I never took religion seriously, and neither did my parents. I knew they had both grown up religious. My mom and aunt attended Catholic school, and the only stories I remember hearing were about the terrible things the nuns said and did (like telling my 7 year old aunt that she was going to hell). But we never really discussed religion and or talked about God.
When I started making friends, I noticed many of them would go to church. This seemed like a fun thing to do, and I wondered why we never went. I asked my mom about church and God, and her response was one of encouragement. She wanted me to discover my own religious identity. She told me to go to church with my friends, and gave me a bible to look through. I did end up going to church several times, both Catholic and various Christian denominations, but mostly I was just... bored.
Once I knew what "atheist" meant I decided I was one of those. I couldn't ever quite grasp the concept of God; some strange dude sitting in the sky controlling, and listening to, everyone and everything. The older I got, the more passionate I became with my atheism. Religion seemed horrifying to me. How can people believe these stories? How can they deny scientific evidence? I saw the negatives - the hatred and the wars. I couldn't get behind something that has killed so many people over such a long period of time.
I did try, very briefly, in high school to become Wiccan. This was short lived. I never really believed in spells and all of that. It was just fun, and I liked the idea of worshiping the earth. And perhaps a little part of calling myself Wiccan was for shock value. I was a goth-child after all.
Long after high school (and college part 1), I started dabbling in some sort of spirituality. My aunt was interested Buddhism, so I decided to look into it. I loved everything I read. It seemed more of a way to deal with depression rather than a religion. However, the reading was dry, and I never fully committed myself to it. I decided to downgrade my atheist title to agnostic. I wanted to be more spiritual, and being spiritual did not mean I needed to believe in a Christian God.
About two years ago now I started college part 3. My university is a Catholic one, and this scared me a bit. It was required of me to take 2, TWO, religion classes. This seemed pretty terrible. I had this image of a nun, habit and all, standing at the front of the class with a ruler yelling at me for being a horrible, sinner, non-believer. I imagined the battles I would get in to with all the other religious people in my class. I dreaded my religion classes.
As a way to avoid any potentially heated Catholic/Agnostic debates, I tried to take the most liberal sounding religion classes. Someone in one of my psychology classes had recommended taking Death and Dying - as it is helpful for people learning the therapist/social worker trade - so I decided to take it.
As the time to start drew closer I found myself getting excited. I felt ready to learn. My mind started opening to the idea of it because of all the psychology and social work classes I had taken. Religion plays such a great role in many peoples lives, and can be a great coping mechanism. I decided in order for me to be a good therapist/social worker, I needed to learn all I could about religion so I can effectively help people with a variety of religious backgrounds.
Unfortunately, my teacher in Death and Dying was pretty awful. The class was 100% online, and she was not an active teacher. I'm almost positive she set up the course and never looked at it again. We were required to read passages in the Old Testament and then talk about them in a journal. I found this extremely difficult because I was not familiar with the language nor the stories. I would reach out to her to clarify things (many of my journal entries started with, "I did not understand the passage but..."), but she never answered. This was very frustrating because I really wanted to learn something.
My second religion class was absolutely amazing. It was called "Faith, Religion, Theology" which made me nervous at first. I figured this would be the aforementioned nun scenario for sure. But on the first day, I walked into a class with this wonderful older gentlemen who exuded an almost ex-hippie-like demeanor. He was not preachy, in fact we never cracked open a bible. The book we read was called The Power of Myth which is a transcript of a PBS special Joseph Campbell did with Bill Moyers. It covers all religions, how they started, and even likens the various stories between them. The book is cheap, and I highly recommend reading it - religious and non-religious people alike!
I had (have) nothing but admiration for my teacher. He is brilliant, and well traveled. He never told us exactly what he believed, but he did such a fantastic job explaining all the different religions to us. Any question we had, he knew the answer and had a story to share. This is what I was looking for in a religion class.
So last spring, I needed to pick my final classes. After finding my required classes, I had one elective left. I scanned the schedule for interesting classes (read: easy classes). I needed something that wouldn't be too much work, but would still hold my interest. The pickings were slim, but I was happy to find World Religions on the list (with the very same teacher as Faith, Religion, Theology). Now, had this been 10 years ago, I would have cringed at the idea of taking a religion class, never mind an extra religion class. But this is what I picked. And this is the class I'm currently in, and it is fascinating!
I've learned a great deal in just 8 weeks. We studied: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and two small units on Daoism and Confucianism. Many of the religions just flow together. Judaism lead to Christianity, Christianity lead to Islam (believe it or not!), and Hinduism lead to Buddhism. Hinduism is insanely confusing, but interesting. Islam is actually a lot like Judaism and Christianity (it's the extremists that give it a bad name much like any other religion). Buddhism has a billion different sects, does not believe in a God, and pulls a bit from Daoism and Confucianism depending on the region. And, unfortunately, not one of them put women in high regard (even though women play a large role in most of them) - not even my beloved Buddhism.
As you can gather from my opening line, I have not necessarily been swayed, even with all my newly acquired knowledge. However, my thirst for learning religion grows. Instead of looking at religion in a negative way, I'm seeing it in a much more positive light. I see the good it does for so many people. The hatred and the wars are a horrible and unfortunate side effect, but I can finally see and understand why people believe the things they believe. I've even become envious of those who do. I would love to believe, but I can't. It's just not written in my DNA. All I can do is learn, and that is more than enough for me. The fact I'm even wanting to learn is a feat in and of itself.
Another "side effect" of all this knowledge is I've found myself getting angry with Atheists. I've always mostly sided with them, as my beliefs are closer to theirs than they are to religious individuals. However, I've seen atheists be downright mean to people. They berate religious people for believing in what they believe. I can understand this to a point, particularly when a religious person is being pushy, hateful, or ignorant. But in most other scenarios I think it's counterproductive, and frankly hypocritical, for an atheist to make people feel bad for believing what they believe. Yes, some of the stories are completely ridiculous, but if believing those stories isn't hurting anyone then what's the harm? There's no reason to make anyone, regardless of religion, feel bad for believing, and there is also no reason for anyone to push their own personal views on anyone else.
So through all this spiritual discovery, I've created my own ideas. "God" (to me) is the universe... which I suppose makes science my Jesus. I do not believe there is some physical being who decides my fate and the fate of the world. The universe creates us, it kills us, and while some sort of afterlife sounds lovely, I don't believe there is anything after we die. Our energy leaves our body and becomes part of the universe again. I do sometimes "pray" which means I try to send out messages of positivity in hopes good things will happen, but I'm not positive there is any point to doing so other than making myself feel better.
We all want to know why we're here. We want to think we are here for a reason, that our lives have a purpose. Death is terrifying, and we struggle to find a meaning for it, and what lies beyond. Is the Christian God the actual God? Is Islam the right religion? Or is there really nothing and Atheists are the ones on the right track? The fact of the matter is we will never know who is right and who is wrong. There will never be anything definitive telling us what to believe.
If this is the only chance we get, if there is no God and no afterlife, then what we do now is of the utmost importance. Do what makes you happy, but not at the expense of others. Believe in whatever you want to believe in, but never judge another for what they believe. Promote peace and love, and work to extinguish hate. All these things, more so than religion, are the most important practice.
“When you find yourself in one of those mystical/devotional frames of mind or in an emergency and you feel you want to pray, then pray. Don’t ever be ashamed to pray or feel prevented by thinking yourself unworthy in any way. Fact is whatever terrible thing you may have done, praying will always turn your energy around for the better.
Pray to whomever, whatever, and whenever you choose. Pray to the mountain, pray to the ancestors, pray to the Earth, pray to the Tao (but it won’t listen!), pray to the Great Mother, pray to Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, Lakshmi, Siva, pray to the Great Spirit, it makes no difference. Praying is merely a device for realigning the mind, energy, and passion of your local self with the mind, energy and passion of your universal self. When you pray, you are praying to the god or goddess within you. This has an effect on your energy field, which in turn translates into a positive charge that makes something good happen.”
― Stephen Russell, Barefoot Doctor's Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior
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