Just a kid
I suddenly feel compelled to write on this thing. Maybe because there's things I can write about, which is very rare indeed.
Plus, it was my birthday 38 minutes ago and I usually mark that with some sort of Livejournal. And I'm also not sleepy and feeling really good about being at my quiet desk right now. It feels like back when I was on my own, in my apartment and had late nights just being on the computer, doing my thing.
Wow, where do I start? There's lots of things that happen in my life now that I just talk to others about instead of writing it here. Maybe all these years, Livejournal was just a proxy for the deep meaningful connections I had yet to make. Not that I didn't have deep meaningful connections all throughout High School and College... But, like, I've never had as many close friends as I do now... I think. Maybe I'm just more mature. Who the fuck knows.
I don't really feel like talking about Alan, or my new kitty, or the fact that I'm currently unemployed... I think the one thing I want to talk about that I can't write about in any other public forum is my recent conclusion about God.
I don't believe in God anymore. And this has really been a long process. Falling out with religion was kind of an easy thing. At South, I had tons of friends who did not fit into the typical Christian way of living. Ones who had sex before marriage or believed in other gods or who were gay or what have you. I learned quickly to become tolerant of all kinds of people, even if I didn't agree with their way of life. I remained Christian, but became an adamant mouthpiece of sorts, for Liberal Christians (and I don't mean the ONLY one. I knew a few others as well. Korla and Micah come to mind). I was all set to go to Augsburg to study to become a Youth Minister. I wanted to influence young people as I had been influenced by my youth directors at church. I valued the impact they had on me.
Then, at Augsburg, impressionable as I am, I kind of decided Theater was the way to go, and was living an even more amoral sort of existence, and started having sex, and drinking and swearing a shit ton... Basically, all the things that religion had told me for years was bad. But it never felt bad, and I never felt bad for doing those things. There were tons of things that I felt about life that religion just couldn't really measure up to. "Why should there be rules attached to what I truly believe, deep down, that there is a God?"
That was the start. That start of asking questions. In a recent conversation to Alan, I openly attributed the beginning of my critical thinking to... A Critical Thinking course I took at Augsburg. First semester. We watched a Fox network "documentary" on the Moon Landing Hoax. I'd never heard of this before, and all the people featured on it were basically on one side of an argument. Well, if all these people were saying the Moon Landing was a hoax, clearly it must be true. Even if there were some things they were saying sounded really ludicrous to me ["When you see a picture from the Moon, how come there aren't any stars?"... Maybe the same reason you can't see stars during the day on Earth? Nob]. I was still really prepared afterwards to say almost certainly that the Moon Landing was faked.
Afterwards I told Micah about it and he made me feel very small by gently patronizing me with the "You can't believe everything you hear" schtick. And that really stuck. I didn't want to feel that stupid again. I have, of course, felt stupid hundreds of times over since then but I've always tried to be more skeptical since then. Instead of immediately taking something I read as gospel, as I have been confronted with many times, I've instead given it an initial "Hmm, interesting" sort of treatment.
That kind of thinking has really opened up my world to all kinds of new things. It's made me question more and more everyday, and being with Alan has certainly increased that tenfold. I find myself more curious all the time. Then I got to thinking about God. I've always said I believed in God and I felt pretty fine with that assessment. But after time it just wasn't good enough for me anymore. But at the same time I felt like if I stopped thinking that then there would be something wrong with me. I felt like I would let my parents down. But God just doesn't have any place in my life, and I think it's rubbish to blame your problems on God or to dismiss responsibility because "God has a plan".
I feel better about my life knowing that it's in my control alone. I'm not going to risk free will on the near-impossible chance that there's a God. And I'm not going to waste any of my life hoping I'm doing the right thing.
It's been hard to come to terms with this because many people I know who are Atheists had some sort of traumatic experience to make them that way. And it hasn't for me. I have no beef with God. My beef is with people who think they know who or what God is and abuse those beliefs for their own personal gain. I just feel like there's no logical reason to believe in something like that. I find more comfort and solace in questioning and learning about something bigger. I want to learn about the stars and the Universe. And I want to learn about life and science here on Earth.
I can't yet call myself an Atheist, mostly because once I do, I'll have a label once again. But I desperately want to be labeled in some way. When I was Christian, I could just be like "I'm a Christian". When I was in my spiritual phase, I could say "I'm Spiritual". But right now I have no idea what to call myself. And it's definitely not Agnostic, because fuck that. I don't believe in any religious God, and any God outside of that seems pointless to believe in, because as far as I'm concerned, it's not God at that point. So why shouldn't I be an Atheist?
I think I'm just scared. Scared of a word. Alan told me I shouldn't have to force it on myself if I don't feel like I'm ready. Instead he encouraged me to keep questioning, and searching for answers to my questions, and then maybe I'll arrive there.
If anyone didn't know, he's an Atheist, and probably someone my parents were scared of me being with for exactly this reason--that he would somehow seduce me into a Godless way of being. But I am far happier and more at peace with myself living this way than I was before. Chalking things up to "fate" or "destiny" now seems like a cop-out. If I hadn't ended up where I am now, I would've just ended up a different way. But does where I am now mean this is where I'm meant to be? Most likely not. I'm sure I would've flourished in some other life too. That doesn't mean I don't feel extremely lucky to have what I have.
Anyway, I'm rambling. But it feels good to finally write all that stuff down.
[Edit: HA! Oh my god, I just found this while rifling through LJ's from 2 years ago:
So, it can't have just been a coincidence that I knew my way around some design programs, with little-to-no experience under my belt at 19. It must have been fate. It was destiny that I would choose this line of work. And it's something I chose almost out of the blue. God exists, because he led me to this point. There's no way that it was an accident I ended up here.
Say what you will about faith, or religion, but there are more than a few things in life that don't have me doubt the existence of God for a second. And there have been times when I've been really down. Really, really down. Genuinely unhappy with myself and with the world. I didn't kill myself, mostly because I was too scared. But I didn't care at all. And after a lot of time, and a lot of life changes, I was able to turn myself around and now I'm positive.
Basically negating everything I wrote not 10 minutes ago... But whatever, I was just a kid then
Plus, it was my birthday 38 minutes ago and I usually mark that with some sort of Livejournal. And I'm also not sleepy and feeling really good about being at my quiet desk right now. It feels like back when I was on my own, in my apartment and had late nights just being on the computer, doing my thing.
Wow, where do I start? There's lots of things that happen in my life now that I just talk to others about instead of writing it here. Maybe all these years, Livejournal was just a proxy for the deep meaningful connections I had yet to make. Not that I didn't have deep meaningful connections all throughout High School and College... But, like, I've never had as many close friends as I do now... I think. Maybe I'm just more mature. Who the fuck knows.
I don't really feel like talking about Alan, or my new kitty, or the fact that I'm currently unemployed... I think the one thing I want to talk about that I can't write about in any other public forum is my recent conclusion about God.
I don't believe in God anymore. And this has really been a long process. Falling out with religion was kind of an easy thing. At South, I had tons of friends who did not fit into the typical Christian way of living. Ones who had sex before marriage or believed in other gods or who were gay or what have you. I learned quickly to become tolerant of all kinds of people, even if I didn't agree with their way of life. I remained Christian, but became an adamant mouthpiece of sorts, for Liberal Christians (and I don't mean the ONLY one. I knew a few others as well. Korla and Micah come to mind). I was all set to go to Augsburg to study to become a Youth Minister. I wanted to influence young people as I had been influenced by my youth directors at church. I valued the impact they had on me.
Then, at Augsburg, impressionable as I am, I kind of decided Theater was the way to go, and was living an even more amoral sort of existence, and started having sex, and drinking and swearing a shit ton... Basically, all the things that religion had told me for years was bad. But it never felt bad, and I never felt bad for doing those things. There were tons of things that I felt about life that religion just couldn't really measure up to. "Why should there be rules attached to what I truly believe, deep down, that there is a God?"
That was the start. That start of asking questions. In a recent conversation to Alan, I openly attributed the beginning of my critical thinking to... A Critical Thinking course I took at Augsburg. First semester. We watched a Fox network "documentary" on the Moon Landing Hoax. I'd never heard of this before, and all the people featured on it were basically on one side of an argument. Well, if all these people were saying the Moon Landing was a hoax, clearly it must be true. Even if there were some things they were saying sounded really ludicrous to me ["When you see a picture from the Moon, how come there aren't any stars?"... Maybe the same reason you can't see stars during the day on Earth? Nob]. I was still really prepared afterwards to say almost certainly that the Moon Landing was faked.
Afterwards I told Micah about it and he made me feel very small by gently patronizing me with the "You can't believe everything you hear" schtick. And that really stuck. I didn't want to feel that stupid again. I have, of course, felt stupid hundreds of times over since then but I've always tried to be more skeptical since then. Instead of immediately taking something I read as gospel, as I have been confronted with many times, I've instead given it an initial "Hmm, interesting" sort of treatment.
That kind of thinking has really opened up my world to all kinds of new things. It's made me question more and more everyday, and being with Alan has certainly increased that tenfold. I find myself more curious all the time. Then I got to thinking about God. I've always said I believed in God and I felt pretty fine with that assessment. But after time it just wasn't good enough for me anymore. But at the same time I felt like if I stopped thinking that then there would be something wrong with me. I felt like I would let my parents down. But God just doesn't have any place in my life, and I think it's rubbish to blame your problems on God or to dismiss responsibility because "God has a plan".
I feel better about my life knowing that it's in my control alone. I'm not going to risk free will on the near-impossible chance that there's a God. And I'm not going to waste any of my life hoping I'm doing the right thing.
It's been hard to come to terms with this because many people I know who are Atheists had some sort of traumatic experience to make them that way. And it hasn't for me. I have no beef with God. My beef is with people who think they know who or what God is and abuse those beliefs for their own personal gain. I just feel like there's no logical reason to believe in something like that. I find more comfort and solace in questioning and learning about something bigger. I want to learn about the stars and the Universe. And I want to learn about life and science here on Earth.
I can't yet call myself an Atheist, mostly because once I do, I'll have a label once again. But I desperately want to be labeled in some way. When I was Christian, I could just be like "I'm a Christian". When I was in my spiritual phase, I could say "I'm Spiritual". But right now I have no idea what to call myself. And it's definitely not Agnostic, because fuck that. I don't believe in any religious God, and any God outside of that seems pointless to believe in, because as far as I'm concerned, it's not God at that point. So why shouldn't I be an Atheist?
I think I'm just scared. Scared of a word. Alan told me I shouldn't have to force it on myself if I don't feel like I'm ready. Instead he encouraged me to keep questioning, and searching for answers to my questions, and then maybe I'll arrive there.
If anyone didn't know, he's an Atheist, and probably someone my parents were scared of me being with for exactly this reason--that he would somehow seduce me into a Godless way of being. But I am far happier and more at peace with myself living this way than I was before. Chalking things up to "fate" or "destiny" now seems like a cop-out. If I hadn't ended up where I am now, I would've just ended up a different way. But does where I am now mean this is where I'm meant to be? Most likely not. I'm sure I would've flourished in some other life too. That doesn't mean I don't feel extremely lucky to have what I have.
Anyway, I'm rambling. But it feels good to finally write all that stuff down.
[Edit: HA! Oh my god, I just found this while rifling through LJ's from 2 years ago:
So, it can't have just been a coincidence that I knew my way around some design programs, with little-to-no experience under my belt at 19. It must have been fate. It was destiny that I would choose this line of work. And it's something I chose almost out of the blue. God exists, because he led me to this point. There's no way that it was an accident I ended up here.
Say what you will about faith, or religion, but there are more than a few things in life that don't have me doubt the existence of God for a second. And there have been times when I've been really down. Really, really down. Genuinely unhappy with myself and with the world. I didn't kill myself, mostly because I was too scared. But I didn't care at all. And after a lot of time, and a lot of life changes, I was able to turn myself around and now I'm positive.
Basically negating everything I wrote not 10 minutes ago... But whatever, I was just a kid then