Like many Americans, when I was a kid, I went to church. Or, well, my mother took me to church. Sometimes she dragged my father along as well (until they got divorced, at least[1]).
Until one Sunday, when I was maybe six, that I refused to go with her. Like, tantrum-yelling-screaming refused. I don't really remember exactly why[2], don't know what my 6-year-old self was thinking, but I do remember that I was pretty emphatic about it.
Well, my mother gave in, probably because it was easier for her to go alone than be to be saddled with a small kid who didn't want to be there. At least for a while, though I know I started going with her again later.
I don't know if that was an early sign of things to come or not, but it was the point that my relationship with religion became a little less usual.
A few years later, I had the usual bout of kids' questions about religion, but between erratic church attendance, a poor relationship with my mom, an agnostic father, and my one set of living grandparents not really being the church-going type, I mostly had to figure them out on my own. I read a few books (I was always a reader), went to my friends' churches, picked up both the kids' stuff and the adult stuff from the Kingdom Hall when I went (my Mom was a Jehovah's Witness). Most of what I learned about was various forms of Christianity, but I did learn about Judaism, and I understood there were other religions, too, though at that point I didn't know much about them.
My relationship with God, in short, has always been based on belief I developed from a lot of different sources.
By the time I was a teen I'd more or less settled into a sort of non-demoninational Christianity. I'd attended AWANAs, and joined a high school youth group, but didn't regularly attend church on Sundays... my mother was still a JW and I'd more or less rejected them (in part because I was going through more or less rejecting her) and my father was still not religious, so there wasn't a family-going-to-church thing going on in my life, and I felt the youth group events were a better idea anyhow... I had a preference for discussion over sermons, I suppose.
And then I started having problems with depression. Serious ones. Really, really serious ones. And I started having doubts.
It took a while before the doubts really turned into a change in faith. Christianity was still a comfort to me, and I even got to a point where I tried to help a couple friends understand what I believed and why and urged them to consider becoming Christians. I mean, I was not seriously out there prosyletizing, but when it came to my friends, I wanted them to have the same beliefs and comfort that Christianity offered me.
And not long after one of them told me he was becoming a Christian... I stopped. All those things I'd told them became empty to me.
Oh, not all at once. But at some point I just gave up believing that the Christian God could possibly be in my life because my life was really pretty messed up. I had some back and forth on it... part of me still believed, but most of me was looking for something to fill the void I had, the one where my doubts were making a hole in me.
Years pass. I eventually found other things to believe in, and for a while they made me happy to believe, but because there were still a lot of problems with my life, I had a hard time finding any real joy in any religion of any sort. And then there was my problem with... well, let's say co-religionists. You see, over time, I started to feel that any organized religion, no matter how loose, was the real problem. I could continue to believe there was a God (of some sort), I could have faith (of a sort), I could feel I was basically a spiritual person (most of the time), but I could not bring myself to accept, y'know, religion.
For a while that was okay. My actual level of belief waxed and waned, but I avoided participating in religion... which is odd, because I found discussing it, as a concept, pretty interesting. Figuring out why people believe as well as what they believe. Finding ways religions were similar because I thought it was interesting how many of the same concepts appear in so many disaparate religions.
At times I would wonder... if I can believe so strongly there is Someone (no matter what one calls that Someone) and that there is a Purpose (no matter what that Purpose is), why can't I believe in a specific religion?
And it always came back to two things: The way people of the religion acted, and the fact that the one religion I'd ever truly strongly adhered to was presented in ways I just couldn't agree with.
A few years ago, I started realizing again that... for the most part, the things I believe still fit into Christianity. Not any specific brand of it necessarily, but a basic core belief that: a) there's a God, b) God is (or at least should be) about love, c) Christ's teachings about how to treat one's fellow humans were right, and even d) no one who didn't try to act in the way Christ taught could possibly be going to Heaven. Maybe I didn't precisely believe in the things that would make me a Christian in many people's eyes, but I think that an open-minded Christian at least would have seen his beliefs echoed in mine.
There were, however, things I still couldn't get over... things that had been, when it comes down to it, the core of my waxing of faith to begin with. The same doubts that I believe a lot of people have.
Wondering why, if God is love, why so many people hate in His name. Wondering why, if God is love, he allows there to be so much pain. Wondering why, if God is love, why he wouldn't allow people who didn't say the magic words to get into Heaven... that, to the contrary, he'd put them into eternal pain. I couldn't reconcile my internal vision of God with someone who did these things.
Recently, I had an epiphany... well, no, not exactly. It was something I knew already, so maybe I mean I finally internalized this: Even God's most ardent followers, people you can look at the writings of or listen to the words of and just be absolutely sure they truly believe, can't agree on these things. From the same Bible and the same reading of the same laws, Christians come up with entirely different answers to the same questions.
It's strange it took me so long to realize that meant that my understanding was as valid as anyone else's. That I could reconcile some of those questions without in any way saying "I'm going to follow only these parts of the Bible". That the Bible is clearly open to interpretation... because there people are, interpreting it differently.
And lately I've come to consider myself a Christian again, even if I don't necessarily believe in the same precise manner some people do.
See... I don't think I need to believe that there's a magic set of words I need to say to be a follower of Christ. I do believe that people who don't say those words (or express the thought, even) can go to Heaven as long as they follow the same ideals. I think the message is more important than the mechanics... does it really matter most, when you get down to it, if Christ literally only came to Earth so he could be punished in our place? Or does it matter more what he tried to teach us? Because I think it's the latter, to be honest. I'm perfectly willing to believe—do believe—that that was the deal: he was sent to teach us and try to reach us and then he had to also stand in for us so God could cleanse away the sins we had done... we still do. And that should be honored... but not at the expense of forgetting that every word he said was important, that the ideas he tried to get through to us are really the way to Heaven.
You could consider me a heretic[3], or... well, whatever you want. But only God gets to decide if I'm wrong or right, and I think, looking at the message he sent Christ to come tell us, that he'd say I was right... or as close as a flawed human, a human who is prone to all sorts of mistakes, is likely to get without additional divine intervention. I'm not going to say I don't still worry I'm wrong, but when I start to worry, I think: the God I choose to believe in, that I believe made sunsets and kittens and rivers and trees and art and language and most of all love... he wouldn't be such a stickler. He knows we're flawed; that was part of the message. He knows we won't get it all right. He just wants us to try, and to admit when we fail, and to be sorry we did... and then to keep trying.
And most of the time, lately, that's starting to be a comfort again. Because lately, I'm starting to think I can hear Him again, and that's the best part of it. That when I talk, He listens, and when He listens, He understands. And that He is willing to forgive anything I get wrong.
And I still have doubts, but that's human, too. But I also have hope. And that's God.
[1] Actually I have these vague memories of my Dad showing up on the weekends and going with her even after the divorce, but it may've been because those were weekends I was supposed to be spending with him.
[2] I'm pretty sure it had more to do with disliking my mother and the aftermath of my parents' divorce than anything about me understanding church or religion.
[3] I'm comfortable with that label. After all, some of the same Christian sects that are considered mainstream began with someone considered a heretic.
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