A subject I am reluctant to blog about, since I know how controversial it is, is this. This article, the New Atheism, is very relevant to my life. Over the holidays, some of my sisters discovered I am an athiest (I have not been involved in religion for the past five years, but as the title to this entry hints, I don't exactly shout it from the rooftops). They were very puzzled at how I, who had been a missionary for a fundamental Christian organization in my teens and early twenties, could have "turned my back on God". I chose not to delve into it with them, as they are the two youngest of my sisters and have different memories and interpretations of our family's history, and I wish not to disturb those with any of my reflections.
Over the last few days, I have been thinking over what exactly religion means to me and why I've been so comfortable and happy and at peace with a mode of thinking I never imagined myself embracing.
After I left my parent's fundamental church, I was still a Christian. My thinking was that I just needed to find a church that was a better fit. After visiting a few in my area, I realized that the services, the youth outreach, the congragation was so very, very similar to what I experienced in my parent's church growing up and this made me deeply uncomfortable.
So, maybe I would be Jewish or something. I read about different religions and tried to find one I could believe in. But, by this time, I was deeply involved in my studies and doing a lot of reading on religion, philosophy, etc. I was trying to get to the history of it all so that I could find my place. Instead, what I found was that religion was making less and less sense to me. I was taking a sociology class that did a lot more to dispell the myths of human interaction and consequences than my Bible ever did. I was beginning to become a humanist. Seeing how similar the human condition was throughout time.
I think my religion (being a Christian) made me feel separate from Muslims or atheists or Buddists or, really, anyone who didn't believe like I did. I would befriend those with different beliefs but deep inside, I would still feel that I was better than they, that I possessed a truth they had yet to come to know. And thus, I was better than they in that aspect.
When I shed religion, I began to connect with others in a much more genuine way. If someone I met was gay, I no longer felt superior to them. If someone had an abortion, same thing. I no longer was shocked and horrified but could relate instead to their human condition, the circumstances they found themselves in.
It is very hard for people to understand, but becoming an athiest made a better person. This is why I bristle when someone says, "But you don't believe in ANYTHING??" Not "believing in anything" sounds so hollow, so shallow and immoral. It does not describe my life, which is full of love, goals, family, friends, emotion.
I may come back and re-write this post someday as I do not feel I expressed everything as best as I should.
No comments:
Post a Comment