It's A Long Hard Road Out of Heavan
(continued)
Finding Peace
When we last left our hero, his faith was strong, but he was starting to question things. I had found that I couldn’t go to church, because it seemed that everytime I set foot in church I found myself in disagreement with those around me and that left me confused, at that point I didn’t understand my need for church because rather than clearing my head it just seemed to muddy the waters. So I gave up on church, I stayed home, read the Bible and prayed. I thought maybe I could have my own personal relationship with God. I thought I could stay in my little bubble and be untouched by the rest of the world, but alas that was not possible, after all I am a member of the human race, and we are social creatures.
I am a logical person, some would say a slave to logic, things have to make sense to me. I need to understand. It was apparent to me that there was something wrong with my interpretation of God and other peoples. I just couldn’t understand how God could hate gays, I couldn’t understand why God wanted us to execute people, I couldn’t understand why God would send a Buddhist to hell just for believing what he had been taught as truth his whole life. But that is what I was told by other Christians. That was apparently the God I had been praying to. Well, I realized I couldn’t pray to that God anymore, I didn’t like that God, but then again I wasn’t praying to that God anyway. When I prayed and asked God the things that were in my heart, I got the answers that I truly believed to be true.
I have always been a logical person, I have always thought about things deeply, but it has only been over the last few years that I have really started to evaluated things. To do that I had to be willing to look at everything in my life and take nothing for granted. I had spent most of my life believing there was God, even during my late teen years when I didn’t precisely believe in a Christian God, I still believe the heavens was occupied by some being. Now this is the most important part of this right here, this is the logic that kept my faith for years. Now matter where the human race and Earth came from it had to begin somewhere. Somewhere at sometime there was nothing, then there was something. So logically to me Somebody, namely a god, put something there, set something in motion. Because if there is not an eternal being to start this chain of events that begats our creation then we have a paradox friends, the “Who created the Creator” paradox, and that just isn’t logical. This one thing held my faith for years.
Over the next few years of my life I slipped into a kind of deitist view of a god. The more I evaluated and tried to make sense of the world around me the more I felt comfortable with this view. I just can not reconcile what I see in the world with a loving and caring god. A month ago I saw a nine year old boy with Proteus Syndrome on television, this poor child will not live past his twenty-fifth birthday, and the worst part is he will probably wish for death long before it finds him. This is not the act of a loving god. I also came to the realization that other than the creation hang up I have, I can’t find any other evidence of a god. Like I said I am a slave to logic. I just can’t understand the logic of asking for unquestioning faith without undeniable proof. That just doesn’t make sense to me because if God showed me his existence I would bow before him, all I ask for is a little proof. Now let us briefly revisit that night in the Pelican Inn when I was twenty. Did I mention how alone I felt? Or how it scared me? I need someone, and I can’t help, but notice that is when most people find God, when they need him. I needed to feel comforted so on a subconscious level my mind accepted God, as comfort. This is what I believe now, because it makes more sense to me.
Now if anyone would have asked me for years I would have told you I was a deitist, or maybe deitist Christian. Based on the fact that I believe there was a god of some kind just not a god involved with our daily lives. And since I didn’t know the identity of that god, that I would be just as willing to call him God as anything else. But I am beyond that now too.
The hang up for me always was that creation moment. I can’t explain it and logically a creator makes sense there, but I can’t take anything for granted so I have to accept that maybe another logical answer will come that removes a creator from that equation, I just don’t know. I also hung onto some belief because that allowed me to continue to have a belief in the afterlife. Which in the end I believe is the single biggest reason why people every join a religion. On a very deep level people don’t want to believe when they die that is it. My dad once told me an anecdote of a dialogue between a priest and an atheist. The priest says to the atheist, “Let’s say we live out our whole lives and die and your right, What have I lost? But let’s say we die and I am right, What have you lost?” Now this anecdote fed me for some time, because it just didn’t make sense to believe in nothing. But a year or so ago, I realized the answer to this question that the atheist should have said. “You sir would have lost you one chance at life.” Because if I spend my life worshipping and living by a god that doesn’t even feel the need to introduce himself to me and then I die and that’s it, I have wasted my one chance to live. Now if I was happy living under a biblical law then that would be no big deal, but I am not.
So we come to the Brandon Collinsworth of today, the atheist. I just don’t believe there is anything out there. I don’t need a god to give me strength and morals. I have morals and found that if I live by two simple rules everything works out fine. One, treat others as you would want to be treated. Two, always do what is in your best interest and the interest of those you care about as long as it doesn’t interfere with rule one. These two rules give me all I need to lead a happy life. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to piss on anyone’s religion. I think faith can be a good thing. Faith in a god helps people who are having trouble helping themselves, it helps them get off addictions, raise families, do a good job, and all those are good things. The only issues I have with religion are when it makes people feel ashamed as in the case with some homosexual who can’t help who they are attracted to, but are made to feel bad about it anyway. Or in the case where people try to interject their religion into my life or the lives of my children. As in people trying to get prayer into public schools or trying to pass amendments against gay marriage. Each person should decide on there standards themselves and let me make that decision for myself.
One last thing, this is not a cry for help. I don’t want anyone to try and save my soul. I am really not interested in that. I have found peace in my unbelief that I could never find in trying to reconcile what I knew and saw with what I was told. There is no more confusion in me, I am happy to my core. Now like I said I do get frustrated with you Christians, right now there is someone telling my daughter about God, and our oldest girl brought home a bible that was passed out to all the children at school when as she puts it, “Someone came to talk to us about God.” But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you too. We just have to learn to agree to disagree.
(continued)
Finding Peace
When we last left our hero, his faith was strong, but he was starting to question things. I had found that I couldn’t go to church, because it seemed that everytime I set foot in church I found myself in disagreement with those around me and that left me confused, at that point I didn’t understand my need for church because rather than clearing my head it just seemed to muddy the waters. So I gave up on church, I stayed home, read the Bible and prayed. I thought maybe I could have my own personal relationship with God. I thought I could stay in my little bubble and be untouched by the rest of the world, but alas that was not possible, after all I am a member of the human race, and we are social creatures.
I am a logical person, some would say a slave to logic, things have to make sense to me. I need to understand. It was apparent to me that there was something wrong with my interpretation of God and other peoples. I just couldn’t understand how God could hate gays, I couldn’t understand why God wanted us to execute people, I couldn’t understand why God would send a Buddhist to hell just for believing what he had been taught as truth his whole life. But that is what I was told by other Christians. That was apparently the God I had been praying to. Well, I realized I couldn’t pray to that God anymore, I didn’t like that God, but then again I wasn’t praying to that God anyway. When I prayed and asked God the things that were in my heart, I got the answers that I truly believed to be true.
I have always been a logical person, I have always thought about things deeply, but it has only been over the last few years that I have really started to evaluated things. To do that I had to be willing to look at everything in my life and take nothing for granted. I had spent most of my life believing there was God, even during my late teen years when I didn’t precisely believe in a Christian God, I still believe the heavens was occupied by some being. Now this is the most important part of this right here, this is the logic that kept my faith for years. Now matter where the human race and Earth came from it had to begin somewhere. Somewhere at sometime there was nothing, then there was something. So logically to me Somebody, namely a god, put something there, set something in motion. Because if there is not an eternal being to start this chain of events that begats our creation then we have a paradox friends, the “Who created the Creator” paradox, and that just isn’t logical. This one thing held my faith for years.
Over the next few years of my life I slipped into a kind of deitist view of a god. The more I evaluated and tried to make sense of the world around me the more I felt comfortable with this view. I just can not reconcile what I see in the world with a loving and caring god. A month ago I saw a nine year old boy with Proteus Syndrome on television, this poor child will not live past his twenty-fifth birthday, and the worst part is he will probably wish for death long before it finds him. This is not the act of a loving god. I also came to the realization that other than the creation hang up I have, I can’t find any other evidence of a god. Like I said I am a slave to logic. I just can’t understand the logic of asking for unquestioning faith without undeniable proof. That just doesn’t make sense to me because if God showed me his existence I would bow before him, all I ask for is a little proof. Now let us briefly revisit that night in the Pelican Inn when I was twenty. Did I mention how alone I felt? Or how it scared me? I need someone, and I can’t help, but notice that is when most people find God, when they need him. I needed to feel comforted so on a subconscious level my mind accepted God, as comfort. This is what I believe now, because it makes more sense to me.
Now if anyone would have asked me for years I would have told you I was a deitist, or maybe deitist Christian. Based on the fact that I believe there was a god of some kind just not a god involved with our daily lives. And since I didn’t know the identity of that god, that I would be just as willing to call him God as anything else. But I am beyond that now too.
The hang up for me always was that creation moment. I can’t explain it and logically a creator makes sense there, but I can’t take anything for granted so I have to accept that maybe another logical answer will come that removes a creator from that equation, I just don’t know. I also hung onto some belief because that allowed me to continue to have a belief in the afterlife. Which in the end I believe is the single biggest reason why people every join a religion. On a very deep level people don’t want to believe when they die that is it. My dad once told me an anecdote of a dialogue between a priest and an atheist. The priest says to the atheist, “Let’s say we live out our whole lives and die and your right, What have I lost? But let’s say we die and I am right, What have you lost?” Now this anecdote fed me for some time, because it just didn’t make sense to believe in nothing. But a year or so ago, I realized the answer to this question that the atheist should have said. “You sir would have lost you one chance at life.” Because if I spend my life worshipping and living by a god that doesn’t even feel the need to introduce himself to me and then I die and that’s it, I have wasted my one chance to live. Now if I was happy living under a biblical law then that would be no big deal, but I am not.
So we come to the Brandon Collinsworth of today, the atheist. I just don’t believe there is anything out there. I don’t need a god to give me strength and morals. I have morals and found that if I live by two simple rules everything works out fine. One, treat others as you would want to be treated. Two, always do what is in your best interest and the interest of those you care about as long as it doesn’t interfere with rule one. These two rules give me all I need to lead a happy life. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to piss on anyone’s religion. I think faith can be a good thing. Faith in a god helps people who are having trouble helping themselves, it helps them get off addictions, raise families, do a good job, and all those are good things. The only issues I have with religion are when it makes people feel ashamed as in the case with some homosexual who can’t help who they are attracted to, but are made to feel bad about it anyway. Or in the case where people try to interject their religion into my life or the lives of my children. As in people trying to get prayer into public schools or trying to pass amendments against gay marriage. Each person should decide on there standards themselves and let me make that decision for myself.
One last thing, this is not a cry for help. I don’t want anyone to try and save my soul. I am really not interested in that. I have found peace in my unbelief that I could never find in trying to reconcile what I knew and saw with what I was told. There is no more confusion in me, I am happy to my core. Now like I said I do get frustrated with you Christians, right now there is someone telling my daughter about God, and our oldest girl brought home a bible that was passed out to all the children at school when as she puts it, “Someone came to talk to us about God.” But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you too. We just have to learn to agree to disagree.
posted by Brandon Michael Collinsworth at 1:23 PM
2 Comments:
The general trend in many of today’s Christian movements, especially the charismatic/pop spirituality wing (Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, etc.), is to engage in a warped method of theodicy (defending God’s character). This trend is a response to some of the arguments of atheism that you have digested, namely “How could a loving God do this or that?” The problem with these movements is that they misrepresent the Bible in order to appease the atheist, trying to convince him or her that “God isn’t really like that.” I know that they do this because I was a part of this movement for a while, and I still have friends who are immersed in it. I even still catch myself in this knee-jerk position every now and then. The watered-down God that these folks try to sell is not the God of the Bible. I don’t plan on watering Him down. You’ve represented the God of the Bible accurately:
1. “I just couldn’t understand how God could hate gays” At this point the run-of-the-mill Christian would say, “God doesn’t hate the sinner, God hates the sin.” Unfortunately this Christian either has not read or does not take King David seriously in Psalm 5:5 and 11:5. In these verses notice that the direct objects of the verbs are not actions but people. The Bible defines homosexuality as wickedness. If the God of the Bible hates the wicked, then he hates the unrepentant homosexual.
2. “I couldn’t understand why God wanted us to execute people” At this point the Christian will say, “That was the God of the Old Testament; the God of the New Testament is different.” Wrong. The God of the OT and the NT is the same; he doesn’t change (Jam. 1:17). I have deluded myself with the idea that the God of the Bible simply recognized the government as wielders of the sword; however, Rom. 13:4 cleared up this delusion.
3. “I couldn’t understand why God would send a Buddhist to hell just for believing what he had been taught as truth his whole life.” Joel Osteen, the latest bootlegger from Houston, Texas, tried to worm his way out of this one (and other objections to the Christian faith) on Larry King Live a few months ago. John 14:6 is the exclusivity verse that Mr. Osteen was so embarrased of on national TV. Another question worth considering: Why would God send a Palestinian terrorist to hell just for believing what he had been taught as truth his whole life? Hmmmm….
4. “A month ago I saw a nine year old boy with Proteus Syndrome on television, this poor child will not live past his twenty-fifth birthday, and the worst part is he will probably wish for death long before it finds him. This is not the act of a loving god.” Once again, many will say that you are right. They will agree with you and say that the devil did it. They will say that the God of the Bible would never do such a thing. Read Deuteronomy 28 and tell me that.
Unlike many of the atheists on religioustolerance.org and other “freethought” websites, you’ve accurately represented the God of the Bible. Instead of making wild claims based on misunderstandings of the Bible, you’ve rejected the right thing.
Other things that you’re right about:
1. The priest and the atheist: Maybe you should tell your dad that the priest in his story is wrong. Here’s what Paul said regarding this same scenario: “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (2 Cor. 15:19; ESV). If Paul and and other Christians are dedicating their life to a myth, then what have they lost? Well, they’ve lost enough to be pitied. The atheist is right to say, “You sir would have lost your one chance at life.”
2. “Faith in a god helps people who are having trouble helping themselves, it helps them get off addictions, raise families, do a good job, and all those are good things.” You’re a hundred percent right. Faith is indeed a crutch for the weak mind. Those who seek God believe that they are not self-sufficient. They recognize their frailty and seek the help of God.
No one’s worldview is consistent. Through your writing I see a bit of agnosticism mixed in with a little atheism. As you’ve acknowledged, the weakness in your belief is the only evidence of God that you’ve acknowledged (and rejected as true evidence)—the creation. It exists. We exist. Your “I don’t know” regarding this qualifies you as a bit agnostic. Here is where my questions come up: Over the last few months (less than 8 months) you’ve acknowledged the existence of God and you have professed to be a Christian. When you realized that Kim was pregnant, you said something to this effect: “I don’t think God will give me anything that I can’t handle.” Also, during our conversation about prayer in school, you said something to this effect: “I’m a Christian too and I don’t believe that prayer should be in schools.” I have to admit, I was a bit surprised by that comment, for I believed, based on who you seem to be, that you were a Deist of some sort. Atheism seems to be a giant leap of faith for one who acknowledged and professed a religion and a god such a short time ago. Were you bottling up your beliefs and pretending to be someone else? Or have you recently come to these final conclusions about our reality?
I think the easiest way to answer your question is with a small analogy. Telling people that I am an atheist for someone raised by an entire family of southern baptists has to be the equivalent of telling your parents that your gay. In fact, my mother is the only member of my family I have ever told that I am an atheist, and that was in the middle of a heated debate on school prayer. My feelings aren't new and the truth is until about six months or so ago I probably wouldn't have called myself an atheist, I would have said I was either a deitist or agnostic. Which is as much as you have said. And that maybe a more accurate way of describing what I believe. But the biggest part of me truly believes there is nothing out there, that when we die we are just that proverbial candle being snuffed out forever. But I as any logical person have to accept this simple truth as well, I just don't know. So I am willing to re-evalutate my situation with every new piece of evidence that is presented.
Also, to be honest I have put on a false face for different people and you are one of them in this case, when I made the comment after Kimberly was pregnant that was just for show, when I would say it, it seemed to make people happy, it seemed to be what they wanted to hear, so I said it. But I guess if I am truly honest with myself a part of me deep down probably still believed it then too. It is difficult to explain or even for me to sort out myself, because I have always put on this front that didn't jive with what I was feeling deep down. All I know is that over the last six months to year of my life I have met, heard, and seen people who had my similar way of thinking and I felt empowered through them. That feels pretty lame to me, I have always considered myself headstrong, and always thought I was willing to voice my opinions even if they were unpopular, but this one tore away inside me for a while. In some ways that is probably where I found real peace, letting out these feeling and unburdening myself.
In the end, I basically chose to be counted among the atheists. What I found among agnostics is that they didn't really care or think about it too much, I guess that would be a passive agnostic, I did meet some who gave it thought and just couldn't decide, which the truth is that there is just so much at stake and they don't want to be wrong, and that has crippled them from coming to any conclusions. I have not met alot of deitist, and those I have met no two are anywhere near similar some thought the Earth was god itself, some thought that God was a mortal being who might even be dead. In the end the deitist seemed a little squirrelly to me. The atheist I met seemed to share the most in common with me and that is why I count myself among their number. I guess one could say it is a need to belong, but atleast I don't feel crazy anymore for thinking the things I do. Some the atheists are very closed minded and just refuse to accept the thought that they could be wrong and that there could be something out there, but most I have met are similar to me and don't believe there is anything out there because they have evaluated what evidence they have and have reached that conclusion.
I do want to say I am sorry to you and everyone that I have put up a false front for regarding these feelings. I have always said I am an open book, but I have kept these doubts and beliefs to myself for far too long. I have no good excuse for pretending to be something I am not, my only excuse was selfishness. It was simpler than telling everyone who I really was. Also, I was and still am working things out for myself, and have not wanted to let anyone in until I had a firm grasp on what I believed.
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