2004-01-15 - 11:29 a.m. God 4 Virtue
Virtue: The quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong. I started at that for about ten minutes demanding an answer from God. Am I doing what is right? Am I virtuous? Am I doing what is right with my life? Am I an honest human? Do I have a redeemable soul? What am I doing wrong? I received no answer, though my mother did bring me a sundae, complete with whip cream. I thought that this might be the closest thing to heaven I was going to taste. I realized that to find God, I had to understand how I came to know about God. I am certain that I did not always know about him, but I am uncertain as to wherther or not he was always with me. Does God travel with the sinners? Does he answer their prayers? I thought back to the story of Jesus and the lost sheep. Jesus told a man in Galilee that God was the Shepard of the world. He told the man that God tends to his flock, but sometimes he will leave the flock to find the missing sheep. This is what Shepard does, and this is what God must do. I feel to discover my worth, my inherent goodness, I must find God. And the only way for me to find God, is to lose myself. Then I won�t find him. He will find me. I am leaving my house for this summer. I will give myself these months to discover god, before I move on with my life. ****** I have spent three weeks away from my house. I am working as a dishwasher. I don�t think this was a good decision. But my resolve stands true. I need to understand God. I need to know. I need to discover the truth. God must come and save me. If God doesn�t exist� I don�t want to think what that means. ***** I have been here for two months. I miss my home, which is now nearly a thousand miles away. I miss my friends, and I miss my life. My resolve is still true, but wavering. I no longer know if what I am doing is right. I have lost weight, and I know that I don�t have much time left. In a month I head to college. My parents don�t understand what I have done, and I suspect that they never will. Their faith has been so steady�so unquestioning� But I am not steady. I am falling apart. Last night I was convinced that God didn�t exist. I have been drinking too. Peppers, at work, was kind enough to show me via example how to steal liquor from the bar. Tuesday night, right before they stock Wednesday morning, they lose count�since the shipment comes in, and isn�t counted until the morning. Clever guy that Peppers. There are five empty bottles of vodka in the hole I live in now. I almost emailed my friends�they think I am camp. God I wish I was at camp. **** Last night I got so drunk I puked blood. No god. ***** I couldn�t tell you what time it was, but I woke up to the face of an older lady, who I assumed was the caretaker of the church that I had just passed out in front of. I was scared and took God�s name in vain, rather loudly. This woman came to me looking so hurt and so upset. I am just a boy. I must have looked like such a sad sight. She helped me inside. I will never understand why. I must have looked homeless. She didn�t live in the church, but of it to the side. She was a older lady, but still beautiful and pure. She looked so concerned for me. She simply asked what I was doing. I told her I was cursing god. She asked why. I said because he didn�t come to me when I needed him, or when I asked him. She fed me a mysterious ways line, that I rejected worse than my college should reject me if they had ever know what I was doing. �Why do you hate God?� I thought this was an odd question, but I suppose I didn�t look like a God loving man. �I don�t hate him. I don�t understand him. And this has lead me to ask why I even know him�if he doesn�t come to me, even at my lowest.� I felt, for a moment, that she was going to name herself as his messenger of his redemption, but hesitated. I might have bought it too, at that point. �Can you remember when you first learned about God?� �I can remember being "saved." I was in Sunday School at a Presbyterian Church. I was 4 years old and I honestly knew exactly what I was saying and thinking at the time. To this day I consider that exactly where and when I was an actual child of God, though later on in life at the youth group mentioned above my faith was questioned heavily and I was almost forced into asking God into my heart again... which I did whole heartedly. I do regret that I ever questioned my faith in God just because of some Church's Doctrine.� �I can�t remember when I learned about god. It�s like a blur. Can I ask you about why you were saved� What is your religion?� �Christian, not nondenominational, I have protestant beliefs and Catholic beliefs. I'm just not sure what church I really feel a part of.� �That�s funny. I find a woman in a church who doesn�t know her own relgion. Why are you here?� �God�� �What. I am confused, miss. Maybe it�s just me but is there a difference between God and religion?� �A very big difference. Often I think religion is the archenemy of God. Religion is a structured way of thinking, whereas God, in my opinion, wants people to know for themselves that he's there, not learn from a church that God's there and he wants you to do this, right now. I don't think of God as a forceful-DO THIS NOW! kinda guy. I see him as a patient being with a very deep compassion for humans. Religion just makes him look like he's really not a very nice guy.� �What do you do here�?� �I teach� I gulped. I knew that I had to leave but I wanted to stay and learn more. I quickly apologized for my outburst, and I left. ****** With nearly two days having past, I new that my time alone was running out, and the woman who woke me was the only one who had given me any sort of insight. I decided to be proactive. I returned to talk to her, and ask her questions. �You said you teach. But, I don�t think that God should be taught. I think we should be born knowing. But I suppose that you would have an opinion on how God should be taught to people in the classroom?�
�People should learn the basics but never be discouraged from asking questions and discussing God. You're not questioning God by asking questions about him. No one should be discouraged from asking questions and learning. The more you learn about God yourself, the more stable your belief system is. There's nothing worse than an overbearing teacher jamming scripture down your throat and saying "this is what it means, and that's all it means."� �Well if you teach people now, who taught you your own morals and ethics?� �My parents, the bible, my own life experiences. My parents taught me how to behave, how to act like a civilized human being. The bible taught me how to be a person of God, and how to think for myself. My life experiences have taught me tolerance and how to relate to others and stay Christian at the same time. I'm very tolerant of homosexuality, which isn't very common in Christian beliefs.� �No, it�s not�but I am confused was your moral and ethical code based on religion?� �Yes and No. It wasn't based on your traditional bible thumping teachers... it was more based on God's word itself. I learned more from God than I did from my teachers.� �Is it still based on religion?� �Nope, still based on God though.� I wanted to ask how God taught her things, if not through the conduit of religion. I wanted to demand that she answer how she can know that it�s all real. But her smile was so innocent and sweet that I dismissed myself, saying that I would return. She told me she was more than happy to talk to me again. ***** With little time left, this woman was answering my questions with her own sense of wisdom. My most confusing questions, however, were yet to be asked. I felt bad, but I wanted to know how her belief in God held up against the absurd and the shocking. �What color do you equate with God?� �Blue and I think that's mighty weird. Thank you for asking that!� I wondered why she both equated that color with God, and why she thanked me for asking. �Besides man, what is God's favorite animal?� �I don't think he really has a favorite but I think he uses the Lion and the lamb often.� �You live here now, but say you don�t believe in relgion on a whole. Did you go to church when you were younger?� � I went to the Catholic church until I was 6, then I went to the Presbyterian Church, then a nondenominational, then no church at all until I was 14 or 15, where I went to a Grace Brethren Church, and now I don't attend Church because of the conflicts I have with both Protestant and Catholic Churches.� �Why did you stop?� � I got sick of being told that I was wrong, and not knowing why. The teachers and the youth group only told me that I was wrong, they never explained why, never even attempted to reason why. I hold different beliefs, and I could reason mine... they couldn't reason theirs.� I think I hit on it. The original reason I left for this trip was to discover that feeling of being wrong. I was certain that religion now was not for me, but maybe this woman could show me if God was right for me or not. It was like a light had been turned on somewhere. I thought about being virtuous. I thought about being good in the eyes of God. I wanted to know if I was still a sheep in the flock. �Do you think God will be angry at you not going?� �Nope, I think he understands.� �But don�t you think that God would be happier if you did go?� �If I forced myself to go I wouldn't be devoting time to God, I'd be worrying the whole time about what I was wearing, what other people thought of me, and whether I would get looked at weird for even being in church, since I'm a "true sinner" and all.� I think she nailed how I felt. I felt like a sudden outsider at my church. She had given me a glimmer of hope, but I still didn�t know how she was so sure that God existed. ******* My wandered for the last week of my exile. I was so looking forward to returning, but then I knew that I would have to turn right around and head to college. I called my parents, something I didn�t do often. They cried. I told them I was coming home. I just wanted to make one last stop. I wanted to see if I could figure out how God existed.
�How was the universe created?� �By God. I don't have the details, but I know God did it.� �Well, what science and religion. Do you think�think that they co-exist? �Science proves God exists, but religion's always the enemy of science. Science is about breaking rules and proving that there's more out there, and religion's about setting rules and proving that "God" is out there. Science proves that GOD is out there... but he's not the traditional God that churches set down, but he is God nonetheless. Science proved that there were particles so tiny that no human could ever make them... with a slight mm of difference in distance our entire existence could collapse... God holds us together. Who else could do that?� �I believed that� I believed that once. I wasn�t sure what she meant. Was she equating God to light, and particles and waves, and nebulous gases�? But what about the God that created man. What about the God that created out society and everything else? �Why do we have free will? Do we really have free will if God has unlimited power, since he created everything?� �God has unlimited power, that�s clear. Therefore he GIVES us free will. It's his will to give us free will. He's a very confusing guy, but I think I know what he's getting at here. He loves us so much that he lets us decide for ourselves.� I was shocked at the idea. Did the creator of the universe really create the world, and then, let everything run around it freely? Why would he give us that ability unless he either a) Didn�t care what happened or b) Doesn�t exist in that way. My head was spinning. �I just have one last question. If God created the world, and loves us, and lets us roam freely; Did god create AIDS?� � No, he sure didn't.� �But then, that doesn�t make sense. How could a loving God do that� Does god even exist?� �How could he not? Who else would hold the universe in place. God exists because he must.� And I think I got it. After all this time, I think I started to understand the true nature of God. And he wasn�t at all what like what I had hoped, what I had dreamed, or what I had loved. | |||||||||||
