RE: The Fragileness of Faith

In reply to Tim's latest post.

Telling somebody that you have lost faith could mean a million things. Perhaps you've lost faith in the American dollar, or in your favorite basketball team, or in your chances of winning the lottery, or in getting that girl to go out with you. Could be just about anything.

But when all you say is "I've lost my faith," then it's implied that you mean religiously. Or at least philosophically.
And that is, for the most part, just what Tim's post covers.

The biggest issue arises with definition. What exactly does "having" faith even mean? Well, for the purposes of this post--a more in-depth discussion may come up in another post--I'll give a simple meaning. With the presence of faith comes a belief in some form of higher power. Whether that power be the Judeo-Christian God, the many gods of Shinto, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't matter. Whatever cream-cheeses your bagel, really.

Anyway, I think Tim made a great point: faith is of great importance to humans. Nearly a necessity across the board. He approaches this from his struggle with losing a friend and, quite importantly, from a Christian background. And that last part makes a big difference. From what I can tell, he seems a devout believer and so the period of doubt he went through must have shaken him greatly. But, as he mentions, he was able to move past this doubt with the help of friends. And so his struggle for faith was, like most, troubling at the time. For him, luckily it was brief.

For me, however, things didn't go so smoothly.

It was over the span of three months that I lost my faith. For good. All of it beginning with a book titled Ishmael, which we read in my English class junior year of high school.

Actually, no, it began earlier. In the period leading up to reading Ishmael. Since I was born I had been raised a Christian. And for more than seven years my family and I had been attending a Baptist church. It was around this point, after all those years, that I had a great revelation: God was the most important thing in life. His being meant all who believed would go to heaven and live eternally. So I would devote my life to spreading the word and to trying to convert those who would listen. However, things never got to that state. I procrastinated and felt guilty. Adding to the already existent guilt of being a sinner, never living up to the standards that my church preached. Trying harder seemed to do nothing, and after failing in "converting" a friend, I was left disheartened.

And that brings us to Ishmael.

For those of you too lazy to read yet another valuable Wikipedia article, I shall give a quick synopsis (mmm, fun word). A man sees a newspaper ad of a teacher seeking a pupil with "an earnest desire to save the world." From here, the man is lectured to by a telepathic gorilla--Ishmael. And that's about it. The important part, though, is the subjects the lecture covers, things from society to God to many things we take for granted of civilization. While it may not be the most groundbreaking book ever--and while I doubt most would agree with its statements--it is highly thought-provoking. If you know me in the slightest, thought-provoking books are my favorite. So from there I went on to read My Ishmael and The Story of B.

It was Story of B that really got me thinking. The last book of the series that I read--though technically the second in the series--was the one that undid everything I had believed as a child. A character in the book, named B, speaks with our protagonist, Jared Osborne, bringing up simple doubts of the Christian faith. And by the time I finished, laying on the top bunk of one of the bunk beds in my family's cramped cabin on a Norwegian Cruise Line cruise, all I could do was think (actually, I had a lot of time to lay around and think on that vacation). Think and evaluate my faith.

The next couple of months I struggled with myself back and forth. Previously, I had been trying to become a "better" Christian, yet now I found myself questioning even being a Christian. Questioning God's existence, similar to how Tim did. But unlike him, I did not turn back.

This was the most difficult step. Whereas before, I used to pray and talk to God every night while I lay in bed, then I could only say, "What's the point?" And it was troubling. There was that feeling, that need, to look up and know that something was staring back down, watching over everything. I had to know that there was more to life after death. That the good would prevail in the end, the evil punished. That things in life--tumbleweed and déjà vu and goldfish and duct tape and toilet revelations and lightning and love and limericks and packing peanuts--had a meaning. That my existence had a meaning.

And that all of it fit snugly into some sort of grand plan.

This need, this feeling of requirement, slowly subsided in those months. Afterwards I was able to truly take in The Story of B. My way of thinking on the topics of God and religion changed drastically. No longer was God a concrete being whom I prayed to and talked to and knew I would meet after my physical death. No longer were religions--namely Christianity--these infallible bodies of knowledge and authority. Instead, god was an idea. Instead, religions were to be used as guidelines for one's philosophy and theology, readily questioned when conflicts arose.

What remained after all this was me. Slightly jaded yet with a long path of possibility set ahead of me. Not exactly a blank slate, but close enough. And from that state, I happily--but much more importantly, willingly--thought about religion. What it meant to me, not what I was told it was supposed to mean.

I learned god is not required to: be a good person; have hope in life; find happiness. And so, at that time, I became an atheist.

Lost my faith.

Honestly, that's not the end of the story. Probably in some later posts I'll cover the rest, including what I believe now and how I got to do so. But, for now, I've covered the points I wanted to make.