Having been raised into the teeny tiny French Hinduist community, I started my life with the default premise that there was a god. The belief in Karma, reincarnation and immutable morals were supposed to set my mind up for a dogma-led life. Yet, although I only have warm memories from this time, this is not how I turned out.
My parents completely turned away from religion when I was around 10, taking a more secular and philosophical approach to the Vedic teachings. As the brainy, curious and rational kid that I was, it wasn’t too hard for me to follow the current and drift away from the beliefs. In fact, my mom told me recently that one of the reasons why their faith weakened was that they often found themselves unable to answer my questions. I did grow into a bit of a rigid and skeptical know-it-all. In my defense, these traits were always presented by my peers as my biggest strength, and I became the face and heir of my family’s new approach to life: “question everything”.
But I found a way to take them by surprise. By the time I reached high school, the rock subculture I was into was led by excellent musicians, most of whom were young, cool, inspiring, and very Christian. Add to this: I had the chance of having as best friends the two sweetest, kindest, most loyal and most beautiful girls of the whole school, both very Christian. So you may understand why religion had found a new shine in my eyes. Soon, I started to study the Bible and attend church with my Protestant friend, and as you may imagine I did it the nerdy way and took it very seriously, for two years. I wanted to do the right thing and I thought that there way no way religion was such a big part of the human experience for no reason.
But I could not bring myself to believe, although I truly wanted to. Truly and sincerely, none of it made sense to me. I’m not going to list everything that had me doubt, but quite frankly if there was a God, why would He consider me as unworthy of saving because I couldn’t believe something on the simple basis of people saying “Oh, yeah, it’s true, trust me!!” Even if faith itself was something my mind could cling to, how do I know who to believe? Each year, every religion has bunches of people swearing on TV “My path is the right path, I saw God yesterday in a trance, He told me, trust me!!”
I couldn’t find a way to make it make sense. With both a new found frustration and fear of hell, I thought that the only thing that would free me from this puzzle would to throw it all away and simply live my life. On my way out, I promised to leave a window open for God, just in case. But the pendulum swing was stronger than expected.
From exiting high school to current days, I went through 10 atheist years of fun and frustration. Despite being proud of my fidelity to reason, I felt anger every single time I thought about religion. I was completely dumbfounded that so many grown adults could not only believe in fairy tales, but also abide by them. I would start speaking to someone who seemed perfectly sane and somewhat intelligent, find out they were religious, and think “Why?? How do you do this?”. I never rage out of differences. I rage out of inability to understand a perspective.
That was until very recently. As I discovered in myself a new thirst for knowledge, my mind started to loosen up. By exploring psychology, philosophy and simply looking back on life, I realized that stone cold reason is only one half of being human. The other half is feeling, and is just as valid. One could use some of the famous arguments that give reasonable grounds for the existence of God, but there are ways to counter them all and in fact, it isn’t what believing is about. Just like you could list every practical reason that can justify marrying your significant other, but none of them are really what made you fall in love. You just did, period. I now understand that faith works on the same basis as falling in love.
It’s still very hard for me to believe. I feel like there is a voice in my head spelling out every cognitive bias that starts to lead me towards the “Maybe…” route. I wish I could just make this voice go away. I no longer want to be right. I no longer want to have every answer. Quite frankly, I just want to be happy. And this resistance feels bitter to me. Why is it still calling me? I now see believers with envy, instead of anger. I truly wish I were you. I'm taking baby steps, but it is far from easy.
My parents completely turned away from religion when I was around 10, taking a more secular and philosophical approach to the Vedic teachings. As the brainy, curious and rational kid that I was, it wasn’t too hard for me to follow the current and drift away from the beliefs. In fact, my mom told me recently that one of the reasons why their faith weakened was that they often found themselves unable to answer my questions. I did grow into a bit of a rigid and skeptical know-it-all. In my defense, these traits were always presented by my peers as my biggest strength, and I became the face and heir of my family’s new approach to life: “question everything”.
But I found a way to take them by surprise. By the time I reached high school, the rock subculture I was into was led by excellent musicians, most of whom were young, cool, inspiring, and very Christian. Add to this: I had the chance of having as best friends the two sweetest, kindest, most loyal and most beautiful girls of the whole school, both very Christian. So you may understand why religion had found a new shine in my eyes. Soon, I started to study the Bible and attend church with my Protestant friend, and as you may imagine I did it the nerdy way and took it very seriously, for two years. I wanted to do the right thing and I thought that there way no way religion was such a big part of the human experience for no reason.
But I could not bring myself to believe, although I truly wanted to. Truly and sincerely, none of it made sense to me. I’m not going to list everything that had me doubt, but quite frankly if there was a God, why would He consider me as unworthy of saving because I couldn’t believe something on the simple basis of people saying “Oh, yeah, it’s true, trust me!!” Even if faith itself was something my mind could cling to, how do I know who to believe? Each year, every religion has bunches of people swearing on TV “My path is the right path, I saw God yesterday in a trance, He told me, trust me!!”
I couldn’t find a way to make it make sense. With both a new found frustration and fear of hell, I thought that the only thing that would free me from this puzzle would to throw it all away and simply live my life. On my way out, I promised to leave a window open for God, just in case. But the pendulum swing was stronger than expected.
From exiting high school to current days, I went through 10 atheist years of fun and frustration. Despite being proud of my fidelity to reason, I felt anger every single time I thought about religion. I was completely dumbfounded that so many grown adults could not only believe in fairy tales, but also abide by them. I would start speaking to someone who seemed perfectly sane and somewhat intelligent, find out they were religious, and think “Why?? How do you do this?”. I never rage out of differences. I rage out of inability to understand a perspective.
That was until very recently. As I discovered in myself a new thirst for knowledge, my mind started to loosen up. By exploring psychology, philosophy and simply looking back on life, I realized that stone cold reason is only one half of being human. The other half is feeling, and is just as valid. One could use some of the famous arguments that give reasonable grounds for the existence of God, but there are ways to counter them all and in fact, it isn’t what believing is about. Just like you could list every practical reason that can justify marrying your significant other, but none of them are really what made you fall in love. You just did, period. I now understand that faith works on the same basis as falling in love.
It’s still very hard for me to believe. I feel like there is a voice in my head spelling out every cognitive bias that starts to lead me towards the “Maybe…” route. I wish I could just make this voice go away. I no longer want to be right. I no longer want to have every answer. Quite frankly, I just want to be happy. And this resistance feels bitter to me. Why is it still calling me? I now see believers with envy, instead of anger. I truly wish I were you. I'm taking baby steps, but it is far from easy.
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