You ever believe in something?
I’m not talking about the big ideals here, like Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love or anything like that, I’m talking about something small. Maybe you believed the Wicked Witch of the West really was real, her and her flying monkeys. Maybe you believed there was sincerely something in the dark, something that you wouldn’t want to meet in the light. Maybe you believed you were really a princess (I hear all girls do this to some degree) and you just waited on the day that Mr. and Mrs. King would drive up and take you to your castle. Or maybe you feel victim to a misconception. Maybe you thought that stars were something you could pick up a handful of, since the Enterprise flies past them so easily (shout out to Sir Patrick Stewart) or maybe you thought that the proximity of Earth to the Sun causes the seasons. Maybe you believed in your brain of brains that library was spelled with one ‘r.’
Maybe you believed something bigger and crazier. Maybe you believed he really loved you, he was just too afraid to say something. Maybe you believed you could make it somewhere big or make a difference in the world. Maybe you believed that this generation is the generation, the one that’s going to make this world a better place. Maybe you believed that, at the core, we’re all good.
Favorite new word of the day: Mythopoeia. It means the making of myths or something like that. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you google it to confirm and contradict. And the truth is, as humanity, we like to make up myths. We like to explain things away with new little lies and we like to put importance where importance isn’t due. Like the New Year, for example. It’s a new beginning, a time to start over, a time to empty your bank accounts so the government doesn’t take the money you haven’t saved for a car you’re not going to get when you fill out your FAFSA, a time for When Harry Met Sally, a time when we pretend like we all have the self will and confidence to keep up with a list resolutions that will somehow make our lives better. New Year’s gets myth status. Anyone else remember Rudolph’s Shiny New Year?
But really, it’s just another day. You can be encouraging and you can say that, in that case, every day is a new chance to be someone better, to renew those resolutions and that determination to improve the world around you (and I mean quite immediately around you) and so every day is New Year’s, just like every day when there’s peace and goodwill towards men (or towards those upon whom His favor rests, I never remember which is the official version) is Christmas. It’s the idea, the spirit behind the thing. In the spirit of honesty, I’d have to say it’s all a lie. But in the spirit of Having Something to Believe In, I’d say it’s worth keeping around.
And I do have to say that I’m a bit biased against New Year’s. It’s a time to think about the year that’s passed and I’d rather not. And it’s a time to think about the year to come, and I’d rather not. I’d rather run up to the mountains and find me a nice cave with a space heater close to a fast food restaurant than think about where I’ve been or where I’m going (or where I am for that matter). I don’t know what resolutions I’d make. I’m inclined to say none. Aren’t I great just as I am? Nope, never good enough. Welcome to my world.
You know, I had this stalker (and I use the term as derisively as possible, because I’m a terrible and heartless person with no intention of repentance on this without a divine edict) who sent me a message on Facebook asking, “How do I get to know you?” No ‘Hi, how are you, I was just wondering what was going on in your world,’ no ease into the conversation and no reason for it at all, just “How do I get to know you?” And because I’m a nice, indulgent person, I sent some witty and guarded reply back, but I was willing to start the pathetic excuse for a friendship that Facebook messaging offers. It turns out that he had been reading my blog (privacy settings updated? I think so) and he wanted to know if I was a ‘Super Christian’, meaning that I believed in heaven and hell. I personally think that there’s a lot more to Christianity beyond heaven and hell, but he asked me a theological question, and, like the sucker I am, I bit. I wrote long replies which he answered with long replies. I became the dumping ground of atheistic logic and lack thereof, coming from someone who had had a close, personal relationship with God and then realized that it’s all a lie. I was tempted to put air quotes around the close, personal relationship so we would all be aware that it’s a lie. A semester with Bennie taught me well.
So I blew him off. He told me that it sounded like I believed what I believed because I had believed it my whole life and because I didn’t like the things he was proposing. (As a side note, What meaning can you possibly find in a Universe completely ruled by random chance and odd happenings? How do you marvel at the beauty of something if you think that we make up beauty? How do you get out of bed in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I think that all my happy feelings are created by chemicals in my body and all of the purpose I put into my day is entirely self-imposed and partially a reflection of the society in which I was raised so I’m just going to breathe another breath because it’s a survival instinct and go about my day’? And I’m not saying that that’s a defense of God, I’m saying that we have a reason to live beyond chemicals and I’m not saying that just because I have a bias against chemists. I do love Sherlock Holmes. End side note.) I tried as politely as I could- OK, that’s a lie, I layered on caustic sarcasm as I told him that I obviously haven’t thought out a thing about what I believe and that I hoped he would find what he was looking for. Then I deleted him from my friends list and blocked him and there’s another Christian unwilling to listen to an atheist out in the world.
And it’s not that I’m unwilling to listen, it’s that I have listened and I have thought, just not enough to have a watertight argument against the first thing that’s thrown at me. How is God any different than New Year’s Eve? He makes you think about where you’ve been and what you want to be better about and He gives you a new beginning. How do I know that God isn’t as made up as the end of the year (and slightly less accurate to boot, which is a lark, considering how terrible our calendars are and the fact that we have to add extra seconds every so many years and a whole day every once in a while, I mean, who thought that up, we should redefine the second so we can live our lives without this confusion, just pick another atom with a different electron transition, geeze)?
I don’t have an answer for that. I have my beliefs and my experiences and my hopes, all of which could be lies. And at the end of the metaphorical day, when humanity has explained everything away, when we have probed the fathoms of the deep and the depths of the soul and compiled it all neatly in a data storage space, in short, when we have lost our curiosity and our humanity, there may not be room for God and the people of the future will shake their heads at our quaint beliefs.
Remember Job? There’s this chunk in there, maybe someone put it in later, maybe the original author really meant for it to be there, but he talks about knowing that his Redeemer lives, someone who will plead his case before God and make God answer for what He’s done and why He’s done it. I don’t want to make ice cream castles in the air of faith, you know? I don’t want to cheapen someone’s faith or take them away from it. But we think, we love, we laugh, we cry, we feel, we are fearfully and wonderfully made and we deserve a Redeemer, we deserve a reason. A reason for this damn doubt, for this painful world, for this irredeemable sin. For believing, for not believing, for creating, for not stopping, for not knowing what He stopped, for living in this haze of a mystery, effing unnamed deity leading us onto confusion.
But I’m going to wake up, God willing. And maybe that’s reason enough for now.
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