(no subject)

[pensnest]

Beast and I were for some reason having a talk about religious belief yesterday. We are in accord on the subject.

But I am curious. If you believe in God - *how*? How do you do that?

I honestly can't remember.

Comments

[laughingrat]

Hard to say. I vacillate between believing in some kind of unifying Good (or god principle, I guess), being bloody furious at God for letting horrible shit happen, and being completely indifferent to the concept altogether. It's really automatic, not something I can switch off and on. Upbringing, maybe? Were you raised religious at all?

[pensnest]

I was baptised, and I dare say I probably went to Sunday school (can't remember much of my childhood), and when my mother was killed (I was nine) my father explained that she had "gone to Jesus", which was about as comforting as anything can be in such circumstances. I remember trying *really* hard to be good, and praying a lot, in my early teens, and I gradually gave up doing that. I was pretty much agnostic by the time I got married (at twenty-two), and now I'm atheist.

I think I've got from the position of 'automatic assumption of the existence of God' to 'how can people reconcile these obvious contradictions', and where I stand now I just find it really hard to understand faith. Yet I know quite a few people who *do* believe, and I keep wondering how.

[laughingrat]

Yeah, I grok you. I'm actually with you all the way, intellectually, but there's some little thing in me that keeps, occasionally, recognizing the existence (real or not) of a deity. Go figure. I'm sorry you lost your mom at such an early age, that's really awful.

[pensnest]

Thank you. I wonder if maybe it's because it would be so *nice* to have there be a God—because it would!