Losing my religion.

One of the big questions in my life has always been the question of faith. For the first half of my life, there wasn't even really a question: God existed (how could He not?), Jesus had died for my sins (why would anyone ever deny this?), and I was a Christian waiting to see what my calling would be. I thought for sure I'd be a preacher - winning lost souls for Christ would be the best use of my time on this earth. I sang in the choir. I attended youth group. I taught Bible School.

And then I slowly began to see inconsistencies in what I'd been raised to believe. It is really too detailed to get into right now, but by the time I accepted my sexuality, I had already broken ties with my Methodist foundation. At this point, my doubts had been raised by glaring hypocrisy, as well as a very conditional understanding of what was supposed to be God's unconditional love.

For several years after that, I investigated every religion I could. Other denominations of Protestantism, even very liberal ones, couldn't fill the void in my soul. Catholicism had a lot that I liked, but my deeply ingrained Protestant understanding of Scripture made certain aspects of the Catholic Church seem glaringly off-base. Judaism was interesting, but I never felt more than a fleeting connection. Buddhism and especially Wicca seemed much more in line with what I considered spiritual, but I felt uneasy when it came to practicing either of them. And Islam just wasn't that inviting.

So I continued on, with what felt like and open hole in my soul. I kept longing for something to believe in. Then, about a year and a half ago, I started reading books on free thought and atheism. What those books said made the most sense of anything I'd ever read.

I didn't make up my mind just then to be an atheist (and I guess I still haven't), but from that moment on I've been looking at the whole faith thing with a different set of eyes. I've gone back to re-examine all of the above mentioned faiths, and they are full of logical problems I cannot find a solution to if I were ever to commit to one of them. For the most part, they can give you good pointers on how to live a productive life, but there is also an exclusiveness about many of them that demeans others in general and inspires hatred and conflict as well. This dark side of faith makes me wonder why I would want to believe in anything at all.

Coming to this conclusion has made me realize that the longing I've felt inside was simply a longing to return to the innocence of my childhood, a time when you always knew right from wrong and submitted to an authority it would never occur to you to question. Sorry, but I can't just accept things anymore - I'm full of questions. I know there aren't answers to everything, but it is easier for me to accept "I don't know" instead of "I don't know, but God does, so do it this way regardless" or, even worse, "Why are you questioning God? How dare you! Repent now before you are banished to an eternity of torment simply for exercising your God-given free will!".

So for now, I don't really label myself atheist, because there may be a God, we just can't prove it. I can't say I'm an agnostic, though, because that implies some kind of belief in a God, which I'm not sure I have. I'm just un-labeled, I suppose, and that's fine with me - why do we need labels anyway? It's just weird that something that used to be so vitally important to my life is now just unnecessary.