Tag: spirituality

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Another Version of God

crying_out“You’re a god, and I am not, and I just thought that you would know.” -Vertical Horizon

There are some days when I strongly believe in a higher power causing the sun to rise in the East and set in the West, a being stronger than us who gives us free will but also pulls the strings when necessary, an iconoclast who by his very nature defies his own existence, who is revered by many but truly loved by few. Lip service, that’s what we usually pay to such a god, and we do it in prayer, sometimes down on our knees, sometimes standing up, sometimes over Skype with our grandmother who is in the home but we choose not to visit. And she believes in such a god who sits high and judges low because so did her grandmother who has been gone lo these many years, a woman who took religion as seriously as she did her shaving rituals.

Then there are days when I honestly don’t see how there can be a benevolent god in a world so full of misery and devastation, when good people die daily and bad people live to be a hundred. Then I stop myself because are there really good people and bad people? There are just people who do bad things, right? And sometimes those same people also do good things, but of course that’s when no one is paying attention. What kind of a god lets things happen, even in the name of free will, that could have been easily prevented? Some days I sit high up in my chair and judge low, feeling like maybe I’m that god I’ve been doubting all along, that maybe being made in his image means I’m upholding an image that is just that, an image, a mirage, a picture in my head that is shared by many who also doubt. Continue reading “Another Version of God”

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Spiritual Detours

You’d be surprised, but I spend an awful lot of time thinking about religion, about church, about spirituality, and about how each of these concepts can exist independently of one another. People often ask me why I don’t go to church, but the answer isn’t a simple one, even though the act of not going is simple. And I know what they’re thinking, that I must be a lost soul, that I’m one of those backsliders who grew up in the church but has now turned his back on it. They would be wrong on both accounts.

I’m not lost. In fact, for the first time in my life I think I finally have solid footing where it comes to God and my connection with him. It has been a long time coming, though, and I have gone through many wrong turns on the journey.

FIRST TURN:

In college I worked at the Temple University library circulation desk, and I had a wide variety of students and non-students come in and ask me questions or tell me things they thought I needed to know. They were looking for the religion section (BS – no joke), or they were trying to find their computer password to log in (they really needed the reference desk), or they wanted to let someone know that a guy had built a book fort in the stacks. One time that stands out, however, was when two guys in gray suits with print ties came up to the desk to ask about my eternal soul. They gave me a pamphlet and invited me to go to their church on the following Sunday. At the time I had so many questions about my eternal soul that I think I became an easy target, and they could see it. Continue reading “Spiritual Detours”