Agnostic Proselytizing

I guess it’s faith weekend here at the White Papers, so I am putting my two cents in.

I am a die-hard agnostic. I lean far enough that I should break the last thread and become an atheist, but something prevents me. Maybe it’s my own unwillingness to lose Pascal’s wager. Or maybe that last little thread is what faith is all about- believing in something without any proof of it being true.

Now having faith and being religious are two different things. I am not, nor will I ever be religious. I firmly believe that religion is a creation of man and that like most creations of man- it is fallible. I believe that organized religion is a structure placed over something that humans do naturally just fine. And structures, being prone to hierarchies, are prone to corruption and to the motives of those at the top of the hierarchy that are not to the benefit of those at the bottom. Those with power (just like in all bureaucracies) will do what ever they need to keep power. They never act against their own best interests.

I know that those of you who are religious are wailing “but not all churches or religions are like that” But they all are created by man- and therefore they are all prone to mistakes. I prefer to make those mistakes myself, rather than making a mistake based on what someone else tells me I should do or believe. And I believe in taking responsibility for those mistakes. Because I acknowledge that I am human, and fallible, then my mistakes are not a reflection on God, but evidence of the struggle we all go through in life. By giving my moral responsibility to an organization like a religion, taking responsibility for my own mistakes then becomes a reflection on my religion and therefore- God. But God cannot be fallible, and if I am following the guidelines of a religion that speaks for God, then I cannot acknowledge my own mistakes and take responsibility for them. Little Flower’s post on Ken Lay is the perfect example of this. Someone who is doing bad things but thinks they are ok because God is on his side. My own story is the exact opposite. I did what I thought God wanted me to do and couldn’t figure out why all I wanted to do at the end of the day was drown myself in the bathtub with a bottle of vodka and a straight razor at my side.

About five years ago I went through a massive struggle with depression. I had been doing everything I thought I was supposed to be doing: working hard, devoting myself to my child, taking care of a physically and mentally ill parent, not having any fun because a good mother is supposed to give up herself for her family. You know- no sex, drugs or rock n’ roll. Everything around me was soul-crushingly awful. And I couldn’t understand it. I was being good- why would I be so miserable if I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Why was God putting so much crap on me?

The problem wasn’t so much that I was suffering because I was doing what God wanted me to do, but I was suffering because I was trying to follow society’s idea of what I was supposed to do. I’m a mother, and a young, single one at that, so I thought I was supposed to sacrifice myself in order to prove that I am a good mother. I remember being so self-righteous. I was not going to be one of those Jerry Springer types who had a new baby-daddy every week or neglected their children while they went out to clubs. The Kid never even stayed with a babysitter till after he was two, and then it was only for an hour every week so I could do volunteer work. But I was miserable and being self-righteous is a lonely thing.

Then everything that I had carefully built up was knocked down in the space of a few months. I lost my job and my home. But by losing those things that I had struggled to keep, I found out that I was trying to hold onto to things that I didn’t really need or want. By becoming what I was most afraid of- I gained the freedom to choose my own path. And I realized that God wasn’t punishing me for some un-clarified sin, but that I had been responsible for my own misery because I wasn’t doing what I needed to do. I got a lot less judgmental about other people and discovered friends who were generous and kind. Without them, the Kid and I never would have made it.

I am now a rock n’ roll mom who cares very little what the tweed-clad parents at the Kid’s school think of me. I am perpetually poor and freely admit it. I have little ambition to ever be wealthy, or even middle class. I have sex – a lot of it, with different people- and I never feel bad about it. I have amazing friends who are all human and fallible and generous and kind. I still have low points, but I know that everyone has low points. When things go badly I look to see what I can do to make a change, and if I can’t change it -I roll with it. When things go well, I toast with a vodka tonic and a bad karaoke version of a They Might Be Giants song. I act ethically because it is the right thing to do, not because it is what I am supposed to do. I’m responsible for my own behavior, and I don’t dream about bathtubs and straight razors anymore.