I am currently reading Christopher Kitchen’s book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Page 71 hits home for me especially:
If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe IN something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished.
I have to admit, it is in the area of faith I most struggle with. I don’t believe. I keep trying, again and again and ultimately, I lack the very faith that is needed in order to fully believe in a deity, one that created the earth in six days, one that created man from dust and woman from his ribs, one that determines who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. I simply do not believe that such a deity exists.
But what does faith mean? Looking it up on Google, I found the following definition:
strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
Apprehension in this case means understanding. Rather than proof, that’s the rub. Faith is the substitute for proof because you need to have faith due to the absence of truth. In fact, in some cases, it is faith DESPITE proof, despite logic. Because if you look at some of these stories logically, they don’t make any sense. In order to make sense of them, you have to have faith. In order to believe, you have to have faith. I don’t have faith. I expect proof. I expect things to make sense and religion has never really made any sense to me despite how hard to try to make it make sense. I ask too many questions, too many difficult questions that no one can answer. And no one ever tries to. Why is that? Because they don’t need the answers, they already have faith.
To be honest, the better question is why do I need faith? Why do I need to believe? Well, supposedly, it’s so that I don’t go to hell. But I don’t believe in hell either. Or heaven for that matter. When we die, we die. Our existence after death is no different than the existence we had before birth or rather lack thereof. It’s a horrifying thought only because we are alive now and the thought of not being alive can be rather frightening. And yet, there are people incredibly concerned about the state of my soul, more so than I am. And, rather ironically, these are people who should be far more concerned about the state of their own soul as, based on their system of beliefs, they are or have done things that are very much out of line with what they believe and yet, it is MY unbelieving soul they are worried about. Murder, adultery, lying, they can just ask their god for forgiveness and all is good but because I don’t believe, I have an automatic one way ticket to hell that these people feel if they can just get me to believe, if they can just get me to have faith, they will win one over to their side and save my soul from eternal damnation in the process.
If only it were that easy. But it’s not. I don’t have faith. I require proof. I want my morals to have a reason for being besides, “Because god says so!” That doesn't work for me. I need more than that. If anything, the proof has been the opposite. The stories are not based on reality but tales told by a primitive society to explain things that are now mostly explained by science. It is something that provides comfort to people, yes, but it is also something that is used to control people and stagnate process.
And yet, I still struggle with the fact I don’t believe. I fear rejection, something that happened in my own marriage because I did not believe as my husband wanted me to. And so anytime it comes up that someone may look down on me because of my lack of belief, I become very concerned. Trauma is triggered and I become very distraught and emotional, afraid of rejection from anyone who is close to me. I sense a good part of this is because my own belief system is still being formed, raw and unsure from the years of my marriage where I lost love, affection, and intimacy because I failed to believe.
However, the more I try to believe, the less I am able to. I search and I read and I end up determining that I cannot believe that which others want me to believe. It is too out there for me and the lack of evidence doesn’t help. There is no evidence for much of what is in the Bible. There simply isn’t. Belief requires faith and faith is something I just do not have.
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