"It's Not a Rejection, It's a Realization" Pt. 1---The Nature of Belief

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned through losing Christianity, it is this: belief is not a choice.

Try it. Pick something you don’t believe in—it can be anything: Shiva, aliens, Santa Claus...

Now on the count of three, believe it.

1...2...3................

How did it work for you? I assume not so well. Just examine anything you believe in or don’t believe in and you will find out pretty quickly that belief is not a voluntary act. I never chose to believe that my friends and family love me—the overwhelming evidence simply convinced me. I never chose to believe stepping a piece of broken glass would cut my foot, I just realized it from experience. Trying to make myself believe broken glass would not hurt me is an impossible task because the facts all point in the opposite direction.

A belief arises from solid evidence, conviction, and sometimes a bit of emotion. Only in the absence of these three things does belief become a conscious decision.

For example: Some people look at the world around them and come to the automatic conclusion that there must be a god. Some people look at the world around them and conclude the very opposite. As I said in my first point about the existence of God---each side presents a pretty good case, and (for me) the evidence is inconclusive. It is in situations like this where belief becomes subject to an act of the will: I come to no conclusions concerning the existence of God, so in this case I have the ability to choose what to believe.

But though the "existence of God" question is pretty much up in the air for me, the evidence against the God of the Bible strikes me as pretty conclusive. Of course, there are a lot of people out there who could not bring themselves to disbelieve Christianity either. Humans are very diverse: Different facts hit different people in different angles. I don't think my methods of reasoning things out are any superior to those of the rest of the human race; they are simply my methods, the way my mind is wired.

Still, countless Christians have accused me of leaving the faith for one of three reasons:

1. I’m angry at God.

2. I have become too selfish and sinful to want God in my life.

3. I just don’t care.

No matter how ardently I try to assure people that none of these answers are true, they usually don’t get it. My intellectual conclusions are mistaken for selfish motives. It’s frustrating to no end.

(Christians: how would you feel if I accused you of rejecting Allah for one of those three reasons above? You would probably be pretty offended too. My guess is you’re not mad, you’re not selfish, and you’re not apathetic; you simply don’t believe Allah exists. Your conclusion is based on reason alone.)

Now I’m sure some non-Christians don’t believe for precisely the reasons I mentioned. I won’t deny that. But that’s not the way it was for me; I never wanted to leave Christianity—in fact, I waged a battle with my own mind for a while, trying to force myself to believe it. But those attempts failed pretty quickly—I knew I was lying to myself, just as you probably knew you were lying to yourself when I told you believe something on the count of three...

So why in the world did I leave Christianity if I didn’t want to? (Key words here: Did. Not. Want. To.)

The answer is simple: I had to.


-Monica

My Perspective...

Does something have to be true in order to be beautiful?

No.

Don’t give me any of this “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature...” nonsense. What kind of human being are you anyway, Mr. Marx?

You don’t have to believe in the existence of Zeus and the rest of his merry (or sometimes not so merry) pantheon in order to appreciate the Greek myths. You don’t have to believe Christ died on the cross for you sins in order to feel the majestic exhilaration of an ancient hymn. You don’t have to believe in any kind of goddess or tree nymph in order to experience the harmonious energy of a pagan ritual.

Religion is beautiful. Religion is art. Religion is a part of who we are as humans—it defines us. Take away religion from us and you might as well take away music, drama, literature... Eliminate the entire concept of beauty while you’re at it!

I can’t tell you who is right or wrong when it comes to religion. I don’t know. Nobody really knows, do they? Sure, I tend to think there is a God out there, and I have some philosophical reasons for believing it. (Namely the question of the origin of the universe) But that’s not really my main reason for believing in God. I believe in God because I want to. I find the whole concept of God to be incredibly beautiful; and while I don’t think one religion has got everything right, I think they each provide something to be learned. But they provide more than that—they provide beauty.

Yann Martel, author of one of my favorite books—The Life of Pi— puts it this way: “I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.”

I agree with Martel; I think God is the better story. Atheism just seems so bland to me, so lacking. It’s like comparing the wild landscape as seen from the top of a mountain on a bright, crisp day, to the endless stretch of a concrete tarmac glazed with the red-hot spit of an angry sun.

Sometimes I think I’m an atheist, but I try not to be. I try not to “lack imagination and miss the better story.” And yet, I still am committed to reason. I believe there's truth out there: I'm no relativist. I still thirst for knowledge and truth, even though truth is hard to find, and pretty much impossible to prove. But as long as nothing can be proved about the existence of God, I’m going to believe.

So here’s the basics about me: I grew up in a Christian home, and I became a Christian when I was about 8. Recently though, I was confronted with a slew of doubts and questions about Christianity and ended up realizing I couldn’t believe it anymore.

Now that’s an extremely long story made short, and I will elaborate later, I promise. But for now that will have to do.


-Monica

The Purpose of this Blog

Sometimes we want the world to be black and white. Sometimes we think that we can find all the answers to all of life’s questions and lock them into place like the pieces of a perfectly geometric puzzle. It’s comforting to think that there is always a right, clear, objective answer. But life doesn’t always work that way. Some things aren’t black and white and obvious; they’re confusing and murky and more than a little unexplained.

I believe that objective truth is out there, the problem is that we can’t always see it clearly. Many people claim to have the right way. Thousands of religions and viewpoints claim that they have an exclusive hold on the truth about God, meaning, and life.

I believe that there is not just one right way. This doesn’t mean that different things are true at once, it just means that there is not one right way to live or one right thing to believe. I believe the unexplained can be beautiful.

The purpose of this blog is to explore these unexplained things in life.

First, a little background. My sister and I are former evangelical Christians who have now left the faith due to doubts about the belief system. We wanted to learn about different beliefs and viewpoints about the world, so we started studying. But we realized that we could only learn so much by reading. We knew that best way to learn about these viewpoints was to experience them first hand. So we started visiting churches and religious groups. This blog is going to be about our experiences going to various religious services, as well as our own thoughts on the many unexplained things in life.

Our viewpoints are fairly similar, but we don’t agree on absolutely everything. (What sisters ever do?) I consider myself an agnostic. My sister leans more towards theism; I toward atheism. I don’t see that there is much solid evidence for God’s existence. I think that if God does exist, it is impossible for us to know what he is like.

That being said, I am fascinated by religion. One can be a spiritual person even if they don’t believe in God. Humans throughout all of history have had a sense of spirituality and expressed it in many different ways; through rituals, worship, paintings, music, and emotion. We’re spiritual animals by nature. I think fundamentalist religion causes a lot of harm in our world, but a healthy religion or spirituality can be an enrichment to our lives.

We’re going to start posting about our experiences at some churches as soon as we can. We love a good discussion, so please send some comments our way!


-Carmen