I have found myself, over the years, endlessly fascinated by church. My parents were atheists--or, at least, my Father was. I think my Mother was--is--more anti-religion than anti-God. They always told me that I was free to make my own choices regarding whether or what to believe and how--or not--to express that belief.
But then, when one's parents phrase it along the lines of, "I think there is no more a God than there is a pork chop flying around, but if you want to believe, that's up to you!" it tends to steer one away from believing in a Higher Power at all--for fear of, if nothing else, looking “stupid,” or losing the respect of one's parents.
As a child, I would envy friends who believed in God and went to church. I'd peer in church windows at the people inside, watching them pray or genuflect, or make the sign of the cross on their chest and I'd think... How lovely it must be to have the kind of faith I imagined they had--complete and unyielding confidence that God IS--and, that God can and will bring peace and comfort to one's soul, simply by making every painful or wrong thing right again--some day, some way. I imagined that all those people were at peace, in some manner I could not imagine, because they had faith in a Higher Power.
I remember quietly slipping into Bible study classes at school one year. They were held during morning break and I thought I'd like to learn the secrets of the Bible--find out all the important answers I'd heard it had--to all the big questions of life. I recall listening carefully, to the the begat’s and the thou shalt’s, and the beautiful poetry, and the lyrical words… but, as to answers? For me, it either provided none, or else, they were contradicted or woefully inadequate.
Then, as I grew into my teens and twenties, I kept trying to square the idea of believers having a special sort of inner peace with what I actually knew of people--not to mention, squaring what I'd read in the Bible with the wildly differing ways it could be--and was--interpreted. All the while, my own inner conviction--that we as human beings were not here as a result of a random matter of scientific wonder, but rather were the result of thoughtful planning--kept growing. Not just us--the whole Universe--it seemed to me, had to have come into being by something other than an “accident,” surely? But, even if it didn’t come into being that way, it certainly carried on in a manner that was the farthest thing possible from chaotic. And, why did I feel that way? I’d look out the window and see… perfect chaos contained within perfect order. Seasons, years, days, humans, animals--everything--cycled in perfect order and, what’s more, in unbreakable order. Seasons may sometimes seem late or early in coming, for instance (that would be the chaos part), but come they always do (there is the perfect order part). Sunrise and Sunset are non-negotiable and unfailing (order), but we often have overcast days where the Sun seems, gone, somehow (chaos). There are absolutely no exceptions to the fact that death always follows life (order), but the matter of when death will come to any one individual, is a complete unknown (chaos).
However, when the realization hit that I myself was a “believer,” the epiphany that this was a decision on my part that I may be required to act upon was inescapable.
Aww… man! You mean, you can’t just believe in a Creator and be done with it? Bow a little bit, make a few gestures, dip your fingers in some special water or something and that’s that? Couldn’t you just give yourself over to “blind faith” and you’d be right with God? I thought faith was the whole point?! With enough faith, you could, they say, move whole bloody mountains! Surely you could also live and die with inner peace, too? Surely faith and regret (you know, saying sorry--and meaning it--when you do bad things), were all the “action” you were required to take if you were to have that special feeling of oneness and peace that I’d imagined for so long would come if and when I became a “believer?”
Well, no, actually.
Crap! So, this was when the big, ugly question, “O.K., you “believe”--so what, if anything, are you going to do about it?” came knocking at my door. Hmm… Well, for some time, I simply refused to hear the doorbell, much less answer the door. But, as these things do, the question refused to take no response for an answer and simply kept on and on pecking at my head until I could ignore it no longer. The hunt for a religion--or, as I think of it now, my spiritual home--was on.
Now, I could iterate all the things I looked into--from Christianity to Islam--and give the reasons I rejected the one’s I did, but that is not my purpose here. Here, I am looking at belief, my journey to that belief, and what I, personally, chose to do about that belief. And, perhaps most importantly, what I have learned along the way about Personal Beliefs in general.
Well, let’s just start there shall we? Personal Beliefs are just that: personal! Not only are they personal, as in, “affecting, or belonging to a particular person rather than to anyone else,” but also personal as in, “done in person, without the intervention of another.” In other words, what we choose to believe, if we choose to believe anything at all with respect to spirituality or religion, is a matter of individual choice and can and should be as private as we choose for it to be. Moreover, this means that anything and everything we choose to believe is right--for us--even if it is wrong for everyone else.
Phew! That’s BIG! So, everyone has the right religion--for them? When they have it? Even if they change it like I change my underwear, the one they currently have is still right… for them, now? There are no wrong religions?
Yup.
Wow. So, wait… what does that mean to me, exactly? I mean, now that I “know the truth,” or, “need to spread the word, because my religion says I should,” or, “I’m just so happy now that I’ve found (whatever) that I simply have to tell everyone I meet…” All that is, well… wrong?
Yup!
And, nope. OK! I know, I’m doing it again! Alright… here goes…
I found my personal “spiritual home” as a Pagan and, as my students know, I teach--only those who have asked me to--in a very loose, sort of open-ended manner. Why? Because I do not believe many questions have a simple, cut and dried answer that fits everyone, every time. And the question of whether one should proselytize, preach, spread the good word, seek converts, bring in the flock--or anything else you might choose to do or seek to call it--is strictly a matter of personal choice. There is no right or wrong to this, just as there is no right or wrong thing to believe or way to believe that applies to everyone all the time.
So, for the record, my personal choice is not to proselytize at all. Fine line that one. Sometimes, you can be doing it and not even know. Other times, you can be consciously striving not to preach or teach… only to examine things later and find that, perhaps, you were. Or, at the very least, that it could be taken that way. Better to keep your mouth shut as much as possible. Unless, of course, someone asks…
There ya go!
