I understand religion. If I were bold enough to say it i think I understand it better than most who say they believe in it. Its absence in my life is clear, like a foundation that's been carved out from beneath my house. My life is unstable; the water seeps in when it rains, and I can't place anything too heavy for fear that the floor will fall out from under me. For most of my life i have been consumed with envy for those with faith.
Faith is funny; you can't choose to have it. You either have faith, or you have doubt, and any faith I have strived for the doubt is outweighed. It is something I will never achieve. That is not to insulate that faith or doubt is better than the other; both are ways of living, and both have wins and losses. Faith comes with delusion, doubt with instability. I am a very unstable person.
I wish I had faith. I wish I had faith that the cruelty I see in my fellow humans is dutifully punished in what comes after. I wish I had faith that those who suffer are coddled and swathed in some form of peace in the end. There is a justness to faith and righteousness that seems to slip more and more from this world. I never liked the idea of hell; eternity always seemed too great. Yet the more the years go by, the more I find horrors that others have committed, and the less I see of any regret.
I want to believe that every human is kind and worthy of life and its wonders. I don't even want that for myself. I want to believe that everything will eventually be okay, and that there is some cosmic reason for all suffering. But the world is random. I want to be able to blame every evil thing on some devil's influence if only to persuade me that no other human would do evil of their own accord.
But it is all lies, meant to comfort you. It engages some sort of complicity in the horrific deeds of others and ourselves. You can say, "God will fix it," "God will bring justice," and feel okay with sitting on the sidelines and waiting. We are all waiting for god to fix us, and that is cruel. That is cruel to those who don't have the time to wait.
It is easier to see suffering if you tell yourself that, well, it's okay because they will go to heaven. It's easier to see cruelty if you believe they will go to hell. It keeps us from enacting our own justice, from holding ourselves accountable. It lets us be complacent with doing nothing.
I hate religion, I hate how it soothes us. I hate how I cannot be soothed.
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