Disgruntled Philosopher

Nov 21, 2022

Please Exit Through the Rear Doors

Around 2018, while living in New York, it occurred to me: I was finally free. Having grown up in a strict, conservative, evangelical culture I always had a gnawing sense of guilt, a belief that there was someone out there watching me. But for whatever reason, I came to the realization around the end of 2018 that I was alone, and that feeling was freeing. It's not that I stopped believing in God at that point (that would happen a few short years later in 2021), more that I no longer felt burdened by his existence.

If you've ever been to New York or lived there then you know that despite the plea of the automated voice on the bus speaker, "Please exit through the rear doors," people will exit wherever they damn well please. Depending on where in NY you're located, they'll also enter wherever they damn well please, attempting to avert the fair (if you ever see this happen, no you didn't). The whole reason to exit through the back doors is to allow people to get on the bus, increasing the flow of people on and off the bus and helping to maintain order. But New York is a place of chaotic order and the busses are no exception.

De chao ordinem - out of chaos, order. All my life I was raised to believe that there was an ordered world created by God and that all things would function toward this order, either now or in eternity. That or it'd be cast aside into the fires of hell or the destruction to come. Chaos is what Satan brought to this world, or as any educated evangelical would tell you, sin and evil are naturally chaotic and go against the ordained order of God.

Why do conservative evangelicals believe they have a right to run everything in this world? Well, because God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, they were to have dominion over all the earth. That dominion is controlled and we, the image bearers of God, are his appointed caretakers. There is a hierarchy in the creation and of all physical beings, we sit at the top. But even within humanity, or "man" as is so often written in Christian circles, men sit at the top. Yes, "There is no male nor female in Christ," or to use a cheesier example, God took the rib from Adam and made Eve as a way to show that the two are equal. But anyone who has an understanding of evangelical Christianity, the conservative kind at least, knows this belief is misconstrued. Or, to be less charitable, it's bullshit.

Regardless, there's order in everything. The services are uniform, the songs sound the same, the messages fit a certain outline and style, and the service structure stays the same. The family must follow the order given by God with husbands/fathers at the head, it must be heterosexual because the "natural order" calls for it (after all, only men and women together can have children, and that's part of the "natural order"). I could go on, but I think I've made my point - Christians, at least conservative evangelical Christians, are obsessed with order.

"Please exit through the rear doors."

It's a system to which any evangelical would masturbate, or at least they would if they didn't think masturbation a sin (you'd be surprised - or maybe not - how often that's debated in seminary dorms). It's a system into which I never fit, no matter how hard I tried.

Looking back it's rather obvious why I didn't fit into that system - I have severe ADHD and it wasn't any better when I was younger. Take the natural pains that come with having ADHD, add in not only rejection by your peers but their scorn as well for being out of order, or adults constantly condemning you to hell for disrupting the natural order of things, and I'm not sure I was ever going to fit in.

I've always been drawn toward more artistic endeavors. Not that I'm an artist, or at least not that I'm good at it, but I do appreciate it. I appreciate the weird, the outlandish, the bombastic; I appreciate the people who walk out the front door and try to enter through the rear doors. I'm drawn toward variety, toward difference, toward anything that will make this life more interesting and exciting.

However, when you believe that there's a God of order out there who has ordained things to be a certain way, and you like when they aren't a certain way, you feel a constant tinge of fear and regret. You wonder what is wrong with you. You begin to try and force yourself to believe certain things, to act a certain way, and begin to lose yourself. To any properly trained seminarian this feeling would, in fact, be the whole point of Christianity; to die to your worldly self, to your flesh, and put on your spiritual self, or put on the Spirit, or essentially supplant who you are with who you've been told you need to be. After all, you're a sinner.

Why is it that conservative Christians are so absolutely, abysmally, fucking awful? Well, because that's their belief. They believe in a world of strict order (must like fascists). Everyone has their role, their place, and their part. Whenever they act out of this order - say, by questioning their gender, by getting pregnant before marriage, by loving someone of the same gender, by making the powers that be uncomfortable - then conservative Christians feel a natural desire to lash out against them. After all, they're violating God's order.

And in 2018, I broke free of that feeling. I had been breaking free for a while, but like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, I had made it to Zihuatenejo (as a side note I've actually been to the real Zihua, it's an amazingly beautiful place). I embraced the chaos of this world and rather than fearing it, rather than running from it, I threw myself into it.

To others who find themselves trying to break free, who hear that constant plea to "Please exit through the rear doors," I say this; exit wherever you fucking want. Don't fear the world, embrace it. We live in a beautiful, exciting world full of life, of culture, of chaos, but out of chaos there is a certain order. It's flexible, it's fun, it's life.