#still kinda ambivalent on the whole concept of therapy

[glorious-spoon]

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[princeandhisboyfriends]

just a rant on my current confusion about my religious beliefs. feel free to ignore

I was raised Catholic. I never believed in religion because it emphasized too much trust and/or faith in someone/thing I didn’t know. That said, I spent my childhood in a constant panic because if I didn’t believe what I was told then there had to be another source/reason for existence. Existential depression was the first diagnosis I ever got, and it was by a therapist I had managed to get time with before actually getting therapy. 

But I started exploring that whole response to religion because my roommates are passively/actively religious and I really ain’t about to be shit to them because of my own hangups. I am starting to work out that most of my issues with  religion are with the organised manipulation and the blind faith, rather than the concepts or morals themselves. Additionally, most of my issues come from the evangelical religions, or rather, the specifically western christian/catholic/etc. representations of the bible. I’m not about to use the word judeochristian bc I’ve seen enough of judaism to know that they’re really nothing like modern christians, even western ones. 

So I guess in a way, I’m still not religious? But I have a strict moral code and a tenuous belief in a higher being because the alternative is fucking terrifying and I think that kinda makes me Catholic, so in a way my grandma succeeded. God is extremely humanized in most religion that I’ve experienced, and a lot of them put emphasis on the personal relationship to God, while talking about his image as though it’s something we could ever understand. I guess my understanding of God(no pronouns bc those are a human construct in specific languages so they wouldn’t apply to a being from before those languages existed) is more along the lines of a being that is much greater than we can understand whether or not that being has attempted to communicate with us through texts, and God is certainly not a being that would take interest in the small, ape-like species on one tiny planet in the outskirts of a huge galaxy with many possibilities for creation, destruction, life, or death. 

If anything, we’re an experiment God did as a sixth-grader and promptly forgot about, and we’ve been unfortunate enough to gain sentience in our small time here. If God truly had been made aware of our presence I believe God would more than likely be a threat, rather than a help, or savior. 

Additionally, if we were made on purpose, sentient and all, I hardly believe in individual relationships with God given just how much more even the concept of god is than the entire human race. 

Thus, the individual relationships would be as if we had a specific relationship to each individual particle of dust, air, and snot every time we sneezed. To me, it seems more of a desperate grab at the illusion of importance and connection to ignore the questions of our existence and have a preset way of life that allows us a measure of security and stability that we otherwise wouldn’t have due to the support religious communities provide. God, if not malicious. is an ambivalent creator, and does not exist to the benefit of humanity. And we are sentient, yes, but we are still animals with short lives and we have a right as any animal should, to work to its survival and the continued survival of its species. We cannot comprehend or put together anything more than that, because it is beyond us. To claim otherwise is to lie to yourself and others, a form of egoism among group relationships to gain acceptance, solidarity, and an inflated feeling of self-worth.

I honestly can’t say I believe in God, but I also can’t say I don’t either. God is what made me as a species, but god is not what actively provides for mine and my siblings’ food, shelter, or security. So thus we owe it to ourselves, for as long as we’re stuck here on this miserable planet overthinking our reason for existence, to live as best we can and live with ourselves and only our life. Any other, higher priority is false and placing ourselves higher than we can be. 

tldr; we’ve overestimated our own importance due to our potential worth rather than gaining what we can from the tiny cursed lifespan we already have.