"Belief is a beautiful armor; it makes for the heaviest sword. Like punching underwater, you never can hit who you're trying for."
John Mayer- Belief
Lately, the subject of God has come up in a few different conversations. I recently created an account with Associated Content, and there was a subject about why individuals don’t believe in God. Since the subject was taken before I could bag it, I wanted to post my thoughts here.
I grew up in a house with three women, and none of them took me to church on a regular basis. When I became a teenager, my mother encouraged me to go with her to services, and most of the time, I didn’t have a choice. She said there were lessons to be learned from the sermons, and I didn’t doubt her. I don’t even blame her for making me go. She wanted to teach me some things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, I wasn’t ready, or open-minded about the topic at hand, and I believe I would have been if I were more of an open young man
However, at thirteen years old, I could care less about life lessons when I was awoken from my slumber at seven in the morning to listen to someone talk. This, by no means, is meant to make fun or criticize how individuals follow their faith, but it wasn’t for me. It brings me to why I don’t believe in God.
For starters, none of the adults in my life raised me to believe in the existence of a higher power. When I became old enough to understand the concept of a God, I was simply not interested. And I was criticized because I didn’t have a faith and I sometimes lashed out when I felt it was being forced upon me.
In the past, I’ve had friends that believed they could speak to God and that they had a special connection with Him. That doesn’t register with me as something that is possible since everyone that I’m able to speak with is either in front of me, or can be reached via telephone or by other means. It has always puzzled me why God, if there is such a being, doesn’t talk to everyone. He certainly didn’t talk to me, and if He did, I might not have heard Him. If that’s the case, I wish He would speak up so we could have a back and forth about why the world is the way it is. Or why He would allow something like Alpha Protocol to be unleashed on the almost seven billion people that inhabit the Earth.
Part of why I don’t have a faith is out of rebellion. When I sat in those church services, I couldn’t engage myself with the culture, and because I didn’t understand it, I had a prejudice against it. It’s hard to believe in something when there’s no physical evidence provided for anything the Bible says to be true.
And it’s not that I want physical proof for everything that I don’t believe in. There are things I don’t follow simply because I don’t agree with them. In the case of God, I won’t follow Him even when I see some type of proof that He exists.
After all this explanation, the main reason I don’t believe in God is because I don’t feel the need or urge to. It’s just who I am, and it’s nice to exercise my freedom of choice. I’m perfectly content believing that I control my destiny. If I want something, I know that I can go out and get it, which is a big reason I’m working so hard on my writing.
I appreciate and respect that others may follow a faith or religion, but it’s not for me. And on a side note, it’s quite difficult to say ‘God bless you’ when someone sneezes. I only say ‘bless you’, but it has no meaning coming from me. It’s been programmed in me to say the term, but I can’t seem to stop without seeming rude for not saying anything when someone sneezes. I welcome any suggestions of what I could say instead. ☺
Writing, believing…
-V
