Pride

Almost a year ago, on this blog, I asked myself why I wanted to find God. I said that my life wasn't perfect, but it was pretty great, and that I already knew how to lead a good life even without God. I've often thought that if I was more unhappy, that if I needed God more, I'd have much less trouble finding him. Last night, I finally realized that I've been looking at things all wrong.

For the last four months or so, I've been attending a new church and a growth group (basically a Bible study). It's been a completely new experience for me, but I can't express how much the new friends I've made there have helped me on this spiritual journey. On Sunday, the pastor spoke about running towards Jesus, not happiness or holiness. I didn't quite understand what he was talking about until it was explained at my growth group last night: when you run toward holiness, you get the false impression that you can accomplish holiness through your own work. It's a false belief because you can't accomplish that yourself. Through Jesus flows everything else that is good. Basically, you can do all the good deeds you want, but it's still meaningless if you're missing Jesus.

I realized that my pride is what has been getting in the way. I thought that I could figure out how to be holy on my own and that if I did that, I would find God when the opposite is true. Once I find Jesus, the rest will fall in place.

It's a difficult for me to grasp that pride is what I need to let go of. My concept of self-worth has always been shaky at best. As a geeky, gawky girl who was used to being bullied and publicly humiliated, I grew up always thinking I wasn't pretty enough or interesting enough or strong enough or smart enough. I've spent a lifetime trying to build up my self-esteem. It's hard to accept that no matter how many self-help books I read or how many plans I devise to make myself better, I will never be able to truly achieve happiness and holiness on my own. I need God.

But then again, I suppose I should feel relieved. Doesn't the Bible say that Jesus will bear the yoke for you (hey, I've only been reading it recently--I can't quote it yet, so I'm just going to have to make do with paraphrasing)? I won't have to constantly work on improving myself because Jesus will do that for me. I won't have to do it on my own any more. As the pastor said, "In Jesus alone, but not alone in Jesus."  

Why seek God at all?

My husband is agnostic. He believes that people have souls and that there is a creator of some sort, but that he doesn't know what form that creator takes. So, in a sense he has more faith than I do at this point in my journey. Where we differ, though, is that he has no interest in pursuing the issue any further. About a month ago, I told my husband that I really wanted to start believing in God and that I was trying to figure out how. My husband responded with, "why?" He said that if God exists, he does whether I believe in him or not, so why not just live my life?

My husband is a great man and in a lot of ways, I'd say he's a much better person than I am. He is honest to a fault (I don't even ask him how I look unless I'm prepared to get the answer), generous, and kind. He has a great moral compass, and always does what he feels is right no matter what it costs him and even if no one is watching. If God is a loving and forgiving God, then I can't believe that God will send good people like my husband to hell just because they don't believe in him, so my search for faith isn't about finding a way to heaven.

And really, I don't think my day to day existence will change much if I did find my faith. I already try to live a good life. I also have the luxury of going into this search married and in my mid-30s. Perhaps in my college days God might have put a hamper on some of my activities, but I'm much past all of that now. I don't need religion to tell me how to live a good, wholesome life.

I also don't need a magical wish dispenser (although I have to say having one would be nice). I'm actually at a time in my life when I have everything I've ever wanted in life. I have a wonderful family with a loving husband and two perfect children. I have great supportive extended family and friends. I have a good job that I enjoy. I have a beautiful home, and we can afford to do some fun things now and then. It's not a material need that I'm lacking.

I think the thing that I most envy in faithful people is their FAITH. They believe that there is always someone watching over them. When things don't go as THEY planned, they believe that things must be going according to some greater plan. I can see how that would add so much peace to life. There would always be someone else to turn to, to take the responsibility. What a relief that must be. Of course, that's also the scariest prospect of faith for me. I don't like the thought of losing control of my own life. I'm an American, after all. We're taught that freedom is the most important right. But I suppose if God really is in control, does it really matter what I believe? He'll still be in control either way, but I don't get the added benefit of the peace that might bring me if I don't believe.

So, I suppose what Steve says is true. If God does exist, my belief in him does nothing to change God. It only changes me.

Humility

I hear a lot of atheists say that God was a creation of man to make himself feel better about death, that only simple-minded people believe in God. I was mulling this over when I remembered an anthropology class I took once in college. The professor said that man's belief in gods was a sign of human evolution. The fact that man could believe in something so abstract was a sign that his mind was progressing, that he could think at higher levels. And it occurred to me that maybe I was getting things backwards. When my sons were very little, things that were out of sight were out of mind. Peek-a-boo was fun because when you hid something, they literally thought it was gone. You were a magician when you removed the blanket from their toy and made it reappear. Children can only grasp things that are concrete. It is the more developed mind that can grasp the abstract. And so maybe the people who can believe in God even though they can't see him or hear him or feel him are the more intelligent ones.

So, I'm starting to realize I need to approach my search for God with more humility. I am not smarter than the billions of people throughout history who have had faith. Some of the most brilliant people to have ever walked this earth believed in God, and even on my most delusional day, I can't claim to come even near to their intelligence. So, I've realized I need to approach my search with both an open heart and an open mind.

After my last blog post, I resolved to start going to mass every week again. I figured that even if I thought I wasn't going to get anything out of it, I needed to at least give it a chance. I hate missing out on the family time since my husband still won't go with me, but I think it's actually good for our family. It gives Steve an hour to himself (I take the kids with me), and I find the hour sitting in church peaceful if not that enlightening yet. 

I also picked up a copy of the Bible after church a couple weeks ago. When I had asked my friend about how to find God, she told me that one of the first places to start was to read the Bible. I had mentioned that I had been reading some articles on religion, but she likened that to reading only Star Trek fan fiction and not watching the actual show (we're both nerds like that). I realized that I had never actually read the Bible except for the readings at church, so, like I said, I picked up a copy. She had recommended starting with the New Testament, so I did. So far, it's much more interesting than I had thought it would be, and I was reminded as to why I always preferred the New Testament to the Old. I always liked Jesus' message of love and forgiveness. 

I'm also starting to wonder if maybe God is already starting to try to reveal himself to me. You might notice that there is a bit of a gap between my last post and this one. When I started this blog not so long ago, I was really in a phase when I was thinking about religion a lot. I was reading what I could about God, I was asking other people about their belief in God, and the subject was on my mind a lot. But of course, other things come up, and I started to lose focus. I was still reading my Bible and I went to mass, but it certainly wasn't on my mind as much. Then, about a week ago, my family got into a religious debate on our family email list, and it got me focused on thinking about God and religion again. Maybe the fact that I happened to send my son to Catholic school, the fact that I started meeting other Catholic parents there, this debate on my family email list--maybe those things aren't coincidences after all.

I still can't claim that I truly believe in God again just yet, but I'm keeping an open mind and heart.

How do you know God exists?

I said in my last post that I wanted to learn to love God, but actually, I just want to know him first. I said that I think I stopped believing in God at one point in my life, but honestly, I don't know if I ever really believed to begin with. Growing up, God was always a given. The questions were always about where to find God, what kinds of things God could do, what would God want you to do. But no one ever addressed the issue of whether he existed to begin with.

I know the story of "doubting Thomas," who refused to believe that Jesus had come back to life without proof. I also know that the point of the story was to not be like Thomas. Thomas' faith was weak. He had to see to believe. But I just can't help it. I'm a Thomas. I would love to believe that there is an all-powerful being that only wants what is best for me and who will always look over me. Of course, I'd also like to believe that a jolly elf brings gifts to people who have been good all year on Christmas eve. I want all the things that God can do for me. It's just the believing that he exists to begin with that I have the trouble with.

I thought a good place to start would be by researching. I found a great blog called Conversion Diary by a woman who was once an atheist and has since converted to Catholicism. I went back to her very first blog post hoping to see what kind of proof she relied on. Unfortunately, it seems like even then she was ahead of me. Starting her blog, she had already gotten to the point where she could say that she believed in a creator. Of course, she also states that she had been studying the topic for two years, so she did have quite a head start on me.
A few days ago, I had dinner with a friend who had not been born into a religious family like I was but who had "found God" several years ago. I asked her how she knew there was a God, and she answered simply that she had asked God to prove himself to her (ahah! I'm not the only doubting Thomas!). It wasn't the answer I had wanted to hear. I was hoping she'd found some empirical evidence or something. A book or argument that made sense to her. I wanted something concrete that I could grasp.

I was also scared of that answer because in my research I'd come across a book written by atheists who had converted to Catholicism. In reading the reviews of the book, I discovered that many of the authors had experienced dramatic events shortly before their conversions. I don't know exactly what a conversion experience is, but I do know there are two things I don't want. I don't want anything bad to happen, and I don't want any apparitions, especially of the ghostly or scary kind (yes, I admit that while I have trouble believing in God, I have no trouble being scared of ghosts). In fact, I'd rather just avoid any kind of drama all together if I can help it. Luckily, my friend assures me that God tailors it to each individual and his or her needs.

Since then, I've been thinking about asking God for some proof, but I'm still not quite sure I want to do it yet. There are still a few things holding me back that I want to deal with first. But I've certainly been thinking about it a lot.

Lost

This is going to be a difficult post for me.

I grew up in a very devout Catholic family. My mom and her extended family emigrated to the United States in 1975 as part of a wave of refugees at the end of the Vietnam War. They came with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs, so my grandparents would watch all of us kids while our parents were working. My grandfather was especially religious and felt it his duty to make sure all his grandchildren were educated in the teachings of the Church. After our parents dropped us off, we would have breakfast and then start our religious classes. My grandfather would read passages from the Bible, teach us prayers, and discuss what would sometimes be very high theological concepts with us. At night, after the parents came back from work, we would say a family rosary before heading home.

My mom was a former nun who was just short of her final vows before having to be sent away from the convent for treatment when she became ill. She likely would have gone back to the convent had her whole family not fled Vietnam. Instead of fairy tales, my mom would tell my brother and me Bible stories or biographies of saints. When my brother and I reached school age, my parents sent us to Catholic school. Even though my parents still were not making very much money, our religious education was a priority, and they made sacrifices to send us there.

My parents really only had two priorities for us: that we grew up well educated and be good Catholics. So, we didn't really get to participate in a lot of extracurricular activities. I was in the Girl Scouts very briefly. In middle school I joined a junior arm of The Legion of Mary where we would get together with some other middle school-aged kids and pray the rosary, make rosaries, and visit Catholic shut-ins.

I grew up in this kind of Catholic bubble. Until high school, I don't think I'd met very many non-Catholics, and I never considered that Catholics would be perceived any differently from other Christians. I remember being very surprised one day in high school when I was riding the school bus, and somehow the issue of religion came up. I stated very proudly that I was Catholic, and this Baptist girl told me very matter-of-factly that I was going to hell because Catholics weren't saved. Still even through high school, even though I was exposed to a slightly wider range of people, everyone I knew was of one Christian denomination or another.

Even then, though, I think I was starting to get little cracks in my faith. I remember going to youth group retreats and seeing all my friends in tears over how moved they were by the grace of God and thinking, "um yeah...I didn't I felt that." I feel like my "faith" was always in my head and not in my heart. As I was learning more about science and history, religion started to not make sense to me.

When I got to college, I met even more people from different backgrounds. I met my first Jews, atheists, and gays. And they were all good people. I still went to mass on Sundays and joined the Catholic Student Union. I even went on some retreats and was even on a "Team" for one (that's what we called the retreat organizers). More and more though, it just felt like I was going through the motions.

Granted, there were a lot of distractions. I went to college in New Orleans, and its reputation for debauchery is not all-together unfounded. Boys were also starting to pay attention to me for the first time in my life. Perhaps some of my lapses in faith fall more in the category of rationalization. Also, like I said, I was meeting a lot of people with views I hadn't been exposed to before, and a lot of things I had been raised to believe just didn't make sense. Whatever the reason, I was growing further and further away from not only Catholicism but God.

After college, I moved to Tallahassee for law school, and it was pretty much the beginning of the end for me. After the first year or so there, I stopped going to church on Sundays except when my parents were in town (they have no idea about any of this. I still tell them I go to church every Sunday). I just felt like I wasn't getting anything out of it. And one day, I just stopped believing in God. If I ever did to begin with.

When I had children, though, things started to change. I wanted them to believe. I can't really express why, but I do. I feel like there's some inherent benefit to faith that I just can't pinpoint. When my son Cael was old enough for preschool last year, we signed him up for a Catholic school. It kind of happened coincidentally. The school just happens to be close to my work and the sitter that my younger son goes to. But it makes me happy when my son comes home and tells me he's learned a Bible story or a prayer or went on a trip to chapel to see the Eucharist. Maybe it's just because I went through the same things as a kid, and I feel like I'm bonding with my son. But maybe it's more.

The problem is, I just can't get myself to believe. I have the principles and the foundation, but I don't have the faith to go with it. I guess it's kind of like trying to make yourself fall in love with the person who's "good" for you but just not feeling the spark. I've been told that you can learn to love someone, so I'm trying to see if there's a way to learn to love God.