You Call This Living?: How Christianity Destroyed My Life

By Michael Butchin

"You Call This Living" is a memoir of Michael Butchin's early life, recounting some of the abuse he endured, and how he became a religious zealot because of it. It also recounts the first, last, and only romantic entanglement he ever endured. Butchin takes you on a journey through self-discovery that led him away from religious faith to the freedom of atheism. Everything recounted in this book is true, to the best of the author's recollection, though names have been hidden or changed in order to protect the privacy of those who were involved.

Butchin's memoir shares a powerful journey of self-actualization and personal liberation. This book serves as a reminder that we all can heal and overcome trauma and abuse. Regardless of who you are or what you believe in, this memoir is an unforgettable account of courage and growth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736323830

Book preview

Nineteen

PART I:

Fore-Kvetch

Preface:

How Christianity Destroyed My Life

Joan Didion wrote that We tell ourselves stories in order to live. And Gabriel Garcia Márquez once noted that Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers, and how one remembers in order to recount it.

This is what I remember.

I remember the child I was, the interests I had in the Arts and Sciences, and Theater. And I wonder where I went wrong, when there had been so much promise.

What happened on that child’s journey toward adulthood? What smothered the polymath in its cradle? In a word, religion. Specifically for me, Christianity. Christianity destroyed my life.

I gave up drama in high school. I grew up in a theater family. I have always been comfortable onstage. I enjoy performing. But because acting isn’t in the Bible, I was convinced to give it up.

I enjoyed martial arts in college. I enjoyed practicing and going to classes. But because I was expected to be peaceable, and to turn the other cheek, I was convinced to give that up, too.

At university, when I should have been studying subjects that would have given me the skills to earn a living, I instead busied myself preparing to be some kind of missionary.

My life has had, not so much a theme, as a litany of complaints.

I could have been — should have been — a scientist, working quietly in a corner of some museum or university. Or, I could have carved out a respectable, if not particularly lucrative, career in theater. Or, I could have been a teacher (a real one). Or a writer. Or any number of things.

I was going to entitle this book, How Christianity Destroyed My Life, because it did. Or at least, it helped an awful lot. Of course, I myself was also responsible for a lot of the wreckage of my life; but that was because I bought into the mythology of religion in general, and Christianity in particular.

Now, I know perfectly well that such a statement is going over the top. Each one of us may be products of our environments, be we are not unconscious products of our environments. I know perfectly well that I myself am alone responsible for having destroyed what my life could have — should have! — been.

I rarely looked after myself health-wise, either. Because after all, I was going to receive a new body in the World to Come, wasn’t I? And oftentimes, when I would develop an interest in physical culture, I was told that it was exalting the flesh, and so should be avoided. Even doctors were to be seen only in the direst of emergencies, since God was able to heal all afflictions. (Of course, later on, I rarely saw doctors because I couldn’t afford to do so.)

I was once avidly interested in dinosaur paleontology, until I was shamed out of it by my peers; and then I laid it aside because of Christianity.

Yes, I was once interested in theater, having some skill and talent; but I gave it up, because acting wasn’t in the Bible.

Yes, I was once interested in the martial arts, but I forsook it because of Christianity; it was alien, violent, and steeped in foreign religions.

I gave up academic and artistic dreams, because I wanted to devote all my energies and skills to God.

I was already socially awkward, and at a time when I should have been learning how to socialize, and talk to girls, I was instead devoting myself wholly to Jesus.

I allowed myself to get fat and out of shape, because I thought that in the World to Come, I would receive a new and incorruptible body. So, I didn’t properly take care of the one I had.

I cultivated other pleasures and proclivities from hatred, rather than love. But that ties into the social awkwardness part of the equation that destroyed me.

Religion robbed me of many pleasures and much fulfillment over the years.

I found my religion while young and helpless, against bullies, against ridicule, against being the black sheep amongst my peers. I filled my time with religious devotion.

I didn’t have to worry about fitting in, because as a Christian, I was supposed to be a stranger and a wanderer in this world. I didn’t have to worry about my present, whether it concerned maintaining my physical health, or preparing myself for a real career, or even the hobbies I once loved. A career? I would simply be a missionary, and God would support me. Was I becoming weak and obese? I would receive a new body in the world to come. How did I use my formidable intellect? Bible studies and cheap theology.

In short, I did all I could to sabotage myself in life, never noticing, because I was devoted to, and separated unto, the

Lord

God.

I was unable to properly enjoy the only love affair I ever had in my life, because of the burden of guilt laid upon my back by God. And yet, it was that — as you will read — that eventually saved me from the slough of faith in which I was mired.

In addition to the emotional and social damage done to me by religion that has left me isolated and alone as I face the final stretch of my life, I was also robbed of a career, and skills that might have at least allowed me some provision against my rapidly oncoming deterioration. I am, as of this writing, in my fifties, with no significant savings, and no real prospects for remunerative employment, no skills to obtain that employment, and no assets. My only real hope is to suffer a massive stroke or heart attack that will end things at once, quickly. With my luck, I’ll end up merely crippled, and will have to linger until I’m ninety, destitute, homeless, and in pain.

Yes, Christianity destroyed my life. And I blindly and cheerfully helped.

Because when I was in high school and university, I was thinking only about God, and how to be a faithful witness to him, and how to win souls, and become a teacher of God’s word. I never seriously set myself to anything that would have helped me to accomplish anything useful.

I never took this world seriously, because after all, Jesus was soon to return, and so I didn’t need worldly knowledge. And anyway, God himself would provide for me as I went forth to do his work. So, I never learned anything useful in school. No accounting, no pre-med, no law, no actual trade skills like electronics, or plumbing, or landscaping, or carpentry, or contracting, or automotive repair. Nothing.

I allowed my soul (you should pardon the expression) to wither. Intellectually, emotionally, physically, in terms of my friendships and interpersonal relationships, and in terms of family, and in terms of the many possible careers I never had, I destroyed myself. And religion was the tool that helped me to do so.

This book tells the tale.

Nothing but religious faith can make a man so cheerfully rob himself of a future, and betray those he loves.

PART II:

Background and Growing Up

Chapter One

One of my earliest memories is my mother and I leaving my father. I remember sitting on the step, just outside the screen door of our house on the corner of Leonard Street. I was crying. I think my mother was hurriedly putting things into her car, and calling me to come. My father, in the foyer, was speaking, saying, "Aw, you don’t want to go with her …"

Another of my earliest memories is being in the hospital. I believe I was in some sort of oxygen tent. My bed was by the window. I could see it was night. My grandmother was sitting next to the bed, by the window, eating a cup of beef barley soup, of which she offered me a spoonful.

I was born to a Jewish family. My father’s family were Cohens, my mother’s, Levites. They met in the sixties, during a production of The Tales of Hoffman. Most of my family were musical; my maternal grandmother was a pianist, and my maternal grandfather played violin with the old Fleischman Orchestra in Philadelphia. My father, a superb baritone, was at this production acting as stage manager. My mother was a soprano in the chorus.

Originally, they had eloped, but my mother’s father disapproved, and insisted on a proper wedding, under a canopy. And so, my parents married in 1964. They divorced in 1969 on very poor terms.

It was an unhappy, ill-advised marriage. One which my father’s own family tried to discourage my mother from entering in upon. I was told that they had often come close to violence with each other, if not actual blows. I know that the abuse was such that my mother had on at least one occasion half-consciously attempted suicide by wrapping her car around a tree on Roosevelt Boulevard. My mother once told me that she had decided on seeking a divorce when she saw me frightened by a butterfly as I sat on the front lawn at my grandparents’. Apparently, I was screaming in terror, and she decided then that she had to get us away.

I really only remember brief images from those days. My mother and I lived briefly on South 19th Street in South Philly, and for a short time at 49th & Spruce in West Philly. Finally, when I was about five, we moved to Media — the house at which we lived no longer stands.

Additionally, I was apparently a fairly sickly child, nearly dying on numerous occasions. I’d had two major surgeries before the age of five, and I used to fall ill with high fevers with some regularity.

My mother used to aver that in those early days after her divorce, she had thought about giving me up for adoption to a family more financially able to care for me, but that she didn’t because she was afraid that I might die, and she wouldn’t be able to be with me when it happened.

My family variously made their way to America from Eastern Europe and the Balkans. My paternal grandmother’s family were from Nagyvárad, Bihor County, Transylvania. My paternal grandfather was from Minsk Gubernia. My maternal grandmother’s family came from Bessarabia in Moldova, and hinted that her own parents or grandparents came to Bessarabia from Krakow. My maternal grandfather’s family were from Kiev Gubernia when it was still a part of the Russian Empire.

Only those who made their way to America (and their descendants) lived. Those who remained in Europe perished in the Nazi death camps — all except one: Cousin Claudica. Not my cousin, of course, but that’s what we called her.

Cousin Claudica survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, and was said to have been a patient of the infamous Dr. Mengele. After the war was over and the camps liberated, she attempted to come to the United States. There was at the time, however, a strict quota on how many Jews could enter the country. She ended up indenturing herself to family up in Canada in order to escape Europe. The rest of the family, by now settled comfortably in Philadelphia, eventually found out about Claudica’s circumstances. They pooled together their resources, and put together enough money to buy out Cousin Claudica’s indenture, and sent Cousin Frank up to Canada with the money to redeem Claudica, and bring her back with him to America, and to the family. He was told that he’d have to marry Claudica so as to be able to bring her into the country. You’ll stay married for six months, they told Frank. Then you can divorce her; but by then, she’ll be a citizen.

And so, Cousin Frank went up to Canada, paid off Claudica’s indenture, married her, and brought her back to America. But after six months, instead of divorcing, they had fallen in love, and remained married for the rest of their lives.

I last saw Cousin Claudica twenty-five or thirty years ago, and I believe she was in her seventies or eighties then. But I receive little news from the Hungarian side of the family, and so I have no idea when she died, or how long she lived.

My maternal grandmother never said much about her family’s history, except she once told me that her mother walked across Europe to book passage on a ship going to America. And my maternal great-grandparents, it was said, came to America fleeing conscription in one of the armies fighting for control of Russia near the time of the revolution.

I was proud of my heritage, but I wasn’t especially religious. My father came from an observant Orthodox family, though he himself was not particularly religious. At least, not traditionally so. My mother’s side of the family were Haskalah Jews, and she herself was extremely active in the Reform movement.

Growing up, I was keenly aware that we were different from the Gentiles that surrounded us. Twice each week, I went to cheder, and on Friday night and Saturday morning, the family attended synagogue.

My father used to tell me Bible stories, but in his own way. Usually with humor and large grains of salt.

Chapter Two

My father was a man of both strong opinion and caustic wit. He was ever ready with, not merely puns, but smart-ass observations on those around him. Indeed, he was merciless in his criticism, and the humor with which he often delivered it, revealed the stark contempt in which he held all that could not meet with his standards of approval. And he was, moreover, indiscriminate as to where and at whom he aimed his poisonous darts.