did I just spend two hours writing about my beliefs? yes I did. I even cried a little.
This is probably not the kind of entry I usually make and it's completely for my own benefit, because this stuff has been invading my thoughts lately for various reasons. I figure if I write it down and thus actually spend time thinking it through, I'll be done with the thoughts for now.
So I'll write a long entry about religion, my experience of it and my beliefs or lack thereof. Just so you know.
I'm an agnostic. That's what I've defined myself since I was twelve. I've been uncertain about the term at times, but it's the best one I've ever been able to think of. That uncertainty is mostly because I lean towards being a theist agnostic, which I think isn't that common. How much I lean toward that depends a lot on when in my life we're looking at.
Just under eighty percent of the Finnish population belong to the Lutheran Church. We get taught religion in school and it's mostly Christianity and obviously from a lutheran point of view. Of course it's against the law to make anyone participate in anything to do with religion, so if the parents don't want their children to participate in those classes or anything else religious the can inform the school of it. But mostly that doesn't happen, especially in small school where there's really not many alternatives to offer instead of those classes (I think the scholl would still have to arrange something, but...)
So I was raised a Lutheran. Not that my parents are religious, we went to Church for weddings and funerals and such and we got taught to say a prayer before sleep, but that was it. However there wasn't any daycare or kindergarten or whatever where we lived and the best thing you got was this thing that was sort of a cross between daycare and sunday school, which was (if I remember correctly) five hours a day, three times a week from when I was three until I started school at age six. There was playing and things, but there was also learning about Jesus (there was a this little booklet where I got to glue pictures about things that Jesus did) and the story time that usualy consisted of a story from the Bible. And lots of singing about God.
Most daycares here aren't much different really, just slightly less blatantly religious. A lot of the songs the kids learn have something about God in them. They say grace before meals and there's probably a bedtime prayer before naptime. You don't have to put your child there, but usually there aren't that much alternative if you do want your kid to go to daycare. The same theme continues through school 'til you're twelve or thirteen at which point, well... I didn't need to say grace before going to eat anymore.
I really don't like the way schools teach religion. When I was younger we were taught religion (ie christianity) in a way very similar to the way we were taught history. So that means everything that happened in the Bible gets treated as historical fact, or at least that's the way I took it as a kid. At tweleve I was finally introduced to the idea of other religions and the fact that what I'd been taught this far was just one set of beliefs. Of course somehow the fact that other religions existed still got twisted into proof that our religion is right. Seriously they said that. The lack of any logic in that proof, made me decide then and there that I when I was old enough to do so I would resign from Church. I was twelve and still prayed every night before sleep.
I don't think anyone purposefully taught me religion in a way that had me damned scared of a lot of things, but somehow it seems to have escaped everyone that children are very, very litteral. I remember the first time I accidentaly used a swear word. Well maybe not so much of an accident as my four year older cousin and that wonderful thing called peer pressure, but she did have to spend the next half an hour convincing me that it hadn't been that bad of a word and I wasn't going to drop dead and go to hell right that very instance, so she probably learned not to do something like that again. Then there was the fact that I couldn't go to sleep without saying my prayers (And I slept bad enough as it was), partly because of habit and partly because I really was afraid that I or someone else my family was going to die during the night and well... you don't want to fall asleep without having said your prayers, just in case god really does exist. (Yeah, the second one of the nightly prayers was the Finnish version of the on that has that part about 'if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take'. Scared the hell out of me that one did, and I couldn't fall asleep if I didn't say it.)
When I was a teenager and deciding what I should study, I very seriously considered becoming a priest. But that meant I would have had to study both Latin and Ancient Greek... and I totally refuse to sing, so in the end I decided against it. As a teen I was kind of jealous of the people who could efortlesly believe in God. I've never been able to do that. I wanted to experience faith in something, not necessarily God, but lutheranism was a habit so that was always the first thing to come to mind.
I was nineteen and just moved away from home when I made the conscious effort to try to go to sleep without saying any kind of prayer. That took a while, but eventually prayer or the lack thereof no longer had any effect on my sleep. I'm not sure when I stopped praying completely, I think it might have been around when I finally did resign from Church about three years ago. Like maybe after that I didn't have the right. It took me a bit longer than I'd thought before I resigned, I could have done it for... umm... six, seven (something like that) years before I did. I kept waiting to see if I'd feel differently, until one day I realised that if I still felt the same in my mid twenties as I did when I was twelve, I probably wasn't about to change my mind about it anytime soon.
These days I feel kind of awkward if I have to be in a Church for some reason. I'll almost automatically join in on the prayers and confessing your faith and all of that... I still remember them all. And then I feel dishonest. Actualy... when I kind of implied that I stopped praying altogether that wasn't the entire truth. There's been a few things after I resigned from Church. Most notably the summer before last, when I was in a foreign city with a church I'd never been to before and that most definitely wasn't lutheran and I was just there to look at the church (they're pretty and all)... except I spent over an hour crying and... apologising, I suppose. A couple of weeks earlier was the first time I'd had to go to a church service since I left the Church and it turned out that might have affected me a bit more than I thought.
And why is this suddenly bothering me again? Well, there was grandfather's death. He was someone who had a lot of faith, but he was also someone who'd made the effort to learn about other religions than his own and could appreciate them despite the fact that he was very much a christian himself. I could actually discuss religion with him and while I never told him I resinged from Church or outright stated that I'm agnostic, he knew and he didn't really seem to mind. It bothered me more than a bit during the funeral how much everyone would bring up his faith like christianity was the one and only thing he ever read, wrote and discussed, when my own experience was so different. Of course I didn't say anything, because that was obviously not the time to let the rest of the family know about my lack of faith (mom and dad know, like they do most things about me. But there are others who don't and while I don't care about what they think about me, they we're grieving and I'm not that thoughtless).
Also, since meeting all these new people when I started school, most of them foreigners, I've had a few people ask me about my beliefs. It's not that they're prying exactly, they're new to Finland and... things like that come up. I don't mind answering, it's just that I don't quite know what to say. Are you religious? No. So are you an atheist? Nope. I can try to explain... except... well it's not like I have a handy explanation ready. And even saying I'm agnostic doesn't seem quite right. It bothers me that some people seem to assume that I have to be one or the other, even though a lot of people are mostly ambivalent when it comes to religion. I'd kind of like to be one or the other, I can't help thinking it'd be easier.
So I'll write a long entry about religion, my experience of it and my beliefs or lack thereof. Just so you know.
I'm an agnostic. That's what I've defined myself since I was twelve. I've been uncertain about the term at times, but it's the best one I've ever been able to think of. That uncertainty is mostly because I lean towards being a theist agnostic, which I think isn't that common. How much I lean toward that depends a lot on when in my life we're looking at.
Just under eighty percent of the Finnish population belong to the Lutheran Church. We get taught religion in school and it's mostly Christianity and obviously from a lutheran point of view. Of course it's against the law to make anyone participate in anything to do with religion, so if the parents don't want their children to participate in those classes or anything else religious the can inform the school of it. But mostly that doesn't happen, especially in small school where there's really not many alternatives to offer instead of those classes (I think the scholl would still have to arrange something, but...)
So I was raised a Lutheran. Not that my parents are religious, we went to Church for weddings and funerals and such and we got taught to say a prayer before sleep, but that was it. However there wasn't any daycare or kindergarten or whatever where we lived and the best thing you got was this thing that was sort of a cross between daycare and sunday school, which was (if I remember correctly) five hours a day, three times a week from when I was three until I started school at age six. There was playing and things, but there was also learning about Jesus (there was a this little booklet where I got to glue pictures about things that Jesus did) and the story time that usualy consisted of a story from the Bible. And lots of singing about God.
Most daycares here aren't much different really, just slightly less blatantly religious. A lot of the songs the kids learn have something about God in them. They say grace before meals and there's probably a bedtime prayer before naptime. You don't have to put your child there, but usually there aren't that much alternative if you do want your kid to go to daycare. The same theme continues through school 'til you're twelve or thirteen at which point, well... I didn't need to say grace before going to eat anymore.
I really don't like the way schools teach religion. When I was younger we were taught religion (ie christianity) in a way very similar to the way we were taught history. So that means everything that happened in the Bible gets treated as historical fact, or at least that's the way I took it as a kid. At tweleve I was finally introduced to the idea of other religions and the fact that what I'd been taught this far was just one set of beliefs. Of course somehow the fact that other religions existed still got twisted into proof that our religion is right. Seriously they said that. The lack of any logic in that proof, made me decide then and there that I when I was old enough to do so I would resign from Church. I was twelve and still prayed every night before sleep.
I don't think anyone purposefully taught me religion in a way that had me damned scared of a lot of things, but somehow it seems to have escaped everyone that children are very, very litteral. I remember the first time I accidentaly used a swear word. Well maybe not so much of an accident as my four year older cousin and that wonderful thing called peer pressure, but she did have to spend the next half an hour convincing me that it hadn't been that bad of a word and I wasn't going to drop dead and go to hell right that very instance, so she probably learned not to do something like that again. Then there was the fact that I couldn't go to sleep without saying my prayers (And I slept bad enough as it was), partly because of habit and partly because I really was afraid that I or someone else my family was going to die during the night and well... you don't want to fall asleep without having said your prayers, just in case god really does exist. (Yeah, the second one of the nightly prayers was the Finnish version of the on that has that part about 'if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take'. Scared the hell out of me that one did, and I couldn't fall asleep if I didn't say it.)
When I was a teenager and deciding what I should study, I very seriously considered becoming a priest. But that meant I would have had to study both Latin and Ancient Greek... and I totally refuse to sing, so in the end I decided against it. As a teen I was kind of jealous of the people who could efortlesly believe in God. I've never been able to do that. I wanted to experience faith in something, not necessarily God, but lutheranism was a habit so that was always the first thing to come to mind.
I was nineteen and just moved away from home when I made the conscious effort to try to go to sleep without saying any kind of prayer. That took a while, but eventually prayer or the lack thereof no longer had any effect on my sleep. I'm not sure when I stopped praying completely, I think it might have been around when I finally did resign from Church about three years ago. Like maybe after that I didn't have the right. It took me a bit longer than I'd thought before I resigned, I could have done it for... umm... six, seven (something like that) years before I did. I kept waiting to see if I'd feel differently, until one day I realised that if I still felt the same in my mid twenties as I did when I was twelve, I probably wasn't about to change my mind about it anytime soon.
These days I feel kind of awkward if I have to be in a Church for some reason. I'll almost automatically join in on the prayers and confessing your faith and all of that... I still remember them all. And then I feel dishonest. Actualy... when I kind of implied that I stopped praying altogether that wasn't the entire truth. There's been a few things after I resigned from Church. Most notably the summer before last, when I was in a foreign city with a church I'd never been to before and that most definitely wasn't lutheran and I was just there to look at the church (they're pretty and all)... except I spent over an hour crying and... apologising, I suppose. A couple of weeks earlier was the first time I'd had to go to a church service since I left the Church and it turned out that might have affected me a bit more than I thought.
And why is this suddenly bothering me again? Well, there was grandfather's death. He was someone who had a lot of faith, but he was also someone who'd made the effort to learn about other religions than his own and could appreciate them despite the fact that he was very much a christian himself. I could actually discuss religion with him and while I never told him I resinged from Church or outright stated that I'm agnostic, he knew and he didn't really seem to mind. It bothered me more than a bit during the funeral how much everyone would bring up his faith like christianity was the one and only thing he ever read, wrote and discussed, when my own experience was so different. Of course I didn't say anything, because that was obviously not the time to let the rest of the family know about my lack of faith (mom and dad know, like they do most things about me. But there are others who don't and while I don't care about what they think about me, they we're grieving and I'm not that thoughtless).
Also, since meeting all these new people when I started school, most of them foreigners, I've had a few people ask me about my beliefs. It's not that they're prying exactly, they're new to Finland and... things like that come up. I don't mind answering, it's just that I don't quite know what to say. Are you religious? No. So are you an atheist? Nope. I can try to explain... except... well it's not like I have a handy explanation ready. And even saying I'm agnostic doesn't seem quite right. It bothers me that some people seem to assume that I have to be one or the other, even though a lot of people are mostly ambivalent when it comes to religion. I'd kind of like to be one or the other, I can't help thinking it'd be easier.