One thing that surprises many people when they meet me is that I am Christian. Even with rising levels of religion among younger generations I think it is still shocking to see someone who is so progressive on most issues conform to a religious organisation, let alone one with a disgustingly colonial history.

It was not easy to get here. I was raised Catholic, then became quite devoutly atheist as a teenager. I hated the church, and everything it represented. I dedicated a big chunk of my life to debunking the lies fed to me. It did not help that while I was raised Catholic by one parent, my other parent was into new-age philosophy, and raised me among those who believed in the power of crystals and manifestation.

Like most ex-Catholics, removing its influence was an impossible task. The guilt and shame bury inside you like weeds in the dirt. It felt like some kind of biological connection, where even if I didn't believe in the Catholic God, I was still Catholic, the same way people can identify with an ethnicity despite not living in its region of origin.

A few years ago my strong opinions about Catholicism and religion in general mellowed out. I accepted it as something that was undeniable in our society, something I could not ignore, but that I did not have to dedicate time to joining or despising. I found that my opinions on religion as a whole became more equal; I felt indifferent about all of them. This was helped by me discovering one of my favourite comic books, *The Enigma*, which discusses the idea of personal bias affecting how we view and approach the world and each other.

I cannot quite place when it happened, but I began having the urge to visit a church. I knew going to a Catholic church would be traumatising, so I found another that I felt I may like. I have been part of this church ever since and I truly feel at home in their community.

The main thing I noticed about this church's ideology that differed from the Catholic church I grew up in was the lack of evangelism, which is why I describe my religious identity as 'non-evangelical Christian'. Evangelism is essentially when a person or church believes that their understanding of faith is so undeniably correct that they preach the gospel to non-believers. For some denominations, this is done with the idea that people can only enter heaven if they abide by the rules of their denomination, and they want to save those who do not know how to follow.

Even if evangelism as a concept aligns with Christianity, it's not a practice I agree with. It is deeply rooted in colonialism, and it disrupts the peace that I think is far more important in the Christian faith. This idea is talked about in the book *Mere Christianity* by C.S. Lewis; there is no Christian who has the right to believe that they are the ones who know more, and no Christian who has the right to tell other Christians that they are wrong. I think this idea can be stretched more broadly to all religion; there is no person who has the right to believe that their religion is correct, and no person who has the right to tell other people that their religion is wrong. For this reason, I choose not to be evangelist. While I can absolutely believe that there are fallacies in other understandings of faith, I am like Tame Impala, I am just one guy, and I don't get to decide what the world thinks.

What does this have to do with the Book of Mormon?

A few weeks ago I saw the musical when it was in Naarm. It was drop-dead hilarious, first of all. But I am obsessed with the youtuber Alyssa Grenfell and Mormon culture in general, and every reference to Mormonism in the musical made me cry laughing.

However, what I take away the most from the experience was not the humour, it was the surprisingly wholesome ending. For a musical written by the guys from South Park, it had a very interesting take given on religion and its place in the modern world.

Spoilers for the musical, but the ending shows one of the characters being ridiculed for believing in the teachings from one of the Mormon elders, because everyone else had taken the stories as allegorical, whereas she had taken them as literal and become disappointed to realise they were fake. To me, this was incredibly funny, because Mormons are known for believing way too hard in the reality of their scripture, despite it being the most easily debunked.

I think that scene describes my personal understanding of religion, in a weird way. Most religious people place emphasis on faith, that we should believe in something we cannot prove to show how devoted we are. But faith in the unprovable is not what I get out of being Christian. The stories of the gospel themselves do not need to be taken as fact to be useful. The same way that I read Superman comics and learn to have hope for humanity and their kindness, I read the bible and go to church and gain a better understanding of my self-worth and my place in the world.

My involvement in the church also circles back to the place that churches have within a community. Traditionally, it was the gathering of the people in a town, a place that everyone contributed to, where everyone was welcome. People would bring their tea and coffee and baked goods and feed their families and friends, but also the strangers and the people who could not otherwise feed themselves. People gave what they could to the church, and received what they needed. This concept is not exclusive to churches, we have secular community centres that do this now, but I have found a personal peace in contributing to the function of my church. Even if the days of churches as the centre of a community are gone, churches can still have their purpose in modern society, as a welcoming place where people can socialise and give kindness to each other.

Tarot Cards

As I mentioned, while I had one parent who raised me as a Catholic, the other taught me about crystals, Reiki, and all the hippie stuff you can imagine. What I found most fruitful about this upbringing was that a lot of new-age practices are not actually religious in themselves, but instead can act almost as an extension to a pre-existing religious understanding. For example, I always loved drawing mandalas, and I went to mandala art classes where I would learn about how different religions used circular imagery in their traditional artwork.

When I went to Sunshine Coast recently I bought a deck of Tarot cards. Of all the weird religious stuff I used to have around the house as a kid, tarot cards are something I am glad to bring back into my home. I like them as a concept because they aren't fortune tellers. No one is (or, I guess, shouldn't be) claiming that tarot cards truly tell the future, but that doesn't mean that they don't reveal some kind of truth. Instead, tarot reading is more like a therapy exercise, using symbolism to reveal a pathway in your mind that would otherwise have gone untrekked. Everyone goes into a tarot reading with an answer they're searching for and an outcome they desire, and that outcome will just as equally manifest into the interpretation of the cards.

"God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape." This quote is attributed to Barry Taylor, and while I think many atheists will probably interpret it as 'well, that means the blanket means nothing', I think they aren't looking at the whole picture. We are measly animals who will never truly comprehend our purpose, let alone agree on it. But the existence of the blanket, the words we can give to our feelings, the purpose we can give to our lives, no matter what form it takes for you as an individual, it does not mean nothing.

Always in your orbit,

andro-venus :)