I think this has been a recurring theme with me, but I honestly feel we are all some how connected. For reasons unfathomable to me, I got into a theological discussion today with non other than my mother. We had coffee, we started talking about our lives, our jobs, money, our worries. She asked me about why I love Charles Dickens, I tried to explain to no avail, then out of all that we started talking about God.
Before I get into the specifics of that conversation a little bit of background is in order. I may have said this earlier but I grew up with a somewhat lackadaisical upbringing on religion. God was never forced on me or my brother while we were growing up, but the whole christian religion was implied for us to follow to the best of our ability. This meant going to church on Sundays when we as a family could all get up early enough not to be late. We weren't a model christian family, but in the end I would say we survived better than the so-called Christians did.
Religion in our family has become a little non-existent, we have a few reminders but it's no longer the occasional ritual it once was. My mother is probably the most religious of all of us, this has to do with the fact that she came from a family where religion was forced on her. One of her sisters married a minister and another one of her sisters plays the piano for her church congregation every Sunday. I could never say my mom was indoctrinated as far into religion as her sisters, and I thank God for it. Ironically my mom's family is also that of my Uncle who converted to Buddhism in later life. My mom still is very spiritual and she does feel guilt about not going to church every Sunday and not leading the normal Christian life as her sisters. I remain philosophical about the whole thing, but I suppose this lead to our conversation we had about religion today.
I like talking to my mom sometimes about religion because she has a very open mind when it comes to those things, and I sense she wants to understand more than she may know. I'm no theologian myself, I've pretty much adopted my own religion over the years after some personal experiences, but basically my mom asked me a question she never quite asked before. "What do you think about God"?
One of the things I love is philosophy, because through philosophy you get to ask questions, and the great thing about these questions is they can all have different answers considering who is answering them. I'm still a young person, my perceptions of life change with every new experience I encounter, I can't say what kind of a man I will be when I'm 90 years old, I like to think I have an idea, but today at 29 I am a very different person than who I thought I would be when I was 10. Much of this has to do with my idea of God.
Do I believe in God? That is a very interesting question. There are people who do believe in God, the one preached about in church, the one we are told to follow, the one who is in the bible, is this the right God? This I'm not sure. I look at the God from the Old Testament and then I look at the God from The New Testament, to me they are two completely different entities yet they come from the same book. We are told they are the same being, the difference is one is very vengeful and the other is very forgiving. "For God So Loved The World he gave his only son", is this the same God who loved the world so much, he decided to flood it in order to wipe away all the evil? The flood came first, then he decided to sacrifice his only son for it, how that for a mixed message?
I remember as a kid I had these kinds of questions all the time, I would ask a Youth councillor from our church. They usually took me out for ice cream probably to soften me up, but I was always skeptical about what was in the bible compared to what was in real life. One thing that bugged me was how God created animals on one day and then created man the next. Now if dinosaurs are considered animals, and they came over 65 million years before mankind, how could you count that as one day? The reason I got from this is in God's universe, to him one day is like a million years or something like that, at the time, that was good enough to swallow. Of course in Christianity we are asked to take a lot of things on faith, in fact that is what religion is all about: faith, to believe in something that has no proof, I get that, I truly do, and I think that's a wonderful thing, it's the physical versus the metaphysical. I don't think there is anything wrong with faith, just like I don't think there is anything wrong with questioning it. Where was I? Oh yes, how do I feel about God?
I have been asked many times about my views on God, does he exist, doesn't he, I don't have the answer, and many people tell me I should have the answer, either he exists for me or he doesn't. Here's what it comes down to, I believe, I believe in something, I don't believe in nothing, therefore in that way I am not an atheist, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. What I love to do is trying to know the unknowable, trying to find the mysteries of the universe, what's the meaning of life, why are we here. We aren't meant to know the answer but I think it's worthwhile to pursue the question, it's what keeps us learning, and if we stop learning, then there really isn't any point to anything.
Okay let's get back on topic, because I feel I've rambled on and on about nothing in particular. For me the God that is preached in Sunday schools, in churches, in cathedrals, by the Bishops, The Pope, The President, and the media, that God has been diluted, bastardized if you will into something that no longer exists for me. What does exist for me is something that is intangible, that no one can see, perhaps even fathom. Is this a spirit, a ghost, a living being, an entity? I don't know what it is, does it keep order in the universe, I'm also not sure, but for me there has to be something more than what I see with my own eyes, I can't say it's a presence that has presented itself to me in some spiritual way, call it a feeling, or an intuition, call it whatever you like. It's a possibility, it's a certain kind of faith.
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