On religion
I've recently become willing to accept myself as an atheist.
If you've been paying any attention at all, this shouldn't come as any surprise. Really. Historically, I've tried to be devout. I enjoyed church as a small child, but realized by the time I was in middle school that I was going because it's what I've always done, not because I was getting anything out of it. Of course, there's also the social aspect: everyone always wants to feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves, right? By high school I was contemplating the higher meanings and wondering what my own purpose was. If God is real and has a plan, what the hell difference could a fuck-up like me have to do with anything? In the larger scheme, what the hell could this almighty being possibly have designed that would include all of the thieves and users in the world? All the baby killers? I tried to bring my Christian upbringing into a view that made some sense. I tried shedding light from other philosophies and religions onto it. I studied and re-contextualized. Most of all, I prayed. Hope, guidance, faith, some good in the world... anything. I would have taken anything that was given me, but I received nothing. I begged. I even tried looking into the disaster my life and the world around me had become for some shred of proof of God's existence. The harder I looked to keep my faith, the harder it was to find a reason to keep it. After all, where was God during all those years I tried to destroy myself? Where was He when so many around me were destroyed? Where was He when I tried to pick myself up? When I left Frank, when I lived in my car for 6 months, when I was forced to knock on friends' doors to take a shower so I could go to work, when my car was repossessed, the following week when I lost my job, the week after that when I was evicted from the apartment I finally managed to get, and all the while I was pleading with that being described as 'Love' to help me get through each day and each new disaster, where the fuck was He? I realized then that I was all alone, but couldn't cope with the idea. I mean, I had been told my whole life that I had an ally, a friend. It was me who got me through all those trials. There was no help. I was terrified and God wasn't there to comfort me.
The more I look around, the more I see how stupid it is to think that my actions and my path aren't my own, that it's all part of some larger foreseen plan, and that I should put all of my trust into a father that has never so much as helped to dry my tears.
Am I upset? Bitter? Of course I am. Look at how much time I've lost relying on something that isn't there, when I could have owned up at the start and been a better person? Look at all the mistakes I've made and time I've wasted repenting to a non-existent authority, when I could have been making things right with the people who do exist instead.
Recently someone commented on the steps I had taken in this direction and I can't describe how infuriated that made me. I don't need anyone's approval or condemnation. I really don't give a shit what you think. I'm not making this declaration to prove anything to anybody or to convince anyone that they should throw aside their beliefs as I did. You can keep your god and I will never hold it against you. I'm making this declaration to finally free myself of the yolk and harness that has kept me from being a better and stronger person all of this time. I will bring good to this world because it is the only life I have and the only chance I get, not because I need an invisible chaperon to guilt me into it. Good and evil come in a full spectrum of grays and having religion has only kept me from being able to view my world clearly and without polarized filters. Life is easier to live without all of the black and the white dictating to me what I can or should not do.
If you've been paying any attention at all, this shouldn't come as any surprise. Really. Historically, I've tried to be devout. I enjoyed church as a small child, but realized by the time I was in middle school that I was going because it's what I've always done, not because I was getting anything out of it. Of course, there's also the social aspect: everyone always wants to feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves, right? By high school I was contemplating the higher meanings and wondering what my own purpose was. If God is real and has a plan, what the hell difference could a fuck-up like me have to do with anything? In the larger scheme, what the hell could this almighty being possibly have designed that would include all of the thieves and users in the world? All the baby killers? I tried to bring my Christian upbringing into a view that made some sense. I tried shedding light from other philosophies and religions onto it. I studied and re-contextualized. Most of all, I prayed. Hope, guidance, faith, some good in the world... anything. I would have taken anything that was given me, but I received nothing. I begged. I even tried looking into the disaster my life and the world around me had become for some shred of proof of God's existence. The harder I looked to keep my faith, the harder it was to find a reason to keep it. After all, where was God during all those years I tried to destroy myself? Where was He when so many around me were destroyed? Where was He when I tried to pick myself up? When I left Frank, when I lived in my car for 6 months, when I was forced to knock on friends' doors to take a shower so I could go to work, when my car was repossessed, the following week when I lost my job, the week after that when I was evicted from the apartment I finally managed to get, and all the while I was pleading with that being described as 'Love' to help me get through each day and each new disaster, where the fuck was He? I realized then that I was all alone, but couldn't cope with the idea. I mean, I had been told my whole life that I had an ally, a friend. It was me who got me through all those trials. There was no help. I was terrified and God wasn't there to comfort me.
The more I look around, the more I see how stupid it is to think that my actions and my path aren't my own, that it's all part of some larger foreseen plan, and that I should put all of my trust into a father that has never so much as helped to dry my tears.
Am I upset? Bitter? Of course I am. Look at how much time I've lost relying on something that isn't there, when I could have owned up at the start and been a better person? Look at all the mistakes I've made and time I've wasted repenting to a non-existent authority, when I could have been making things right with the people who do exist instead.
Recently someone commented on the steps I had taken in this direction and I can't describe how infuriated that made me. I don't need anyone's approval or condemnation. I really don't give a shit what you think. I'm not making this declaration to prove anything to anybody or to convince anyone that they should throw aside their beliefs as I did. You can keep your god and I will never hold it against you. I'm making this declaration to finally free myself of the yolk and harness that has kept me from being a better and stronger person all of this time. I will bring good to this world because it is the only life I have and the only chance I get, not because I need an invisible chaperon to guilt me into it. Good and evil come in a full spectrum of grays and having religion has only kept me from being able to view my world clearly and without polarized filters. Life is easier to live without all of the black and the white dictating to me what I can or should not do.