April 28, 2009

• Abandoning the Search

  This post is very difficult for me to write.  This is the second edition of it, and even it has gone through massive edits to get into this form.  This is a topic that I have been thinking long and hard about for awhile, particularly the last few days, and it is something I feel I just need to get off my chest.  So please bear with me as I write it.

  Ever since I started asking questions, and particularly when I left my faith, I thought the religious questions were so important to me, the fear of Hell so strong, that I would never think there could be anything more important.  The religious questions seemed to consume me, causing me much frustration as I searched and came back with only dead ends and more questions.  I would lose much sleep at nights, obsessing about them constantly in my head, reading books on the subject, and constantly feeling I had to have an answer in case I were to die that night.  I poured everything of myself into the search (all I had left after I lost so many people in my life), desperately wanting to find answers to the questions yet none seemed to ever come.  But I was afraid to give up the search, fearing that not having the right answers would doom me to Hell, and so I kept up a futile search for answers I never felt I would receive.  As much effort as I put into it, as much pain as it caused me, I never thought something else could possibly come anywhere close to matching the priority of the religious questions.

  All this time though, tangled up all the way through it were the issues I was dealing with regarding my emotions, particularly love.  I lost a fiancee over the religious questions, and losing her was always constantly a part of my internal struggle.  I don’t really feel I have had many opportunities at love; in fact, I feel that was the only opportunity I really had.  And I don’t really know if she even really loved me, after leaving me like she did after she found out I was no longer a Christian.  So there is a part of me that feels like I have never tasted love at all, or merely just a drop of it.  More than four years have passed since those events took place, and I haven’t come anywhere close to tasting it again.  Call me a romantic, but my spirit cries out to experience true love, my heart aches to have someone to hold close to me so I can show her just how much she means to me.  Every time I think about this, not only do I have the frustration over not having it and lose sleep over it, the symptoms seem to be much, much worse.  Whenever I think about how much I so want to have love, it also makes me physically ill so that I can’t eat, makes it so that I sleep only an hour or two a night (if that) and makes it so that I can’t focus on anything else besides that topic through all of my waking moments.  Comparing these two obsessions side by side, it seems the obsession that is much more important to me is the obsession over love, the one that is causing more problems.  Now I am sure hormones play a part in my longing for love, but I am sure my survival instinct also plays a part in my fear of Hell, so I still have to say that love clearly is the need with the higher priority for me.

  Thinking about it all, I have come to realize that my search for religious answers is at a standstill, and may be at a standstill for the rest of my life.  I have been doing what I can, but very little progress (if any) seems to have been made.  I know I have been afraid of dying without the answers, fearing I would be doomed for Hell, which drove me to find the answers.  But even with all of this motivation to find answers, all of this obsessing and stressing out about it, my rational side tells me that it is HIGHLY unlikely that I will ever find any answers, anyway.  So it makes me wonder what the point of the search really is.  I will never find any answers if I give up on the search (at least not through the traditional means), but if I continue the search I most likely will not either (and I will spend the rest of my life obsessing and stressing and end up giving myself an aneurysm or heart attack).  When I think about it that way, I actually feel a sense of peace over where I am at, because I know this will likely be where I am at the rest of my life.  So there is no use stressing out over it.  Why not instead spend the time on something more productive, such as enjoying life?  Love is so much more important to me, anyway, so perhaps I should spend my time and energy on that (something that I could actually accomplish) rather than wasting it on a futile effort.

  I am wanting to abandon (or at least suspend indefinitely) my active search for religious answers.  I will still keep an open mind about it, and I will read sources I find interesting as I come across them, but I will no longer actively pursue it for the time being.  I am just going to call myself firmly agnostic, admitting that I can’t possibly ever know the answers, and move on with my life.  If a loving god does exist, surely that God wouldn’t want me to keep wasting my life, and surely that God would want me to at least get some joy out of life.  After all, that God gave me these desires of my heart, so surely he/she it would want me to act on them, and to find that special person he/she/it created for me.  And who knows?  Perhaps in the process of searching for love I may find answers to the religious questions in a way that I never expected before.

  I have many Christian friends and family (including many of my readers) that will not approve of this, saying that I need to keep searching.  In their belief, I am doomed for Hell and so I shouldn’t stop searching as long as I am not a Christian (of course, when I am Christian I suppose it is okay for me to stop then?).  But I have done all I can do, in my opinion, and there just comes a point where one has to let go of the past and move on with life.  I am going to start pursuing what (or who) I want in life, because I feel that will complete me and give my life meaning.  Besides, if those people really do care for me then wouldn’t they want me to feel good about my life?  Plus, when I do meet the love of my life (which will hopefully happen before too long) I want to be able to give her all of me rather than force her to share it with this other part that consumes so much of my energy and attention.  That is the kind of lover I am, and I feel the love of my life deserves nothing less than that.

  If you are still reading this, I thank you.  A lot of time and thought went into this, and I do feel quite a bit relieved now.  I also am feeling at peace with this decision, which is the first time I have felt any semblance of peace in many years.  Yet this is still a major decision for me, a major life change, and so I am sure the road may not be easy.  If you do have any comments or suggestions about it (or merely just encouragement) it definitely will help.

  Thank you for reading.  It means a lot to me.

  *EDIT:  I don’t know how many of you read my post about “E-mail Propaganda,” but some more has happened with that story in relation to this.  I replied to the relative who talked about stopping people from spreading lies, particularly lies about the Bible.  I had never been able to stand up to her about what I believe, but I finally was able to tell her that I am no longer a Christian and gave her my reasons for it.  I asked her some of the tough questions about the Bible and God, and how my conscience was unable to reconcile them.

  That was a week ago, and I hadn’t received any response.  Then I got a letter in the snail mail from her yesterday.  It had a little note saying something about how I had asked questions that she couldn’t answer, but perhaps this little booklet (a tract that she included) would help.  She didn’t say anything else to try and persuade me (though I am sure she has been praying), just said that she still loved me.  I read the booklet, and it of course just rehashed the same tired Christian arguments that have pushed me away from the beginning.  My initial response was to be angry, but that was quickly replaced by a peculiar sense of peace.  This was one of the relatives I was afraid of angering (probably the one I feared the most, actually), but her telling me she still loved me really made me feel better.  That and the fact that I did read the tract (trying to be as open-minded as possible), and it only made me more sure that I didn’t believe it.

  So I think I really am moving on from it, which really gives me a lot of inner peace about this decision.
  

  • 1:41 pm
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