Belief

Belief is a difficult subject. It is so personal and individual that I don’t much like talking about what I specifically believe in. Truth be told, I don’t believe in much. I don’t believe life has a greater purpose beyond the continuation of life itself. Individuals give greater meaning to their own lives. They can strive to achieve loftier goals, to help others, to build something lasting; but that is a choice that they make.

I often find myself amused, thinking about humanity. Viewed from the outside we’re a highly impractical species. We have no fur to keep us warm. Our teeth are not sharp enough to rend flesh, nor are our jaws strong enough to snap bone. Our eyesight is nothing remarkable, neither are our other senses. We cannot run with any great speed. Without our brains and our ability to make tools to aid in our survival humanity would have died out long ago. Given our survival against the odds, I am not surprised that many believe that we are watched over by something or someone greater than ourselves. It is a beautiful belief, one I respect very much. In fact, there are times when I wish I could believe in God. But I don’t.

I was raised in a Uniterian Universalist tradition. In my early days, I was exposed not only to the Bible, but to Buddhist ideas, the myths of ancient Greece and Egypt, and the legends of the Hopi and Navajo people. To me they were all stories. Beautiful, fantastic stories that some people believed were true and I could chose to believe in if I wanted to.

There is a strong streak of logic in me. I knew that the stories of the Greek and Egyptian gods were nothing more than stories told by ancient people to explain aspects of the world they couldn’t comprehend. And reading the Bible for the first time, I filed it under the same category as those ancient myths. I knew people believed the stories of Moses and Joseph and Jesus, but I could not – and still cannot – believe in them. And believe me, I have tried.

When I was eight years old, we moved from Colorado to Missouri. It was my first exposure to true Christianity. There were no UUs in Kirksville, MO. The closest UU church was an hour and a half away. No one knew what a Unitarian was when I told them that was my religion. And that was another thing – in Missouri, one of the first questions out of people’s mouths was, “what church do you go to?” At first it was a complete and utter shock. In Colorado, religion was a private matter. You could talk about it with your friends, but it didn’t do to pry into a stranger’s privately held beliefs. It felt like the equivalent of somebody coming up and asking, “so, what color underwear are you wearing?”

When asked what church I went to, at first I told people I didn’t go to church and that my family wasn’t Christian. I didn’t think they would care or that it would matter. I was wrong. The children didn’t care. They played with me, invited me to sleepovers. But the parents were a different matter. Some of them forbade their children from playing with me once they learned I was a heathen. They were never mean about it. It was subtle, insidious. I didn’t notice what was going on until long after it was done and kids I had thought were my friends stopped inviting me to do things with them. I don’t know if I will ever be able to fully express how much that hurt me.

I was just a little girl. I didn’t understand why it should matter that I didn’t believe exactly what they believed. I was good wasn’t I? I didn’t steal or cheat or talk with my mouthful. I said “please” and “thank you” and “yes, sir” and “no ma’am.” There were worse little girls than me – Christian little girls – and they weren’t left out of birthday parties. So, I tried to believe. I read my Bible. I went to church with friends when they invited me. I listened when they talked to me about God and about Jesus and the prophets. I tried to learn what it meant to be a good Christian. The only conclusion I came to was that nowhere in the Bible did it say anything about ostracizing little girls because they didn’t go to church.

I was angry about that for a long time. I can still feel that rage deep in my belly if I dig for it. I was angry at God for giving people an excuse to be mean. I was angry at Christians for being mean, for judging me based on my religion instead of on the way I acted towards my fellow humans. I was angry with them for disregarding and disrespecting my beliefs when I had tried so hard to be understanding and respecting of theirs. They never tried to understand me.

I think I will always, in some way, be that distraught little girl who doesn’t understand why people are being so mean to her, who doesn’t understand what she did wrong. And that, I think, is the crux of why I cannot believe in a Christian God. The Bible says he is both vengeful and loving, but why would a loving God wreak his vengeance on an eight-year-old who had never sinned beyond to lie about having brushed her teeth before bed. Why would He turn a town against her?

Thank you for reading. I hope you do not judge me too harshly for my telling my truth.