Us versus Them

When I was growing up in Christian school, I regularly attended chapel assemblies.  Most of the time, our headmaster or one of the school teachers or pastors on staff at the church tied to the school would speak on some spiritual issue or other.  We'd sing a song or two and then sit back and listen.  For a long while, I even took notes; it was a good habit for me that helped me in school.  But occasionally, maybe once every year or so, we'd get a slide show.

The slide show would introduce us to the Evils of Rock Music and Pop Culture in General, and they were usually interesting in the way that live war footage on the news is interesting.  The shock of learning what was really out there terrified me.  Because I accepted the teaching that my teachers and pastors were in a straight down-line from God Almighty and that questioning them was tantamount to questioning the Big Guy Himself, I accepted as true all of the presentations on backward masking (messages from Satan hidden in rock records played backwards), occult symbols on album covers, and ritual abuse and sacrifice done by hard-core Satanist fans.

I lived a lot of my childhood and young adult years believing that the world was bad and that the people in it were all bad, too, except for the people from my denomination and a slim selection of other denominations with acceptable doctrine.  I peered at the world outside from behind a fence of prejudice, determined to be horrified at what I saw.  So I was.  But some stubborn part of me still liked part of what I saw.  I loved U2 and Star Trek and novels by atheists like Steinbeck and Hemingway.  I just thought that liking those things was, if not strictly a sin (listening to U2 definitely was), then a dangerous, slippery path to sin.

As I've grown older, I've stepped outside the bounds of my denomination, which I left.  I thought that I had left those prejudices behind, but every time I think I'm completely free, I realize I have another door in front of me to open.  Recently, a series of books and shows and songs and personal encounters have showed me another locked door that I'm beginning to open.  I'm beginning to realize that the people around me are just like me.  Being a part of my denomination didn't make me safe; it made me scared.  And in truth, the world isn't us versus them.  The world is just us.