Where’s God?
“The faces of those enameled creatures meant nothing to him, though he talked to them and stood in that church for a long time, trying to be of that religion, trying to know what that religion was, trying to get enough of the raw incense and special dust of the place into his lungs and thus into his blood to feel touched and concerned by the meaning of the colorful men and women with the porcelain eyes and the blood-ruby lips. But there was nothing, nothing; it was a stroll through another store, and his currency strange and unusable there, and his passion cold, even when he touched the wood and plaster and clay.” Fahrenheit 451
I attended Catholic school from 8 to 18. I’ve gone to Sunday mass every week since before I could form memories. And my family has prayed the full Rosary every night, except Sundays because of mass, since before I was born. Every. Single. Night. Unless you’re reading this on a Sunday, they’ll even pray it tonight.
I really need to hammer this in because it’s ridiculous.
The full Rosary takes about 20 minutes to recite. I started joining in on the recitations probably at five. All the way till 18 before I left for college. So that’s 13 years. 4748 days. Minus all the Sundays. 4069 days. Each time, we’d collectively repeat the Hail Mary 50 times.
So I’ve prayed the Hail Mary, which by the way is only one of like six other prayers in the Rosary, literally about 203,450 times.
Get. On. My. Level.
I went to Sunday school as a child, and I remember there were some older kids who had already received their First Communion. If you don’t know what that is, near the end of a Catholic mass, people line up and receive a little piece of bread and a sip of wine, which represent the body and blood of Christ. This is called Communion, and you’re not supposed to just walk up and receive it, unless you ceremonially received your First Communion.
So the older kids were tasked to write a letter to the younger ones preparing them for the occasion. The letter I got, written in beautiful cursive, went something like:
“When I went up to the altar and received Communion for the first time, I could feel the power of the Holy Spirit coarse through me..”
Are you kidding me? Hell. Yes. I want some of that shit. So when it was finally my turn up there, you bet I was prepared. Dressed in my Sunday best. Shoes shined. Buttons buttoned. Hair combed (by my dad). I said a few prayers beforehand, because I wanted to feel it. I wanted all the good things about God to be true. I was excited.
But you know what happened.
Huh…I feel nothing.
And this bread tastes like nothing.
Wine’s great though.
The next time I saw the guy who wrote me that letter, I didn’t bring it up. But I always looked at him kinda sideways after that. This guy was either really holy or full of shit. As a little kid, I usually assumed the latter, but the possibility that God granted this other person a tangible feeling that he wouldn’t give me was disheartening.
Cue the beginning of my disillusionment with Catholicism.
The few times I can remember sincerely praying to God were the night my dog died when I was 9, and whenever I had diarrhea so painful I was begging him to make it stop. I felt nothing when I prayed, but my default belief was that God was real and he was good. I had my questions, but they remained unaddressed, brewing in my subconscious.
Until about 15, when I first started to deeply question why the world is the way it is. Why people are the way they are. So naturally, I fell in love with argument, and watched a ton of Youtube videos on how to do it well. Expanding my vocab, learning about logical fallacies, that sort of stuff. I was, and still am, uninformed and naïve about a lot of things, but I used my little life experience and facts about the world as evidence for my arguments. I’d get into hour long philosophical discussions and debates with my best friends on Skype at 2 am. To this day those are some of my best memories.
So not surprisingly, a big part of my departure from faith was ‘intellectually’ driven. Evolution, the enormity of the universe, contradictions in the Bible given a literal interpretation, etc. I got into so many heated arguments with religious friends. I was one of those annoying little militant atheists feigning intellectual superiority. Because an even larger part of my departure was emotionally driven.
I was pissed.
After all the Rosaries, why didn’t you save my dog? Why aren’t you answering any of my other prayers? Why do some people only know suffering their whole lives? The children born in destitute countries who starve to death at 3 months. The people who are sex trafficked and get drugged and raped every day until they die. Oh, right. Their undeserved suffering is part of your mysterious plan. Some plan. That’s the best you have?
Ironically, after I stopped believing, I spent a lot of time spiting God.
Dear God, I know you probably don’t exist, but in case you do, fuck you.
I’d pretend I was asleep so I didn’t have to pray the Rosary. I’d ditch the masses my Catholic high school forced everyone to go to (and got caught once hiding in Andy’s car). One time I even stole a Bible and burned it.
But these days, I’m very far past my emotionally charged rebellion. My expressions of disbelief have turned into playfulness. I have this running joke with my younger siblings that I’m the devil incarnate. So when we go to mass, sometimes they sneak over to the holy water, dip their hands, and press their fingers firmly into my skin.
TSSSSSS!!!!
I jolt away in pain, garble my voice, do my best exorcist impression, and they laugh. Keep in mind we’re in church. The devout surround us, and I imagine, feel sorry for us. And it’s not like I’m forcing myself to not care about how the irreverence comes off. I simply don’t know how to care.
But I do care enough to even attend mass with my family, to pray the Rosary with them to this day, even though they all know I don’t believe. If there’s a Hell, I definitely have a spot there, but my Hail Mary count increases nonetheless. I go through the motions because it makes my mother happy, and I owe her that.
In mass, I look around at the sea of solemn expressions and actually can’t fathom how people pray so earnestly. I can see it in their eyes. Comfort. Gratitude. Regret. Guilt. And I’m thumb-warring my little brother.
I trivialize religion with my little siblings because they’re young and I don’t think they need it. Sometimes people live lives that make it better for them to find comfort in believing they’re in God’s hands. That it’s all ok and it gets better. And I’m not suggesting all religious people need a god to psychologically compensate for their shitty experiences. Some would simply rather view the world as a good world with a good god.
I’m cool with that.
But what I’m not cool with is institutionalized indoctrination. I think it’s morally incorrect to raise people with belief. If a child goes through life, reads about different religions, thinks about it, and organically reasons they should believe in something, then sure. Let it be. They decided themselves. But I think my siblings have been wronged. People tried to decide their life philosophy for them, before they could even think, so I feel a moral obligation to counter that.
Children ought to understand the world without dogma obstructing their scientific method, even if that dogma may have tangible benefits, like loving one’s neighbor, donating to the poor, hating gays, wait what…
By the way, I’m not asserting that the Judeo-Christian god, or any god for that matter, isn’t real. There’s just no compelling reason for me to believe there are gods that can be described by humans. So I won’t until I find that reason.
But I do entertain the notion that there’s more to existence than meets the eye. That there are properties of the universe that cannot be explained by our science, no matter how far it takes us. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, right Kate? I have a hunch there’s some kind of mystical stuff intrinsic to the universe, but I’m hesitant to attach that to a deity, or to claim to know its properties.
Ultimately, to decide that there is or isn’t a higher power is to forfeit some of your wonder about the universe. No way. I want all of the wonder. There’s such poetic beauty in not knowing, because it brings us all together in the end.
P.S. I’m God.
P.P.S. I mean, so are you, but not really. Because I am.
