After realizing that I did not have an answer for the question "why won't God heal amputees?"that I was satisfied with, I stalled for about a year. Part of it was that I was afraid of what answer I'd find if I questioned my religion or the existence of my God. Aside from that, was the fact that I really didn't know where to start. If I could suddenly question my worldview after 1/3 of a century of believing it, how could I possibly start to reevaluate it all? How could I read any other opposing point of view and evaluate it as true or false if it was possible I'd already failed to do so with my previous beliefs? Should I start by reading the Bible some more? Should I read more Christian apologetics? Should I watch more Christians vs Atheist debates on youtube? Should I look into other religions?
Two things finally prompted me into action. First, the Fear Factory song "Final Exit" based on the book of the same name, kept finding its way into my playlist (I use random playlists). Every time I listened to it, I imagined various scenarios where I may be involved in decisions of life or death. I imagined my wife and daughter making that decision about me as I lay sick in a hospital bed. I imagined having to make that decision about both my wife and daughter. That's not fun stuff to think about. Worse, is that I kinda like the song, so the chorus was stuck in my head for days, prompting me to keep thinking about it. It kept reminding me that, where I'd once been very confident of what to expect from my death, I now was less sure about it than I'd ever been.
Right about the time I quit thinking about the song, some insurance salesmen came to our office to peddle life insurance. After talking to them, and deciding to beef up my own life insurance benefits, it just drove home the fact that I'm nearly 40, and that death is inescapable. Regardless of my beliefs, doubts, or lack of beliefs, I am coming to terms with the fact that I am going to die one of these days and find out what's waiting for me on the other side. Two or three weekends ago, with these thoughts on my mind, I actually broke down crying in front of my wife. She asked me what was up, so I spilled the beans and told her what I'd been thinking about as of late. I let her know that I was mostly upset because I no longer believe I know what's going to happen to me when I die. I also confessed that I was feeling guilty over having a 3 year old daughter, and that I didn't even know what to teach her in regards to death. I spent a lifetime believing that it was a parents job to raise your children to be disciples of Christ, and I have only taken my daughter to church one time in her life. Risking my own soul to hell bothers me, but possibly risking my daughter's feels infinitely worse. I felt like I'd let her down by being too paralyzed to actually make any decisions about my beliefs, or what to teach her.
My wife was pretty cool about it. She was very supportive, and encouraged me to just start searching and figuring things out. Funny. She didn't tell me that everything was going to be OK when I died. She didn't pray for me. All she did was encourage me to look around at the information in the world and see what I could find.
Here we are, 2 or so weeks later, and I've done quite a bit. I've read all 50 proofs at godisimaginary.com, as well as the book The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. The funny thing is that I think I could have easily blown them off a few years back. I could have offered an excuse or explanation for every point that they made. But once I started to doubt, the sorts of questions that these authors ask stab into me like knives. I'm realizing that for the first time in my life, I'm in a place where I can honestly value points of view that I previously only did my best to explain away. I did consider myself open minded, and I'd always listen to another point of view, but I guess I never really gave them the respect they deserved before recently. Anyway, after actually doing some reading and thinking, I have to say I'm feeling better. I have, by no means, permanently made up my mind, but I am leaning in favor of the Bible not being the 100% accurate and infallible word of God right now. I certainly plan to keep taking in and considering a lot of information from as many different points of view as I have the time and patience for. I'm finding that I'm actually way more excited about this process than I ever thought I'd be. Regardless of what I ultimately settle on, this is important stuff. Where I used to fear not knowing what to teach my daughter, I now look forward to telling her what I believe, what I'm not sure about, and what I'm doing to try to figure it all out. I'm also actually kind of relieved that I haven't taken her to church yet. Rather than teach her something I'm unsure of when she's too young to think critically about it, We're going to wait till she starts asking, and then just explain where we're at, and the process we used to get there. There's a good chance, actually, that we'll still be in that process when she's ready to start asking about it.
So here we are. I've been prompted to action, and I'm finding that it already feels much better than moping around being too afraid to do anything. I think in my next post I'll be ready to actually start talking about specifics of some of the material I've read.
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