June 24, 2004

Crisis of Faith

I feel like a ridiculous, brain-washed thing. Perhaps not brain-washed, because I don't really believe, but definitely brain-rinsed.

I refuse to flock to the banner of security that organized religion would offer me. I wear a proud little button on my soul stating simply spiritual, and I am generally contented with that, an amorphous divine presence, a power that is neither overtly concerned with human affairs but nor is it removed too far from them.

I don't want a God of Judgment, but not because I don't feel I ought to be judged. I want a real spirit, something outside the comprehension of the human mind which can not be labeled or named or given a face, a male face.

How can white men expect an entire half of the Caucasian race to follow a lie claiming God was created in their image?

If God is the father, who is the mother?

What of black men and women? Persons of Asian origin? Is God like them, too, in some small part, but man has decreed that he prefers his white, male face? Isn't it convenient that he bestowed them with power and authority not over all of nature, but over peoples of colour, and women, whom they have deemed throughout history to be under their dominion?

Would things be different if God had been overtly female?

I just can't believe it, and I don't want to. I don't want to go to hell for premarital sex, and swearing, and lying to my parents about a trip to the movies when I was 14. Nor do I want to confess these things, which I do not consider sinful, and get a clean slate through some sort of religious back door. It just sounds like scam, to me.

As though, it doesn't matter what kind of person you are, just so long as you are Christian, and claim to follow their moral code, which too often tend to apply only to other people.

I don't believe in hell. But there is a small voice in the back of my head, muffled but terrified, screaming, yes, yes, but we don't want to go there, either!!

Would I be different if I had grown up anywhere else?

I'm so angry that I have this stupid human fear of death, of the afterlife. I don't want to put my faith behind something just to save my soul. I want to believe because it's right, and true, and I don't think I'll ever have that kind of faith in anything.

astera at 12:25 p.m.

previous | next