Somewhere Between Heaven, Hell, and Oblivion

If the human mind is like a mountain, then time is the wind. Different layers of memory make up the human experience and frame of mind. The trivial and insignificant details of day to day life sit like dust and debris at the peak of the mountain, blown away before they truly have any chance to sink into the psyche. Deep in the heart of the mountain, through tunnels and labyrinthine caves, lie the pieces of the soul that are so deeply situated that they could never be removed, even if one tried. There are many passages and pictures drawn on the cave walls of my id, but, for better or worse, there are crucifixes, prayers, angels, and demons etched into my brain, and try as I might, I cannot seem to escape from religion in my life.

I was born into a devoutly Catholic family which was birthed from the marriage of two other devoutly Catholic families. People like me are called “cradle Catholics” by some within the faith. There are those who would wear that title as a badge of honor, and some pity us because we are more prone to become jaded and robotic in our faith, unlike those who discover their faith later in life or experience a rebirth as a result of some experience. The term “cradle Catholic” could hardly be more accurate, since many of my earliest memories took place in church or in the private Catholic schools I attended. The line between mythology and religion was blurry and vague for a Catholic child, regaled with stories of fantastical events like Great Floods and men swallowed by whales, and warnings of where good and bad people go after death. We all learned that Santa, with his book of good and bad children, was a myth, eventually. God, on the other hand, who seemed to keep a similar book, stayed quite real.

As an anxious, nervous child prone to fearing and loathing authority figures who could rain down harsh punishment, I had a tumultuous relationship with my faith. The first thing in the Bible, before any other story, is the story of how God made Adam and Eve, in which children learn that they are born inherently bad and sinful, and that God is the only way to overcome this. Like an abusive parent or spouse, Old Testament God is jealous, prone to losing his temper, deceitful, and makes sure that you know that you are nothing without him. These kinds of stories only exacerbated my already-fretful personality, and while stories of how much Jesus loved us were common as well, it seemed my faith was always driven by more parts fear than love.

It wasn’t until I was about fourteen years old that I privately renounced my faith, at least to Catholicism. My younger sister, Blaise, was born with a completely unknown, and ultimately incurable genetic defect in her lymphatic system that took her life not long after her seventh birthday. Her birth, when I was thirteen, shook the foundations of my religious faith to the core. Everywhere I turned, people were offering horrible explanations and reasons for why God would “let” something like that happen. My freshman year of high school, while I visited my sister for the umpteenth time in the hospital, my parents brought neither the first nor the last “mystic” Catholic, or someone who claims to have some special power or relationship with God. For the last time as a person who considered himself Catholic, I was told that my sister’s illness was part of God’s plan and that I simply needed to submit to his will and trust that he knew best. I privately decided that day that she was wrong and had no idea what God was doing. A few months later, sobbing on the bathroom floor by myself, wondering why God was sending my sister back to the hospital yet again, I decided that anyone who could treat me so poorly and make my life so miserable had no place in it, human or divine.

Since then, my faith and trust in religion has taken a steady decline, albeit with peaks and valleys along the way, to the point that I consider myself something akin to an agnostic today. It took me many years to peel back the emotional layers of my rift with religion to a place where I could use my brain and my intelligence to arrive at a more even-tempered position. Using a book that is over two thousand years old in its most recent edition to guide one’s life in the twenty-first century simply does not seem like a smart choice to me, and the general lack of empirical evidence to back up the majority of what happens in the Bible has left me questioning many of the “miracles” that many people seem to base their faith on.

Distancing myself from the faith my parents handed down to me, though, has been just as difficult at times as it was for me to follow it in the first place. In the documentary, Religulous, Bill Maher goes around the world asking people of different faiths why they adhere to their particular religion, and attempts to ask them about the hypocrisies, contradictions, and outright falsities he perceives. At one point, he asks two former Mormons why more people don’t leave a religion that many find to be rather ridiculous. One of them quips that leaving the faith is the equivalent of “committing social suicide,” and goes on to explain that often times when people publically denounce Mormonism to their friends and family, they are ostracized or even shunned.

Fortunately, my own experience has not been so extreme, but I would laugh at anyone who said turning from my faith was simply “taking the easy way out.” From the moment I first shared with my parents that my faith in Catholicism was crumbling, they have responded to my grievances with a number of emotions: frustration, anger, sadness, confusion, hurt. As a fifteen year old, I was not able to form valid arguments or even express myself adequately, and I have continued to struggle in this regard with my parents ever since, and I think they have struggled, too. In arguments, sometimes the worst of us can come out. “What do you think your brother is going to think when you say things like that?” my mother would ask me in a low voice when I railed against going to church on Sundays. “So, you think you’ve got it all figured out now, huh?” my dad cracked angrily at me over the phone one day. “No,” I said, hurt and frustrated. “Catholicism is the side that says it has all the answers. I’m on the side that says ‘I don’t know what the answers are.’”

Relating to my parents, family, and family friends on this issue has been incredibly difficult for me, and caused a great deal of pain on both sides at times. I love my parents deeply, as I know they love me, but how are they supposed to respond when they realize that I disagree with something that is so fundamentally a part of who they are? I know that it hurts them deeply sometimes, especially when they believe that their faith has kept their marriage together for over twenty years, and that it gave them the strength to navigate through the heartache of losing a terminally ill child. It breaks my heart to think that I could cause them any more hurt, but it is a horrible line that I feel forced to walk sometimes; is it better to lie to someone you love to save their feelings? Or, is the ultimate test of love to be able to be honest with one another and still love each other, despite our differences?

I feel wholeheartedly that the answer lies in the latter, even though it may be an uphill battle. Yet I reserve such a strong love for my parents and family, and those who are truly close to me. There remains the difficulty of those who lie on the outer regions of my social map; what am I to do with them? The number of people who have reached out to me in an attempt to comfort me through my sister’s illness and death is astounding, but many of them speak of prayer, faith, heaven, and submitting to God’s will through suffering. Many times, my parents’ friends have spoken to me through whole conversations with the assumption that I am as devout, faithful and religious as my parents. What am I to say to such people? I could never callously turn down offers of prayers and solace, but I often find myself feeling awkward and uncomfortable in these situations as I politely smile and agree, not believing a word of what I am saying. It is simply not worth it to engage with such people on a daily basis on such a deep level, leaving aside the fact that they may take offense to my actual feelings and beliefs.

Even when I do take the step and engage with people on a deeper level about my beliefs (or lack thereof), I am almost immediately asked to quantify my beliefs in a single sentence, or two. “So, what, are you an atheist, then?” I’ve been asked many times in response to my expression of doubt. Invariably, I simply respond that I am agnostic, even though it is a hollow, empty word, devoid of meaning, in my eyes. There is no single word, or perhaps even combination of words, that could sum up my personal experiences, and where they have led me, and I sometimes feel insulted at the prospect of having to abbreviate my life’s journey into some preconceived philosophy. Unfortunately, though, if there is one thing atheists and Christians seem to have in common from time to time, it is the tendency to scoff at someone who has not made up his or her mind, who freely admits that he does not know the answers to some of life’s most difficult questions. What can I do in response to such an attitude?

I have settled on the answer, for now: nothing. My intent, through the majority of my adult life, has never been to insult or attack anyone for their beliefs or lack of, as long as they are not trying to harm me or others. If those who are more sure of themselves than I want to ridicule me for my position, so be it. Through many painful, pointless arguments, I have come to the realization that verbal sparring over a topic so contentious usually ends only in hurt feelings, bruised egos, or broken relationships. All I would ask of the important people in my life, at this point, is that they love me for who I am, and respect me, even if they do not agree. I am not trying to proselytize my family, either. I hope that they stay strong to what they believe, and if they feel that praying for me is the best thing they can do, again, I say, so be it. I know that in their language, that is an expression of love, and that it may bring them some comfort. Sometimes, I wish it were so simple for me, that I could fall asleep peacefully and happily every night knowing that I had the answers.

I do not think that that will ever be the case for me, though, so I will continue to search for little pieces of the puzzle, even if I can never quite see the whole image; better to catch a glimpse of the truth than to blind oneself with a lie for an entire lifetime. Catholicism, Christianity, and religion have played a large part in shaping who I am, whether I like it or not. It is a challenge, sometimes, to overcome my own bitterness and resentment, but I do not want to live with those feelings forever. Perhaps if I hadn’t been born into such a steadfast religious environment, I would have never really taken the time to ponder the greater truths and questions of life. For now, I make it a daily goal to simply be content with being, to find happiness in this life without promise of ecstasy in another, to treat people with the love and respect I would wish for myself, and to be at peace with not knowing or having it all figured out. In fact, I think I would be horrified if, at the age of 20, I already knew all the answers. I hope to have many more years on this planet, and my greatest hope for myself is that I continue to grow, to learn, and to love. There is an old fable about the Greek philosopher Socrates, in which one of his friends asks an oracle if there is anyone wiser than Socrates himself, to which she responds, “no.” Socrates wandered the land, speaking to politicians, poets, and craftsman, who all claimed to be wise. The politicians thought they were wise, but really knew nothing; the poets could touch and inspire others, but did not understand why; the craftsmen were superior to all, but only in their given field of expertise. It was only in his sureness that he knew nothing that Socrates realized the truth behind the oracle’s words.