I will preface this post by saying that this is a personal, subjective reflection of my faith. This is not intended to be academic or dispassionate. I am sharing my private feelings and thoughts.
why I have a home altar
I have a home altar in my bedroom. It sits next to my door. On my altar sits an athame, candles, a rosary, a cast-iron crucifix, a diffuser with frankincense, a crucifixion nail, all carefully nestled around the central object: a framed picture of Jesus, printed on canvas. The crown of thorns on him, his eyes are bloodshot, tears on his cheeks, blood spilling down his forehead, he raises a wounded bloody hand.
I find that I don't believe like I should. I'm supposed to believe. I want to believe. I've put all this work into my shrine, and I don't even know why I did it. I don't know why I bought all these things, it's cost me over $150. I think I thought it would restore something in my spirit, like if I put effort into this it would magically resolve my doubts and I could find faith again. It's a statement of intent, I am telling my deity that I intend to be faithful. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I don't know if my intent means anything at all.
Beyond that, the altar reminds me to pray. I have always believed that, if a monotheistic god exists, prayers will find their way to him. I kneel before the altar every so often, light the candles, get the diffuser going, and pray all kinds of prayers. I pray for the people I love, I pray for myself, I ask for forgiveness for my transgressions. I pray for the healing of the world, I pray for people in need. But I can't help but wonder if it matters at all. If God hears my prayers, is he going to answer them? If he knows my intent before I ever voice it, does it even matter if I pray at all? People have suffered and suffered and suffered throughout all of time, faithful and unfaithful alike.
I find no comfort, but sometimes I feel fear
When I was younger, I found comfort in my faith. I had a "relationship with God", I prayed, I worshiped. As I evolved, I found that my comfort turned into terror. The idea of being vivisected by an omniscient deity at all times, every impulse of my psyche exposed and naked, I found that I couldn't pray anymore. Hebrews 4:13 communicates this well, "Before him no creature is hidden, and all are naked and laid bare before the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account." I couldn't even think about it, or I would feel sick to my stomach.
Now though, I don't know if I feel either of those things. I find no comfort in my faith, and I understand what Marx meant when he said religion is the opiate of the masses. People like Christianity because there's a lot of fluffy comfort stuff. The major prophets, the psalms, it's all big on the fluffy love and peace stuff. But if you read the bible itself, God is responsible for seemingly horrific things, which many people don't focus on, lest they become obsessed with fire and brimstone and hellfire and damnation, like Baptists.
I don't know if I should feel concerned that there is no comfort anymore. Maybe it's a good thing. Comfort, peace, optimism, I have suffered so much that it feels like weakness. Maybe I am supposed to find discomfort from my faith, maybe there's a primitive vitality that is lost when faith becomes too comfortable. But if I truly am going to start to believe these things, isn't this a universal belief? Would I have to impose this on others?
Does anyone deserve comfort? Or am I some exception? Do I even believe anything at all on this topic?
why do I pray?
"Your prayers will find their way to god." I vividly remember that being a quote by Victor Hugo, but I can't seem to find it no matter how much I search for the quote. I view prayer as a statement of loyalty. I don't believe what I should, I don't feel what I should, I don't have the faith I should, but I choose to remain loyal, to pray, to construct an altar, to have four study Bibles. So I get on my knees and pray, sometimes for an hour at a time, but usually for around twenty minutes. I pray pretty much the same thing.
I am terrified of the thought of becoming a person that doesn't pray anymore. I feel like prayer has been an essential part of my identity for so long, and I keep hoping I'll find what I once had, and prayer will feel meaningful again. I am choosing to pray when it feels meaningless. Which sickens me to think about, but yeah, it's whatever I guess.
why I hate church
I refuse to go to church. Every church I have been to, and I've been to probably a dozen, the pastor preaches his own opinions and superstitions as absolute truth. Churches that preach "the Bible alone" proceed to make inference after inference that cannot be justified through scripture. It's pervasive, it's vile, it's sickening. Maybe there's a church out there that fits my ethos or whatever, maybe there's even one nearby, but I feel like my presence would be an act of complacency, supporting brain-rape or whatever.
You can tell I feel very strongly about this. Maybe I've just had outlier experiences.
I was talking with a friend whom I don't care very much about. I've spoken about him in the past in some daylog or another. He asked me why I don't go to church, I told him I don't believe in church, and he monologued for like a full half hour about how Church is good and necessary and proper and blah blah blah. and I'm sitting there like, "dude please just shut up, I already told you I'm not comfortable going to church." This is the same friend that told me he wants a virgin wife that will submit to him, berated me for "putting curses on myself" for saying I'm bad at pool, and told me he doesn't believe in video games or TV because they're distractions from God. He is also somewhat autistic, and I don't mean that as an insult, but it could excaserbate the other facets of his personality that I find insufferable. Pure conjecture.
'catholic guilt'
I find myself still falling into the trap of "catholic guilt". It's strange, the Bible talks about how God loved the world so much, but seems to prescribe a hatred of this world. A hatred for the imperfect and sinful world, and a longing for the next, perfect world. Jesus himself was big on the idea of focusing on the intangible "kingdom of heaven" in substition for focusing on this world.
There seems to be this weird dichotomy between flesh and spirit in Paul's writings. The flesh wants the vile things that are sinful, the spirit wants to be holy. Only in death are we truly freed from the flesh and placed in a perfect body. There's this theological idea of "original sin" -- ever since the fall of man, every human being conceived and born is birthed in a state of sin, because the world is tainted by sin, and thus the flesh, being part of the world, is perpetually and forever tainted by Adam's original sin. I think it's the book of Romans that goes in detail about it, or maybe Ephesians. It's been a long time since I've seriously read, so it gets hazy.
The fundamental principle behind Christianity is that all people are destined for hell, but God is merciful to those who follow him. The Bible even says "those who sin are children of the devil".
I feel such a repulsion to such an ideology, I find it vile, yet it is the ideology I have identified with my entire life. I don't understand how anyone who is serious about Christianity can find both their faith, and hatred of oneself and of the world, to not be inherently and undeniably mutually inclusive according to Christian theology.
Yet I find that even without Christianity, most days I hate myself, most days I hate the world, not because of my religion, but because I have suffered and continue to suffer and will probably always suffer.
I don't believe in biblical infallibility or inerrancy
It's just outright impossible for modern science to be a conspiracy against Christians, and impossible for various facets of science to independently all come to the same conclusion, and I mean completely independently. People debate evolution, but even things such as the age of the universe, the age of the earth, the age of the solar system, microwave decay, cosmic radiation, radial drift, these are all discoveries backed by hard science. One plus one equals two, the universe is billions of years old.
There are too many species in the world to fit on Noah's Ark. As for the Tower of Babel -- languages evolved naturally and this evolution can be traced to specific proto-languages, which themselves can be traced to specific proto-languages. There are no conspiracies intended to disprove them -- our knowledge of the world evolved naturally as mankind has progressed.
But if I don't believe in those myths, what's to keep me from losing belief in Jesus' resurrection? Losing belief in his miracles, in healing, in God's communication with the prophets?
I want to believe in Jesus. I certainly believe in the idea of Jesus -- a man who loved others passionately and intentionally, who endured torment because he loved others, it's an idea I have to believe in to make myself feel anything good about the world. I want to believe. But I don't know how. I don't know if it's possible that I'll ever find this belief back, like I once did.
yet I believe in miracles and miracle healing
I do. I know I should be ashamed of this, I don't know if it's something I should tell anyone about ever unless they already agree with me. But I do believe, I have believed my entire life, and I will always believe in miracles. I believe I have witnessed and personally experienced miracle healings growing up in a charismatic church. Based on personal, lived experience, the evidence for me has been irrefutable.
Donning the hat of the agnostic, I have to ask myself -- does my experience in a charismatic church mean that the miracles necessarily are Christian in origin? Perhaps there is an alternative supernatural force through which these miracles are being performed in a Christian setting. Perhaps another deity alltogether is involved. There is no way to know, there is no way to confirm or deny that these miracles came from Christ. But they took place in a Christian church, under the presumption that the power came from God as Christians conceptualize him. This would seem to insinuate that it was a Christian power that granted these prayers, but this is not necessarily the case; adherents of other traditions that also believe in miracles will themselves have their own explanations.
There is no way to know. I just need to "have faith", something I egregiously lack, either by choice or by disposition or both.
'This is what I choose to believe.'
It's sickening, but this is the conclusion. There is so much I find repulsive about this faith, faith I lack, serious and legitimate doubts. There is not a transcendent reason, some virtue that makes it logical in an ultimate manner. I believe in God because I choose to believe in him. When I was much younger I felt his presence with me, strongly, in prayer and in church. I feel nothing anymore, but I refuse to believe that the presence was just a psychological fluke. And the miracles I have witnessed. There are a multitude of explanations I could seek out. My choice is arbitrary, illogical, and weak, but I will continue to choose, because I have always chosen.
"but passalidae, (x christians) did wrong things and (y christians) believe in this bad thing and blah blah blah so you NEED to be a (z christian)
I could not care less about the whole evangelical/pentecostal or protestant/catholic or any other stupid goddamn line in the sand you want to draw between the "correct" and "incorrect" christians. I agree with none of them, identify with none of them, admire things about all of them. I feel such a strong aversion to the very thought of identifying with any type of Christianity, an acute disdain toward denominational loyalism, you would not believe how common this is.
"Oh our church is super calvinist because reasons and you need to read Calvin oh my god he's sooooo smart dude"
"Protestants have never done any intellectual reading in their lives, if you read Aquinas you would know that Catholicism is the only way blah blah blah."
Meanwhile all the dogmas they seemingly disdain are of equal rational merit to the dogmas they extol. It's just bandwagoning.
but there's so much to read!
Frankly, there's a wealth of spiritual material that I haven't read yet, both Christian and otherwise. I think it would be beneficial for me to at least have knowledge of what these people wrote about. Know their arguments and so forth.
I want to read the prophets, the apocryphal books, the saints. Rabbinical Midrash commentaries on the Torah. The Orthdox Study Bible. The visions of Hildegard von Bingen. The catholic-adjacent witchcraft grimoires like the Keys of Solomon, Daemonologie, etc.
Maybe if I was having manic episodes still I would try the Summa Theologica, but... too much work. I have it on my shelf, it's probably the heaviest book I will ever own in my entire life in terms of physical bulk. Really wished that Aquinas dude didn't die before finishing the book.
"and you call yourself a Christian?"
A lot of Christians would tell me I'm not "christian enough" to call myself one. I don't believe the Bible is infallible, I don't believe the myths actually happened, but I don't agree that those are prerequisites for Christianity. I have chosen to believe in God and pray to him, I have read huge swathes of Christian literature, both theologians and saints. I am comfortable and confident in calling myself a Christian. Prayer is a huge part of my life, and I consider myself loyal to God. That being said, I don't balk at seemingly unchristian ideologies. I have documented my cleromancy in previous writeups.
Ugh. I want to puke from all this introspection. Thanks for reading I guess.