hey big sis, I saw your tags on that hallelujah post and they Resonated with me??? And I was curious if you'd be willing to expound bc I Too am struggling with my faith rn and everywhere I turn I keep getting the message that I'm Wrong And Bad (and as usual, God keeps leaving me on read). (Public or private is fine, whatever you're comfortable with)
hello, turtledove! i am happy to talk a little about this, although i should preface with i am big time not a theologian, and don’t have any answers for like, most of the questions i’m posing here.
also, please understand that i come from a christian upbringing, so obviously i’ve been really shaped by that; for example, i’m going to use the “he/him” pronoun for god even though god is nonbinary. “him” is just how i was raised thinking about it and i truly believe that god dgaf about what pronouns we assign them to suit our linguistic norms. but as far as i am concerned, in an extremely literal way god does not have a gender or a sex, because god is god.
anyway, i’m in a kind of transitional space in what i think my faith is. i was raised kind of half-heartedly catholic, and then i chose to become episcopalian, and then, after a while, i wasn’t anything. i was extremely, “idk & idc” about the notion of whether god existed. i think i have always felt that probably there was Something Out There, but i just haven’t really been concerned with what it was.
and then, a few weeks ago, i suddenly missed god so much that it felt – grounding. i was ugly crying for like 45 minutes in my apartment, but like, in a very weird way, the intensity and specificity with which i missed god felt really clarifying with regard to the question of belief.
i do. i do believe in god. i believe in a god who cares about us and loves us and has a plan for us.
that’s about where the clarity stops.
my problem is that i am by nature an intellectual person, which means for all this stuff my first stop is to read. but religious books are hard, and full of things that i reject; it’s not a question of belief, actually. 2 timothy, for example, has a few verses that are like, “don’t let women be teachers, bc women are the Worst.”
my problem isn’t that i don’t believe that’s true (although i don’t); my problem is that i fundamentally reject any god or any belief system which does believe it. like … if i die and it turns out 2 timothy was correct, and god is like, “WOMEN AMIRITE!!!” i genuinely will face him and walk backwards into hell about it. i’d rather spend eternity having my eyeballs plucked out by birds than spend eternity in heaven with that asshole.
this has kind of been the impasse for me and god, for the past few years. we keep reaching this place where i’m like, “okay! you’re real. can you just clear up some stuff for me about your feelings on some stuff.” and god’s like, “[READ 7:15PM].”
recently, though, since CryingGate2k18, i’ve kind of felt like i’m getting different answers, in that dumb goopy way religious people talk about “getting answers.” i can’t really point you to scripture and i can’t really say anything except that this is how i ~feel about it, but it does genuinely feel like, for the first time, god is finding ways to answer me, and he is saying:
he created the whole entire universe and put you in it, on purpose.
god finds you where you are, in whatever faith you’re in, including no faith. god isn’t a set of verses that you memorize and put on a protest sign – he is that thing that you feel connected to, whatever it is. whether it’s through religious faith or an atheistic connection to other people, it doesn’t matter. people are the ones who put walls between us and god and call them churches.
at the end of the day, texts aren’t god. my problems with the bible (for example) are problems with the bible, not with god. it is easy to conflate the two, but they aren’t the same.
the only person who knows what god is saying to me is me. the only one who knows what god is saying to you is you.
everything that god made, he made with intention and with love. he didn’t make you to suffer. he didn’t make you not to be loved. any religion that tells you that you are Wrong and Bad is not speaking with the voice of god.
that’s it. that’s all i got. i told you it was messy & incomplete, but i hope it helps!
