Keeping "Faith" to a Minimum

When you say the word "god" to somebody like me, you might get a look like a deer in headlights. I can't relate. But it wasn't always that way. I was raised by two people who were both pastors. I was the oldest of 4 kids all raised almost literally within the walls of the church. So it made sense for me to also be in the faith of my parents because that's all I knew. But there was something in me that always questioned it.

Now as an adult I'm the only person in my family who can call themselves a transcendentalist which is by my meaning, someone who believes in mystery and that it is perfectly fine that life remains one. Apposing this notion of course is my upbringing where the whole essence of the Christian system is to acknowledge yourself as a soul not bound by this life and to "know" beyond any doubt your destiny in the after-life.

Now when I look at my family there isn't a single member who doesn't somehow subscribe to the faith in one way or the other. I'm the only one who doesn't. For the longest time I thought there might be something wrong with me. Why has it been only me in my entire family and extended family who couldn't get with the program?

Maybe it was because I was religiously abused. I've read about this. The idea that when you are bombarded from birth with a god who frowns on you for most any humanly impulsive proclivity, then, rather than the normal guidance parents are supposed to provide, their instruction is heavily weighted by this eternal being who will crush you in life and throughout eternity.

My parents believed in the rapture which meant that Christ might return at any moment "like a thief in the night" and that he would come out of the skies to take home his believers. If even the most devout Christians were to have a sinful thought at that moment they would be left behind. One day when I was 13 I came home from school and my parent's cars were in the driveway, the front door to the house was unlocked and my family was gone. No parents, no little brother or sisters. Nobody. I thought I missed the rapture. Turns out they were at the house next door checking out their new pool.

Yeah that's probably abuse.

But my sibs and cousins were all dealt with with the same draconian ideas so again...why only me?

I've since come to realize what a gift all of my questioning has been. I've gone on to study comparative religion and I work in music, art and film making. I'm also the only one in my entire family who has done that too. So I can't help but think that it is somehow rapped up in my love of art and beauty and our own sublime humaness that we share in the world. And that same idea of god is right here. In us. While the gray bearded man in the sky works for a lot of people I think he's quite imaginary and needs to be destroyed. Not with tanks and bombs but with a simple poof of an ideal that really needs to vanish from our thinking so we as humans can get down to the business of loving and living together. There is no hereafter. It all happens now.

People who want to believe in god see what I'm saying as being bleak and hopeless. I think it's exactly the opposite. The greatest hope is that we learn to live our lives being mindful of our friends, reducing our enemies, not fighting wars and accept mortality as a natural and wonderful thing. There is no greater morality than the caring for our fellow person and our planet. While that notion of living forever seems nice for the ego it seems very counter intuitive to the whole "selfless" idea of religion doesn't it? I think so.

The reason my skin crawls when religion becomes the go to, particularly with younger people is that once again, we can't seem to evolve away from this notion. This superstition. It will never cease to be problematic.