A Non-Believer Believer
I said in a previous post that I grew up in a Christian family. So the process of my leaving the faith was, well, hard. What is also true given my mental illness and the way it came about is that I am still quite scared that god may be real. Which, logically, to me, is quite… egocentric. Or… maybe a little simpler it is so colored by my own experiences and ways that I look at the world because of that.
Look, there are and have been so many religions in the history of the world. It seems egotistical to me to assume that the one I was taught and raised with is the one that is correct. In fact after leaving the faith I’ve tried at times to come up with some concoction, some combination, of all the faiths I can think of.
The thing that has made sense to me the most besides atheism or Christianity was the idea of reincarnation. You see I saw something about the idea that when we die there is this large amount of energy that is within us that is expelled somewhere (it’s more complicated than that and my description may in fact be wrong, that is the way I remember it though). I thought, maybe, that energy is still around at the time of conception of other individuals and somehow that energy is there and becomes part of such another generation of individuals. More likely, in that scenario, and I guess more logical, more based in science, it simply means that our bodies help to produce the life around where our body is buried (assuming we are not, you know, in a box).
Yet that seems convoluted and over time I came to understand a bit more science that made that something I understood to be the wrong idea (the conception idea specifically). So, I just sort of stuck to this idea that there is nothing when we die. In fact I wrote a paper about it in a philosophy 101 class in college.
I took from some ideas of Tolstoy and Epicurus and found a lot of peace in the idea that when I die there is nothing and I can feel nothing so I will be at peace and won’t have to deal with earthly problems anymore. (That paper included some more ideas I’m including in another post of mine that I will soon reveal on this blog). Yet, still, there was the problem partly of how I began to leave the faith of Christianity.
You see in my senior year of high school I was already kind of falling away from the faith but there was this one thing that I wanted more than anything else in the world and I prayed about it. I was madly in love and I prayed that I would end up with this individual. That never came to fruition and partly the way that scenario played out left me even colder to the pull of Christianity’s beliefs.
Then, after a few years of considering myself agnostic in 2014 the symptoms of schizoaffective disorder bipolar type started in my mind. The main symptom I noticed? The hallucinations. This voice in my head that was supposed to be this representation of the woman I had loved in high school. The woman I had never really gotten over.
For a while I was just focused on the symptoms and my obsession with this woman, but sometime after my diagnosis, finally, in 2015 I began to think about that prayer I prayed to god with back in high school. Seemingly it had been answered. Yet, it felt like punishment for something. Even worse it felt like god had told me I was just part of some cosmic ironic joke he was pulling.
I now feared that god was real again and I hated him (I assumed it was a he because I didn’t think a female god would do something along these lines to one of her creations). I couldn’t get over this idea that I was just this piece of nothing to not only the woman I loved but literally the creator of the universe and everything and everybody in it himself.
It’s brought me to many ideas I have had to disprove the idea that Christianity is the right belief system.
I’ve thought about the fact that from what I understand those who do not believe in god will go to hell. Which with the number of people in the history of the world who have never even known of the belief system of Christianity seems completely unfair. How could these people that didn’t even get a chance to believe in god get stuck with going to hell (assuming that young earth creationism is wrong and the universe is billions of years old)?
Furthermore the people that don’t believe in god that are sent to hell? Wouldn’t they immediately see themselves as wrong in their beliefs and ask for forgiveness from god? These people have to spend an eternity, something we can’t even imagine because we can’t possibly experience an amount of time that is eternal, in hell simply for not having believed? There’s no probation or parole from hell? You mean the American judiciary and penal system does better than god?
Yet, oddly, including my fears that god is real and he is in fact something of an egotistical being that needs his ego stroked every Sunday, that he may be an asshole, and that maybe he doesn’t even care, this thought led me in a different direction. What if god is imperfect. What if his ideas are things he thinks is correct, yet maybe aren’t entirely as thought through or correct as we, in regards to believers, have assumed is this great plan that is going to work out.
It brought me to this point that if that is true I just want god to tell me he was trying to do his best. We as human beings, hell all the creations in the universe, may meet him in the end and maybe we can help to create the perfect idea god intended for us. Or… maybe his plan is correct and right and perfect and I just don’t understand.
I mean as someone who is now schizoaffective bipolar type I have a purpose that I didn’t have before. Before I wanted to be a screenwriter because it would gain me some type of legacy. Yes I wanted to influence people to do great things for themselves, but mostly I wanted a great legacy. Now I want some sense of notoriety in a public profession to help those like me with psychotic illnesses to know they don’t have to be defined solely by the diagnosis they have received. Maybe this was god’s plan and I just have to learn how to find happiness in what I can do for other people.
(I had no idea where else to put this, but I feel the need to include it. Has anybody else thought about the fact that a big bang produces light. Thus, maybe, The Big Bang was in fact god creating the universe. Furthermore what if god experiences time in a completely different manner than us. What if each day for god was creating the universe he experienced about 2.3 billion of our earth years before the “seventh day.” By the way, the universe is apparently 13.8 billion years old.)
Yet that doesn’t answer all my questions for god. Which is why at the end here I ask one thing of you. Not to change whatever your beliefs are, but just one thing. If Christianity and the idea the Christian god is real and in fact there is a judgment day ask god to answer my questions. You can ask him yourself, but if you don’t want to then just tell him to listen to me when I come up and have my questions.
If for some reason god isn’t perfect and his plan isn’t wouldn’t it be the perfect thing for the beings he created to in fact forgive him and let him know that we will work together to do the right thing. The Christian thing.
Edit:
2/23/2023 I feel the need to point out something I of course looked over. Simply pray to forgive God if you desire. (Just do so in honesty, if you get up to the pearly gates to get judged they’ll already know anyway). While I still do not presume the existence of the Christian God, or any God for that matter, it feels very good from my view of things to have done so.
In fact I find the idea I haven’t done so previously just a little annoying. Especially since I am a lover of the story Life of Pi (my personal experience with it being with the film). Which has taken me on a path through taking in more Buddhist ideologies. As well I intend to take in plenty of religious ideas across the globe as I journey through life much more than I have previously. As a lover of both Life of Pi and The Lord of the Rings trilogy hopefully I wash up upon the shore someday.
