Losing my religion

Well, well, well. I've reached that treacherous crossroads on my spiritual life where I have spent enough time questioning God and his presence on earth to the point where I'm not sure what to think.

I was born and raised in a conservative Christian home within a multi-generational Christian family. All of my friends around me growing up and through my school years were all in this same boat/perspective. And now, after all of these years, I am wondering what in the hell have I been doing with my time.

It's not like I've encountered some empirical evidence that God is dead - or never was. It is that for something that I've just practiced for most of my life, just never has felt solid for me.

I've tried, committed, gone to meetings, attended church. I know all of the proper things to say and when to say them. I can pray in a group and make it sound all passionate. But it has always felt empty to me. Like hollow promises or better yet just like those trick posters with the dots that some people can just "see" the boat or the airplane but I just see the dots (I honestly can not see how those work).

And, I guess (because I haven't wanted to actually do anything past this point), I'm tired of pretending to have passion about something I just don't feel about. I've even had friends give me books about what to do when I don't desire God. I don't even desire to read the book. How sad.

But Christianity has the real lock on it all. Like every religion on Earth, there is the "bet-the-farm" clause: if you don't believe this holistically, then you are to spend eternity in hell. The Muslims have it, Christians, everyone. But a "relationship" in that context is very much like a marriage where the husband tells the wife: "We can have a wonderful relationship together, love and adoration, or we can just coexist. But if you ever leave me - I'll kill you". And it's just about as flatly delivered as that.

In my experience, evangelical Christians sing and praise God every Sunday, read the Bible, have special bible studies, Sunday schools and the like - but I have not seen the response from God. My mind thinks - why would God even enjoy this? It's a narcissistic behavior of which we, as humans, are not to indulge in. And for all of the evidence that we are to take without question - the Holy Bible and it's stories, it just seems that it works best in a context of illiterate, non-educated peoples where hope is just about all they can ever wish for in their miserable existence.

It's not that hedonism is the way to go - I believe that we Americans have imbibed a little too long on the creature comforts of life (I am truly guilty of this) - but where does God fit in now? Maybe we are set up for a grand experiment like the character Constantine eludes to where God is "just a kid with an ant farm" and he just watches casually from afar.

I can't even really bring myself to think much along these lines as my lifelong indoctrination won't let me dwell on heresy for more than a minute or so as for fear of being struck down by God Himself. To announce that God is Dead is tantamount to saying humankind has been a ship lost at sea for it's entire existence. Having God in place gives us at least some form of grounding - a beacon, no matter how faint, that gives us some focus lest the sea swallow us up.

There is a part of me that thinks that upon my death, and the great mystery is revealed to me, that the conjured images of heaven and hell just won't be there. That I will have a chance to have part of my life force reunite with my passed loved ones until my energy fades into non-existence once the people on Earth who knew me don't any more. And at that point there won't be any reason to exist anyway - no matter in what form.

And maybe that really isn't a bad way to go out - and that eternity, no matter how grand it is portrayed in a heaven sense, just would be boring after a few thousand years and every conversation you've ever wanted to have has happened and every book or piece of knowledge has been consumed. What after that? It starts to look a lot like hell in the form of boredom.

I should stop here - this subject is far too big and complex to summarize into a tidy blog post - but it will be visited from time to time as I deal with this.