"Religious"

I hate labels. I've been on a personal journey for a few years now- learning not to be judgmental. Conditioning myself not to judge others' words or actions, to try and understand where they're coming from instead of instinctively condemning them.

My most recent advance in learning how not to judge is to try and get rid of as many labels as I can. I know that many people think labels are necessary in order to function in society. I personally don't. I think people should just be able to be. 

I was talking to a friend of mine today about the Orthodox community and the labels we use to classify people. "Religious." "Not religious." Most of the time, in my experience, I've noticed that those labels revolve around four observances: Shabbos, Kashrut, Appearance (Skirts for girls, Kippahs for boys), and Shomer Negiah. I've noticed, and it has increasingly made me angry, that the people in the Orthodox community judge someone as "religious" or "not religious" based on whether they keep all, or one, or two, or three of these observances. 

No one has the right to judge your level of religiosity. Especially not based on just four categories. Or five, or six, or seven. Don't let anyone dictate to you what your relationship with God is, because your relationship with God is exactly that- your relationship with God.

"God doesn't want you."

I wasn’t planning on writing about this today. But last week, when I was writing my first post, I happened to glance at the comments section on my first Beacon article. The feedback I’d gotten so far had been positive- the comments, the amount of likes, and personal responses from friends. And now, staring at me in the face, was the first negative response. “God doesn’t want you,” Veronica Glickman wrote. “Why do you insist on wanting him.”

I was stunned. I stared at the comment for a while and then forced myself to close the page, all the while absently thinking, Why was I so shocked? Wasn’t this what I was nervous about when I first decided to write the article? Wasn’t I expecting something like this?

Truth be told, I had been expecting it. At first. For a week or so after I wrote the article, I kept expecting the axe to fall. I kept expecting someone to say something, to attack what I’d written, because it had happened in the past to other brave writers who had come forward, so why wouldn’t it happen to me? But it didn’t.

Until last week. For the past few days, I’ve been continuously going back to the page and looking at the comment. Just looking, turning it over and over in my head, trying to figure it out, understand what it means, what the reader meant when she wrote it.

It mystified me. After five days of staring, I’m still mystified. Because how does Veronica Glickman know? How does she know that God doesn’t want me? So sure of what she believes, there is not an ounce of hesitation or doubt in her comment.

I used to have that. I used to have absolutely no doubts or questions (and funnily enough, it wasn’t my sexual orientation that brought about my questions). Now I find myself both jealous of this woman’s faith, but at the same time, I am also grateful that I no longer have that, because, in my experience at least, even though life is more confusing when you have questions, it’s also easier to find meaning, and truth, and beauty, when you have the presence of mind to search for it and ask it of the world that surrounds you. 

I don’t know Veronica. But if I did, I would tell her this- I do want God. Do I know whether or not he wants me? No, not really. Sometimes I believe He does, sometimes I wonder. But I don’t doubt that I am in this world for a reason. I was created for a reason, and I have a purpose in this world. That may not seem like very much, but for me, someone who lost all faith in everything for a while, that’s a lot.

And right now, it’s enough.