Gotta have Faith

Thanks to Lindsay's Crawford House for her post about faith. It finally gave me the courage to publish this post that I wrote 4 months ago.

This is a subject that has been on my mind a lot lately and there have been numerous occasions where I have contemplated blogging about it but since it is a touchy subject usually avoided in diverse arenas such as this, I have up until this point not talked about it. However, in the end I must remember that first and foremost this blog is for my children and I would want them to know exactly where I was at this point in my life and theirs. I also have faith that even though the subject is sensitive and people who read this will have a multitude of views regarding it, that in the end we can have a civil and respectful discussion about it without judging or critcizing others beliefs. The subject I am speaking of is religion. Now I am sure at some point or another during this post I will probably inadvertantly manage to offend each and every one of you and please do not try and take it personally. I don't mean to and you can chalk it up to my general ignorance from a lack of true personal experience with religion. That's right folks. You heard me correctly. I am not a religious person.

My Mom comes from a Luthern home, although I do not believe she grew up going to church every Sunday. My Dad comes from a Catholic home and although I do not know for certain how often he went to church, I do know that my Grandmother attends service regularly and always has as far as I can remember. That said, as a family we never attended church. Growing up I would go to catholic serve with my Grandmother and I loved it. I had a children's bible she gave me as a gift and I read the stories from there on a regular basis. As I got to be a pre-teen, the need for religion in my life waned until in junior high school I began attending a youth group and Sunday service at a Baptist church on my own, but to be honest my main motivation was to get closer to a boy I liked whose house was right next store to the church. That is not to say however, that I didn't take anything away from the time I spent at that church and to be honest what I remember most was how judgemental they were of people who did not beleive exactly the way they did. They carried an air about them that they were better than people of other relgiious beliefs and while I certainly understand that it very well may have been that particular church and NOT the Baptist denomination, it has definitely stuck with me.

Once I got my driver's license, I decided to try out a couple churches on my own, namely luthern since I was familiar with the catholic faith my father had been raised into, I felt it only fair to give my Mom's family religion a fair chance but I never really felt comfortable at any of the services I attended. In college I took a world religion course as well as a followup course focusing on Western religions. I found the study of religion academically to be fascinating and philisophically speaking I felt most comfortable with the Buddhist religion but I still never found a religion that fit with what I already believed nor did I find anything compelling enough to make me want to change those beliefs. I also studied atheism and found that just like I was not willing to take that leap of faith with any of the religions I studied, I was also not willing to believe with any certainity that God did not exist because that is exactly what atheists do. I therefore labeled myself agnostic, which is what I have considered myself from the time I was 21. I do not know if God exists and question whether or not there is any way to ever truly know. There, I said it. The one thing I am most afraid to tell people and now here it is on blog for friends, family and strangers alike to read. Makes me feel pretty vulnerable honestly because for those who hold so dearly to their faith, I honestly am afraid of how they will think of me now. Then again it is also pretty liberating to just come out and say it because this is who I am. Amongst my good friends I count a studying Jehovah's Witness, Mormons, Catholics and Non-Denominational Christians. I respect their beliefs and I would hope that others would not think less of me for what I believe.

Just because I am not religious does not make me a bad person. One of the most powerful statements the pastor made at my Dad's funeral was about the fact that he did not regularly attend church. He said, to paraphrase, that some people can attend church on Sunday and then think nothing of stabbing a co-worker on the back Monday morning. Going to church does not automatically make you a better or more religious (spiritual) person. And that is how I feel about my life. Even though I don't know what I believe, I still try to lead a moral and just life. I still make mistakes and I still fall but I also think if there is a God, would he approve of this or that. If there is a heaven, I want to know I led a life deserving of being there and also believe that God would not hold it against me that I may not have gone to church on Sundays or even that I questioned his existence. Because I try every day to be a good person. And just for clarification, I want to add that most of the family and friends I know take their religion very seriously and they carry it with them beyond Sunday service into their everyday life. The above example was speaking about someone who thinks that they can just do whatever they want with their lives and that attending a church service once a week makes it all okay.

Joe, who was also raised Catholic but did not attend church regularly as a teen or young adult, believes similarly to me but we also knew when we had kids that the subject would have to be reevaluated because we both want to expose our children to religion. And that brings me to the reason why the subject has been on my mind lately, because we are at that point in the children's lives were we think they are ready for that exposure. Not only that, they are craving it and starting to ask questions. Most notably, Jake had been taught to say a prayer before snack time at his public preschool. I have no qualms about this. In fact, I rather like that he was taught to be respectful, take pause and be thankful for all that he has. Well, about 3 or 4 months ago, he started wanting to say the prayer before dinner and before you know it, we as a family are all now praying before dinnertime. Again, this is not anything I am opposed to but it is obviously time to start making some decisions about exactly what religion/denomination we want to expose the children to, to what extent and what it means for our personal beliefs. This is a big decision with a lot of implications and I don't want to make a mistake.

And so I have been doing a lot of reading and talking to all of my friends about their various beliefs and I am about to start "church shopping" based on all of my research. My goal is to find a something that is a good match for our family. I need to feel completely comfortable with what I am going to expose my kids to with the understanding that they will be able to make up their own minds when they get older. Ultimately, it would be great if I found something that changed my mind, something that spoke to me in such a way that I was willing to give up my undecided and "we have no way of knowing" label but so far that search has honestly been disheartening and disappointing. I am trying with every fiber of my being to be open-minded.

And so in the end I have to have faith. Faith that that the right decision will make its way to me, no matter what that decision may entail - a life change? Maybe. Taking the road less traveled? Possibly.

You just never know. Spoken like a true agnostic.