Living On The Other Side of Faith
There are days when I believe in God. Well, I take that back. There are days when I want to believe in God. Maybe it’s nostalgia. I notice it most after I spend some time visiting with friends who are very passionate about their faith. I listen to them talk about God, and what God is doing, and how things are going at church, and part of me wants so badly to be present in that moment with them. But I still feel like I’m way over here and they’re way over there. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I don’t guess it matters. The point is that I feel so disconnected from that world that I might as well be listening to somebody tell me stories about princesses with magical hair, or toys coming to life. I wonder at such tales, and I appreciate them, but I don’t believe that they’re real. Why would I even try to?
I don’t think that I could point out for you one specific day when I stopped believing in God. My guess is that is happened in much the same way that the Mississippi River flooded the Mississippi Delta in 1927. There had been a mighty levee put in place to avert and fend off such disasters, but small breaches in that levee began to appear; breaches that were so small that no one even noticed them. A little bit of water puddled up here and there. No problem. But those breaches continued to multiply and expand until that mighty levee could no longer hold the mighty Mississippi back. The levee gave way, the river escaped, and the rest is history. The result was a catastrophic flood. And it’s funny how, if I’m being completely honest, the erosion of my faith has felt catastrophic. It’s not what I wanted to happen. But I guess you can only pick and prod at something for so long before it crumbles in front of you.
Ten years ago, I felt like so many churches were missing the point. I felt like I was on the cutting edge of theological innovation. I was reading books by Donald Miller and Rob Bell. I was becoming more and more courageous. What I mean by courageous is that I was becoming less and less afraid of questioning seemingly-foundational aspects of my faith. It was always easy to see that Christians were a hypocritical bunch. I had been one my whole life. A lot of people have walked away from their faith because of that, but I understood it, and accepted the fact that I wasn’t any better than anybody else. This was never hard for me to grasp.
But what became hard for me to grasp and understand is the idea that God, who is all-loving, who is telling us to live our lives by the Golden Rule, who is telling us to love our enemies, and to forgive others (so that he might forgive us) would send a person to a place of fiery, conscious torment for all of eternity because they failed to check every box, or satisfy a list of requirement, no matter how small.
Treat others like you would want them to treat you. Except that I will be tormenting and torturing some of you forever, for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because you didn’t tell me how great I am, or stop masturbating. — God
If you’re a Calvinist, this subject becomes even more terrifying.
You see, I can get over the fact that things in the Old Testament are contradictory, or historically/scientifically inaccurate. I can get over the fact that some of the stories in the Bible are the same stories shared by other religions, only with different characters. I can even get over the fact that believing in God just doesn’t make sense in any tangible way most days. But I have never been able to get over the concept of Hell. I have never been able to truly reconcile the image of an all-loving God that many of my peers (and myself, for many years) would purport to be true, with the stinging reality of a literal Hell, where people are tortured for all of eternity for any reason.
I have also found myself watching the act of ‘church’ over the past few years or so through the lens of a guy who knows how it works, and is admittedly cynical to the core regarding it. I can see how the people on the stage try to emotionally manipulate the people who are watching from the seats. I know all about assimilation strategies. I know that the goal is to have as many butts in the seats as possible, because butts in the seats will usually lead to more money in the offering plates. I know that just about every pastor/preacher that I know is mostly worshiping themselves when they’re up on the stage. They’d be offended if they read this, but it is what it is. I’ve been on the stage in front of the church hundreds of times. I’ve been that guy. I know how it all works, and it has begun to offend me in a deep and profound way. More and more each day. Like I said, I’m very cynical regarding this, but I also feel like I have a lot of good reasons to be.
I’ve also dabbled in what some would call Progressive Christianity. I appreciate what it’s trying to accomplish, but I don’t really understand it. The liberal way in which many folks in this camp pick and choose what they’re going to believe or not believe makes me very uncomfortable. It always comes off as more of a basic Humanist belief system, which is fine. I guess I just feel like you have to believe a few basic Christian things if you’re going to call yourself a Christian.
Enough about all of that, though.
What I want to talk about now is the aftermath in which I find myself muddling through at the moment.
What happens after everything that you believe falls apart?
What happens when you’re trying to get back to ‘square one,’ and realize that you don’t even know where ‘square one’ is?
I have friends whose faith has been pushed to the brink, who have asked themselves the question, “What happens when God dies?” and while I mostly appreciate that approach, I feel like those conversations are always sprinkled with a healthy dose of hope and optimism for a faith that has been misplaced or mishandled. I have to be honest. I don’t have much hope or optimism left, and while I’m trying to tackle this subject with as little cynicism as possible, I’m mostly just ready to move on and take the next step in my journey.
I know that I don’t have a lot of regular readers on here, but I would love it if the few of you who have stumbled upon this essay would humor me by answering one of these two questions:
- You are desperately clinging to your faith.
- What do you do in those moments when it feels like it’s dangling by a thread? What keeps you from walking away?
- You have left your faith behind.
- Where do you go now? Where have you gone? Tell me about life on the other side.
You guys know that I have been wrestling with these thoughts for a very long time. I would even say that I’ve been fighting to believe in God for a good year now. Fighting. But I’m tired, and I’m ready to move into the next phase of my life. If some god finds me there, then so be it. I’m just tired of fighting to make myself believe something that I just don’t believe.
What say you?
