I grew up a Christian. My mother was literally raised with a church in her backyard, and I went to Sunday School until my Nanna died when I was 7. I believed in God.
I’m 24 now and things have changed. I find myself still wanting to believe there is a God out there, much like the God of Christian faith. But I disagree with a lot of the religion itself. I believe in Darwin Theory. In fact, despite her upbringing, my mother had a very intelligent way of answering my childhood questions of evolution theory vs. the Adam/Eve story. She described a blend of the two. That evolution was very real and my science lessons very correct and that the bible had incorrectly portrayed reality. The ‘Seven Days’ of creation were seven ‘God days’ which in our reality were millions of years, and Adam and Eve were not alone in humanity, just a representation of the first of human form as we know it now. My mum taught me to take the Bible with a grain of salt but to live by its fundamental beliefs of goodness and I am so grateful for her wisdom. I was probably only 7 or 8 at the time and I feel for her looking back having to deal with my over active brain so early lol.
So I grew up with this belief and faith and not only was raised to believe, but also was desperate to believe. When you’re a kid you want desperately to be alive, the thought of death and never seeing your loved ones again is terrifying, and the idea of Heaven is a huge reassurance that you will never be forever without Mummy and Daddy and your brother and sister and your pet dog. You are reassured that one day you will see them again and when you do you will never have to let go again. So with that fear, for me, there was never any option but to believe. It was only recently that I realized that this fear was no longer with me. If there is no Heaven, if the end is the end, I can live with that. My lifetime here on earth is enough for me and anything more is a bonus.
Also in the last 10 years I have come to accept some things the Christian faith frowns upon, namely sex before marriage (I’m screwed if that’s a punishable sin, but history tells us it is not), but also homosexuality.
I am not gay. I never will be gay. The first reason was that I was raised to believe it was wrong. But then I grew up and some very dear people to me admitted that they were gay. And it was ok. It was never for a second not ok to me. It was like flicking a switch. With this new found revelation I was still absolute on the fact that I was not even remotely bisexual, but not wanting my sexuality to be based solely on religious predjudice, I kissed a girl…..and I definitely didn’t like it.
So in the last few years I have become less and less religious. Not to be confusing, my childhood, after my Nanna died, was basically free of Church or any practiced religion, but there was a strong belief of God in our house and in me and in our behaviors. But in the last few years that has faded. Sure it has been for all the usual wild reasons of sex, partying and being generally ‘sinful’ as young adults are. But it has also been because as an adult, my childhood questions became more and more reasonable. I believe we evolved from apes, I believe there were dinosaurs, I believe there are aliens and other galaxies and that the universe does not have an edge (a concept which still scares the shit out of me, the vastness and endlessness of space is beyond my mind and I still childishly fear it a bit), I believe that some people are born gay or bi and that’s just that, and if there is a God he wouldn’t want them to repress that….sure they might not fit his original “plan” (as our functioning parts clearly indicate) but I’m sure hes more likely to consider them an evolved version of us that’s just as cool :P. And finally I do believe there is a God. Maybe a few Gods, and that one of them is the Christian version. Maybe hes the main God, maybe hes not, in fact I hope there are other God’s coz the mythological Greek Gods are so cool.
So the question I asked myself today was “Do I fit a particular religion?” (I was watching the Simpsons episode where Lisa turns Buddhist if that tells you anything), and some Googling brought me to this conclusion:
I am an Agnostic Theist (Christian).
What does that mean? According to Wikipedia, agnostic theism is the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. Per theism, an agnostic theist believes that the proposition of at least one deity (God) exists is true, but, per agnosticism, believes that the existence of gods are unknown or inherently unknowable. The agnostic theist may also or alternatively be agnostic regarding the properties of the god they believe in.
It the part in italics, I think, that best explains my view. I believe in a God much in the form of the Christian belief, and I believe in Jesus and in many of the Bible stories I grew up with. But I believe the absolute nature of God, and his requirements of us as people cannot be truly known and can therefore not be followed to the letter as written in the Bible. The Bible was not written by God, but like everything else in the world was written by a bunch of people with different views of events and different motives.
So what do I do? I try to be a good person. I try to be good to people and have their best interests at heart and just to be a happy and fulfilled person in my everyday life. That, I think, is all anyone can do.
