bible and every religion became apparent. I was in a constant state of questioning and disapproval, so I had to take a break from church.

From this point, I tapped into my conscience and critical thinking when making decisions. The choice on whether to sleep around, use drugs, be charitable, etc was no longer a choice. I was taught to pray, and the peace and calm I experience when I do never changed despite this new shift. I no longer felt guilty talking to God when I needed a favour. My communion with God changed from a structured time to pray to saying a small prayer when I needed to. The lord's prayer was the structure of how to talk with God. You begin by exalting God and recognising his might and acceptance of his will. You then move to repentance and then to asking for what you want. I stopped getting caught up in the nitty-gritty of this format and found peace in asking. I realised my interaction with people guided my spirit. I stopped worrying about asking God to forgive me and instead asked for the same from people I wronged and took accountability. I made peace with the fact that I do not forgive unless I forget, and I accept that I am not entitled to the same forgiveness from anyone.