Ticks – that was what I was going to write about. How ticks have become a big part of life in certain areas of the country, like malaria or dengue fever in others, and how – or why – this may be. They have affected and infected me. They may yet kill me. Whose idea were they anyway?
But something else came up on the MSN site, a place where material for this blog is rare. In one of their many side-bars, I saw a picture of an attractive female back with a cross dangling from it. The title was “What I lost and gained when I gave up God” in some blog-zene I had never heard of before, Refinery29. Whatever the heck that means. Given its obscurity, I suspected it would be a propaganda piece for atheism, but I was wrong. Nor was it pro-God. It was, rather, an honest and straight-forward account of an interview with a British woman of 27 that was about as blunt as could be.
We learn in the piece that only 30% of Britains now have a religion (as opposed to believing in God. Another study was done in a Scandinavian country with similar results, but the vast majority said they were spiritual non-the-less). This young woman was chosen for the piece for an obvious reason: she had been raised as an evangelical, with talking in tongues and all, where every aspect of life was seen as an offering from, or a test from, God. She had been taught to have Jesus as her personal savior, someone with whom she should speak as a friend, albeit a friend with the upper hand. This Jesus would encourage here, but also chastise her for bad thoughts and deeds. With a simple decision, the “sin” would be forgiven, and then the world would move to the next challenge and conversation.
At age 14, she began to become bored with this Jesus. At 16, she began to drink and use drugs (recreationally, as apparently she does not have an addiction problem) and grow further from religion as practiced by her parents. Still, she kept her Jesus and gave as her sense of loyalty the pledge of remaining a virgin until marriage. At college, this pledge set her apart from others, and she enjoyed that special status. But she was distraught with the ban on homosexual behavior. In her church, being homosexual was not the sin, but acting on it was. But she had known gays, and could not find them any more objectionable than any others. She stopped going to church, and finally went all the way with a boyfriend. Later, she also had a homosexual experience.
At one point, she looked at herself and said, “You no longer go to church, you no longer talk to God, and now you no longer follow the sexual rules. Therefore, face it, you no longer believe in God.”
By the time of the interview, she said that her belief in God had been something like The Matrix movie – where she found that everything that she had ever believed in was wrong. The whole God thing had been a fantasy. It was now so clear to her.
What was gained? Freedom from guilt, she said, especially over sex. What was lost? Safety and assuredness that life meant something. Said she: now that she no longer has this fantasy of God, she sees life as just a succession of time. Bad times and good times just are – there is no justice or lesson or anything to them. Life is just a ticking away of genes, which is counting the days to her death, which will simply end her life. Nothing. She admits that she is not as happy as she had been. But what, we are led to understand, could she do? Believe in a lie?
Perhaps the easiest point to her story is this: that although religion gave her guilt, the overall sense of meaning to life was the greater of the two. To her, religion had been a childish crutch that actually worked – although it was only a fantasy. The guilt she was relieved of was not as great as the burden of meaninglessness.
This is worthy of a much longer commentary. For instance, much of militant atheism is obviously, at least to me, a way to cleanse the conscience of guilt, a guilt so strong that the empty hole left with non-belief is not felt. Most important, though, is the idea that Jesus, or God, or Buddha, or what have you, is simply a selection from pretty children stories given to encourage certain behavior and give comfort in a scary world. And I would say that, on the surface, this idea – the same idea our young woman has – is correct. The vision she had of God and Jesus was an infantile fantasy.
This has always been a problem with religion. To make God accessible to the public, it has to speak to the psychic levels of that public. It is why Biblical historians of faith have said that the Bible is a monument to spiritual evolution; that the God represented there must reflect the mentality of the people. The evolution seen in God in the Bible is, of course, not the evolution of God – for God is unchanging, is “I AM.” Rather, it is the evolution of the people’s ability to conceive God, who is beyond knowing as we usually understand it. Our young woman was taught that, too, but forgot. She was given a God who was just like her, only morally superior and more powerful, because that is what she and probably much of her congregation could understand. Had she contemplated scripture more – or cross-referenced her own religion with others – she would have found out her error – or rather, her childish simplification of God.
What happened to her is that she outgrew her childhood God. She did not, however, outgrow God, nor could she. With due credit to the interview, she admitted her life was less happy and empty. She still needs God as we all do. But she has to work on it. She has to grow her image of God to the level at which she currently is, and then some. This is done by study, and by meditation and its deeper twin, contemplation. She might also be helped by adhering, at least for a while, to another religion, one that gives her a more grown-up, or at least different perspective.
I hope she finds some way back. It is not easy when most simply do not want to talk about the issue, or have simply surmised that their childish impression of God is all that God is. In this vacuum, belief is not easy because God does not normally manifest a finger from heaven, or appear shining in the night before us. For most of us most of the time, God is simply an idea, a fantasy of what might be. It is only through study, or prayer (meditation if you will) or the luck of grace that the invisible somehow, mysteriously becomes, if not visible, then at least real. “Mysteriously,” because God is not comprehensible nor equitable with anything in the temporal universe in which we usually live.
Yet, still, this mystery is reasonable. The very darkness that comes from non-belief is telling us that life is NOT comprehensible in the ordinary way. We have been told by the sages that there is a way, and in that, perhaps we first need faith on the spiritual path, a faith that says that there is something out beyond the darkness of unknowing. But we also know it inside: it is what unhappiness was telling the young woman.
She is still young. Who knows? But most of us at one point fall into the same trap of disbelief as we grow older. OF course, our God at age 6 will just not do. But neither will toy trains. Someday, we simply have to drive or ride the real thing. FK
But something else came up on the MSN site, a place where material for this blog is rare. In one of their many side-bars, I saw a picture of an attractive female back with a cross dangling from it. The title was “What I lost and gained when I gave up God” in some blog-zene I had never heard of before, Refinery29. Whatever the heck that means. Given its obscurity, I suspected it would be a propaganda piece for atheism, but I was wrong. Nor was it pro-God. It was, rather, an honest and straight-forward account of an interview with a British woman of 27 that was about as blunt as could be.
We learn in the piece that only 30% of Britains now have a religion (as opposed to believing in God. Another study was done in a Scandinavian country with similar results, but the vast majority said they were spiritual non-the-less). This young woman was chosen for the piece for an obvious reason: she had been raised as an evangelical, with talking in tongues and all, where every aspect of life was seen as an offering from, or a test from, God. She had been taught to have Jesus as her personal savior, someone with whom she should speak as a friend, albeit a friend with the upper hand. This Jesus would encourage here, but also chastise her for bad thoughts and deeds. With a simple decision, the “sin” would be forgiven, and then the world would move to the next challenge and conversation.
At age 14, she began to become bored with this Jesus. At 16, she began to drink and use drugs (recreationally, as apparently she does not have an addiction problem) and grow further from religion as practiced by her parents. Still, she kept her Jesus and gave as her sense of loyalty the pledge of remaining a virgin until marriage. At college, this pledge set her apart from others, and she enjoyed that special status. But she was distraught with the ban on homosexual behavior. In her church, being homosexual was not the sin, but acting on it was. But she had known gays, and could not find them any more objectionable than any others. She stopped going to church, and finally went all the way with a boyfriend. Later, she also had a homosexual experience.
At one point, she looked at herself and said, “You no longer go to church, you no longer talk to God, and now you no longer follow the sexual rules. Therefore, face it, you no longer believe in God.”
By the time of the interview, she said that her belief in God had been something like The Matrix movie – where she found that everything that she had ever believed in was wrong. The whole God thing had been a fantasy. It was now so clear to her.
What was gained? Freedom from guilt, she said, especially over sex. What was lost? Safety and assuredness that life meant something. Said she: now that she no longer has this fantasy of God, she sees life as just a succession of time. Bad times and good times just are – there is no justice or lesson or anything to them. Life is just a ticking away of genes, which is counting the days to her death, which will simply end her life. Nothing. She admits that she is not as happy as she had been. But what, we are led to understand, could she do? Believe in a lie?
Perhaps the easiest point to her story is this: that although religion gave her guilt, the overall sense of meaning to life was the greater of the two. To her, religion had been a childish crutch that actually worked – although it was only a fantasy. The guilt she was relieved of was not as great as the burden of meaninglessness.
This is worthy of a much longer commentary. For instance, much of militant atheism is obviously, at least to me, a way to cleanse the conscience of guilt, a guilt so strong that the empty hole left with non-belief is not felt. Most important, though, is the idea that Jesus, or God, or Buddha, or what have you, is simply a selection from pretty children stories given to encourage certain behavior and give comfort in a scary world. And I would say that, on the surface, this idea – the same idea our young woman has – is correct. The vision she had of God and Jesus was an infantile fantasy.
This has always been a problem with religion. To make God accessible to the public, it has to speak to the psychic levels of that public. It is why Biblical historians of faith have said that the Bible is a monument to spiritual evolution; that the God represented there must reflect the mentality of the people. The evolution seen in God in the Bible is, of course, not the evolution of God – for God is unchanging, is “I AM.” Rather, it is the evolution of the people’s ability to conceive God, who is beyond knowing as we usually understand it. Our young woman was taught that, too, but forgot. She was given a God who was just like her, only morally superior and more powerful, because that is what she and probably much of her congregation could understand. Had she contemplated scripture more – or cross-referenced her own religion with others – she would have found out her error – or rather, her childish simplification of God.
What happened to her is that she outgrew her childhood God. She did not, however, outgrow God, nor could she. With due credit to the interview, she admitted her life was less happy and empty. She still needs God as we all do. But she has to work on it. She has to grow her image of God to the level at which she currently is, and then some. This is done by study, and by meditation and its deeper twin, contemplation. She might also be helped by adhering, at least for a while, to another religion, one that gives her a more grown-up, or at least different perspective.
I hope she finds some way back. It is not easy when most simply do not want to talk about the issue, or have simply surmised that their childish impression of God is all that God is. In this vacuum, belief is not easy because God does not normally manifest a finger from heaven, or appear shining in the night before us. For most of us most of the time, God is simply an idea, a fantasy of what might be. It is only through study, or prayer (meditation if you will) or the luck of grace that the invisible somehow, mysteriously becomes, if not visible, then at least real. “Mysteriously,” because God is not comprehensible nor equitable with anything in the temporal universe in which we usually live.
Yet, still, this mystery is reasonable. The very darkness that comes from non-belief is telling us that life is NOT comprehensible in the ordinary way. We have been told by the sages that there is a way, and in that, perhaps we first need faith on the spiritual path, a faith that says that there is something out beyond the darkness of unknowing. But we also know it inside: it is what unhappiness was telling the young woman.
She is still young. Who knows? But most of us at one point fall into the same trap of disbelief as we grow older. OF course, our God at age 6 will just not do. But neither will toy trains. Someday, we simply have to drive or ride the real thing. FK
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