Happy Easter

Well, another Easter has officially dawned and millions will be tucking into their chocolate eggs with great glee as we speak. I have a food intolerance to chocolate so instead Yawksha Boy thoughtfully bought me a box of Thorntons fudge (nom!) and some marshmallows and 2 little sponge cakes from Marks and Spencers (more nom!). My mother also managed to track down a plastic egg full of Haribo for me (even more nom!) so I can enjoy the holiday even without an easter egg. Saying that I’ve only been up for half an hour and am already feeling more than slightly sickly. Best put the fudge and mallows away for a little while I think!


For me Easter is a bitter-sweet kind of holiday, much like Christmas or any other festivity associated with Christianity. On the one hand, I get to drink and eat more lovely things than usual and I get to not go to work for a couple of days – bliss! But on the other hand there is always a kind of shadow hanging over the celebrations for me – I think it’s called guilt.

You see, since I was no age at all I was sent to Sunday School to learn how to be a good little Christian girl. Once I even went to Bible Camp! When I got a bit older I went to a scary kind of church (very evangelical with an over-zealous preacher who the entire congregation worshipped as if he was Christ himself – freaky man!), which was far too over the top for the beliefs that I have developed but it was my weekly chance to think about my faith and thank The Man Upstairs.

While I was at school, if anyone had asked me if I was a Christian, I would have said yes, definitely. Don’t get me wrong, I was far from a religious goody-two-shoes: I often forgot to pray before I fell asleep at night, I never read the bible except in Sunday School/Church and my conversations with my friends were, well, less than stereotypically Christian (I don’t think all the goody-two-shoes little Christian children would have asked their maths teacher if she ate the placenta when she had her baby or would have allowed their best friends to jokingly call them a “ho” every day).

But I had always been taught that although a “Good” Christian tries to live like Christ and be pure in thought and deed, to be a Christian, all you had to do was believe in the Holy Trinity – that God sent his son Jesus as the Jewish Messiah to live the perfect Jewish life and then to die in awful unspeakably painful ways on the cross to save the souls of future generations, so that all we had to do was believe and hey presto we’ll end up in heaven. Well, great, I do believe that – I am a Christian!

However (and isn’t there always some kind of “But...”?) if you are brought up in the Christian Church, you are encouraged to be a goody-two-shoes type of Christian. You are told to live your life according to the advice in the bible – you know, your body is a temple so don’t be gluttonous, get tattoos or piercings and don’t have sex before marriage, etc, etc. These two ideas seem to contradict each other to me and this is what leads to confusion – not only for me but for a lot of the other 20-somethings I’ve spoken to about this who were brought up as Christians.

So, let me get this straight? I get to go to heaven even though I live with Yawksha Boy before we’re married, I have a tattoo and I binge eat and drink, just because I believe that Jesus died for our sins? Well then why did my friend feel it was so important, if not essential, to remain tattooless and skinny, not to drink alcohol and to live celibately with her mum and dad until the day she got married? Is there a sliding scale of Christianity? Is she up there with the saints at the top as a “Good Christian”? Are people who believe in Jesus but go out on the piss and sleep around “Bad Christians”. And where does that leave me?

Or is it more of an on/off switch kind of idea? If you do everything you’re supposed to according to the bible are you a “Good Christian” or if you do even one thing “wrong”, are you a “Bad Christian”? And what does that all mean? We “Bad Christians” don’t get to go to heaven after all? Or do we live in a sort of heavenly shanty town for people who weren’t quite so wonderful instead of the “mansion” Jesus promised?

Having spoken to some friends who feel the same as I do about this, we were all a bit confused about this. We concluded that if you have been a “Bad Christian”, the way to become a “Good Christian” again is to apologise (repent!) for our sins... but what if you’re not really sorry? Don’t get me wrong, I never wanted to live with my future husband before I married him but it was the only practical way our relationship was going to work and we’re happy together. So I’m not sorry. I feel guilty to a certain extent but not enough to apologise sincerely and say “I’ll never do it again God!”, because we’re not getting married until November and yet we’re about to move into another house together – and I’m happy about that. So if I died tomorrow, would I go to hell because I knew what I had been doing was wrong and wasn’t sorry? But then what about the whole “all you have to do is believe” thing? It’s a minefield!

So now, if someone asks me if I am a Christian, I never know what to say. I don’t feel worthy enough to say yes because I do “sinful” things and I’m not sorry about it. But on the other hand I do believe. I would ask someone who knows the bible inside and out, like a minister or some such, but I don’t go to Church either – not because I don’t want to but because I can’t find one that fits with my beliefs. Although to be honest I haven’t made much of an effort, having been happy just to “believe”. Does this make me a semi-Christian? Answers on a postcard...

So this morning I said a little prayer, thanking Jesus for dying for us and thanking God for sacrificing his son to those horrible vicious people for a pile of modern-day ingrates like me. Despite Yawksha Boy thinking that religion is entirely stupid, I still do have my own faith and I am genuinely grateful. I just wish I knew if being grateful is enough...

But enough religious ponderings for now. I hope everyone has a lovely Easter, whatever their beliefs.