2004-06-17 - 12:49 p.m. God 10 Agnostic � I�ll be honest about it. I am a religious man. It is not the atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, �My God My God, why have you forsaken me?� then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.� ~Yann Martel I have shown 10 different points of views on religion, from my first, to my last. My last argument is doubt. My last argument is my struggle. The Muslim faith refers to this as their Jihad as their inner struggle to find God, Allah. I suppose in that struggle, they might NOT find him either. That�s an option. That is my Jihad. I want to find God. I want God to come to me and explain it to me. I want God to care about me. I want to have faith. I always think of that story about the Footprints. The man sees the two sets of footprints, and sometimes there is only one. Those are the moments of struggle in life. He believes those to be the moments when God has forsaken him, but in the story that is where God carried him. I want to believe that. Don�t you think it would make life easier? Someone who is so sure of Jesus� will has a concrete set of rules to follow. A structure and a community to grow in. Other people who have similar views and values that are exactly in accordance with yours. I don�t have that. Don�t you think I want that? Don�t you think I want my girlfriend to not worry about the future of us? Don�t you think I want my mom to not worry about my faith? Don�t you think I want the respect of some of my peers back? I feel as if my life alienates people? It probably alienates readers of this at the mere mention of God. I have found that whenever the topic of �does God exist� is discussed, there are funny looks. Why would he ask that? Does he think we want to talk about that? And yet every person I talk to at my Catholic college had a different idea about religion and God? Were we really unified? Was I a part of that? Can I ever be a part of that again? Does God exist? I don�t know. Do you? I have seen things that confuse me. The world seems so perfect and to work in harmony. But I study things, like math, and I learn things that people would never understand. Arguments and proofs disproving such things as 2+2=4. I understand how math was started, and I understand that it is just that�a creation. Can reason be the same? Reason and math seem to go hand in hand? If reason is a human creation�then can it not be fallible? Is God a human creation? I am stuck in doubt. I want to believe in God, but there has been nothing but that feeling. That fear. I want to not believe in God, but it�s not easy. I can�t escape that urge, that feeling that there is something more. I want to please the people around me who sit on both sides of the fence. People can make this issue into something greater than I ever wanted to make it. Is it personal? Could the answer I choose define not only who I am, but the acceptance of people around me? Could my friends respect me were I choose to believe? Could my family respect me if I denied God? There is nothing in the world I ever wanted more than have the answer. There is nothing I want more than to know that when I am weak, and I am alone. When I rest and no one is there to comfort me in my fears or in my sadness, that I have God? Or am I left alone in this world, weak, sick, and alone. And so it rests as a great mystery. And my response is to settle in doubt. I feel the pressure to have the right answer; to know exactly what I believe. It�s something I struggle with everyday! It�s something that crushes me every time I think I am close to an answer. This is how my life feels everyday when I wake up and I am forced to face the world. This sadness and emptiness is what makes me breakdown. I feel like a house built on sand. I feel like a spark in a well lit room. Never noticed. Never appreciated. These are feelings I can�t share. These are thoughts that can�t be expressed. These are the things that make my body so weak I can�t walk and I can do nothing but cry. --I am in my boat alone, in a sea of doubt, with nothing to do but be thrown by the waves and rained on by the storms, until someday I die, and I discover the truth. The truth � Was God with me in my life or was I alone? | |||||||||||
