I honestly do not know what I believe or what is right to believe. If I have a concept of God at all it is either present in nature or proceeds from an ontological necessity in the form of the “uncaused cause.” I was not always like this, however. Believe it or not, I was a Sunday school teacher for just under four years, and was raised in a Lutheran church. It is something that I think about a lot, however, and I am not closed to religion or God.
I fell away from the church—and, to a larger extent, from God—after I learned more about the cosmos at large. The sheer expanse of physical reality compared to our little solar system. I became convinced that I was ignorant, that the Truth was an unattainable thing, and that the men who run churches do so not out of love of people, but love of themselves or money or something else entirely. Religion started to feel disingenuous, conjectural, and I became uncomfortable with teaching small children after Pastor Dave went on an anti-gay kick.
This “falling away” did not happen abruptly, but after a series of unfortunate events. When I was younger, I was violently sexually assaulted. I did not talk about it with anyone for three years. There was an abstinence ceremony at my church, and a youth leader said that once you lose your virginity, even in cases of rape, then you are impure. I did not feel like I was able to give myself over to God—as weird as that sounds—or to make that type of covenant with him on the basis of my past experience. I felt unloved and unlovable. I felt entirely alone no matter how hard I tried to be closer to God. There was no hope in my life. My family’s dynamic also had an impact on my views of religion and God. My father is an abusive alcoholic—among other, less awful things—and I think that, on some level, I could not separate my father’s heavy hand from God. Church was not a place of honesty or acceptance, either; it was a place that we went every Sunday where we had to pretend that everything was okay. When my sister was little, she accidentally told a crying Vicar, “it’s okay my daddy hits me too sometimes” in attempt to console her. We did not go to church for at least a month, and my little sister was severely reprimanded for saying such a thing. I hate lying—it is uncomfortable and anxiety inducing—and church felt like a place where you had to lie. In hindsight, I know that these experiences are not universal. That religion does wonderful things for people. Maybe I am just not one of them. Suffice to say, I do not have much by way of a spiritual or prayer life at the present moment. Unless, of course, meditation is included as a spiritual practice—I meditate quite a bit. Spending time in nature also, for me, is a spiritual thing. I love watching the birds. Nature is miraculous. The fact that any of this exists at all is miraculous. While I do not presently know what I believe or what is right to believe, I am on a journey of sorts. Every journey must, at some point, come to an end. I will not stop searching for truth or God. It is simply the case that I am not there yet.