Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
When I was younger, I used to be a lot more spiritual than I am now. I don't think I ever truly called myself a Christian, but I was always taught that God exists and is always there. I don't recall ever being taught to fear God, however. I once went to a blind Christian camp and they basically enforced the idea that God loves us and wants us to be with him. Basically a very simple version of Christianity. They probably hoped that we would study more on our own after we went home.
As time went on, I got interested in things like energy work, magic, crystals, and the concept of the Force from Star wars. I didn't think too much about whether or not there was a god. I just believed what made sense to me at the time.
Everything's made of energy? Okay, why not? Science pretty much says everything is made of the same stuff anyway.
Crystals affecting your energy body with their vibrations? No real scientific evidence for it, but why not? Apparently everything vibrates, and maybe crystals do vibrate in specific ways that can affect people somehow. Who can say for sure?
Magic? Hmm. Maybe not like the magic in fiction, but why not? To this day I do wonder what the real limits are if magic truly exists. It's always fun to speculate anyway.
Psychic abilities such as telepathy, psychokinesis, etc. Again, no real evidence, but why not? We don't know everything about everything, so maybe it's possible.
The Force is what makes the most sense to me. The Force in the real world shares some aspects with the Force depicted in Star Wars, and it's actually not a new concept. Lucas didn't just invent it out of thing air. I suppose one could say that anything involving energy work is all the same thing, and we can just call it the Force. Life gives off energy. Heck, even non-living things give off some sort of energy. All that energy is all around us, and maybe it somehow connects everything. It also sort of answers the question of what happens to us when we die. We become one with the Force. Whether there's consciousness after death is something else entirely. Now whether or not that energy can be used to affect the physical world similar to the Jedi in star Wars, I don't know for sure.
So, what changed? That's simple. Someone tried converting me to Christianity. We had many debates/arguments, and I will admit that I was afraid at one point. Afraid because God, for one reason or another, absolutely forbids anyone to use magic or anything else that doesn't come from him. If you don't follow him, if you don't repent, if you do things like practice magic, you go to hell where you will burn for all of time and then some simply because you dare to defy him. There are also no marshmallows to roast. It was quite psychologically distressing.
At some point, I concluded that this is extremely unreasonable, and that God couldn't be how he's depicted by Christianity. God must be extremely misrepresented. Who in their right mind would be such a jerk all while claiming that they love everyone? Sounds like a bit of an abusive relationship to me. Do as I say, or burn forever when you die! Oh but wait. We're all saved as long as we accept that Christ died on the cross for our sins, because that really makes sense. Especially when you consider that he was brought back in a few days, and that he's really part of a trinity/God himself. So God sent himself down an died so we could be saved from his judgement, when all he really had to do was just forgive everyone. Right then. Sorry. Makes absolutely zero sense in the real world. It's an interesting story though, and if people want to believe it, that's cool. No judgement here.
Add to that that there are so many demoninations of Christianity, all telling us that they have the monopoly on truth. We can't even all agree how to worship this god of ours. Some churches even use different versions of the Bible. But wait, there's more! There are classes one can take that teach how the Bible's supposed to be interpreted based on the original Hebrew, because apparently the English translation isn't understandable enough and we need help. How the heck does this even make any sense at all? Why wouldn't the Bible just been innately understandable by believers in the first place? God supposedly wants people to come to him. Why make it extra difficult? Oh. Right. Satan. Of course. Has to be.
There's more, but this is getting long as it is. Suffice it to say that if this kind of thing is what keeps people going and gives them hope, great. Sometimes it does inspire people to be better people. Sometimes lives really are turned around. I've seen it happen. Whether it was the holy Spirit or just their own desire to change, I can't say for sure. But so much of it makes no sense to me.
So after realizing all this, it came to me. If I'm sitting here saying that God can't possibly be real as far as Christianity goes, then how can I possibly also sit here and say that anything else supernatural or metaphysical is real? How can magic be real? How can psychic abilities exist? Is everything I ever believed just fantasy? Was I really using the Force in some way in the past, or was it just me being more aware of my natural senses and kidding myself that it was something special?
To this day I've never really fully recovered from it. Oh sure, I'm still interested in things and still have a ton of information I've collected over the years, but I don't work with crystals anymore. I don't work with energy anymore. If I ever did have any sort of psychic abilities, I've subconsciously shut them off and I don't know how to turn them back on. I don't know how to remove this obvious mental block I seemed to have put on myself. All I know for sure is that the universe and I exist.
So, does God exist? I don't know. Part of me wishes he did. I wish he could just talk to me like he used to talk to people in the Old Testament. I wish I could just talk to him like I would any person and ask that things be explained directly from him and not by other flawed humans like myself. Okay, I admit that then it wouldn't be a belief based on faith, but why in the name of cheese does it have to be faith based and not reality based? What the heck is the point? *sigh*
Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, as they say.
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