Podcast

Welcome to the Map of a Human Being Blog & Podcast #5. Covering the first six months of my encounter with Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.

I know a lot of people today don’t even believe in the existence of a God. I went through a short atheist period when I was about 19. Of course it is the religions, in my opinion, that have trashed the idea of God with their vacuous and bigoted points of view – not to mention a few wars, jihads, inquisitions, reformations, etc. And what does it mean: the religions? The officials of the religions, the people who draw their salaries from religious positions, most of them, from my observation, are simply politicians in a religious setting. And how dare some of them say that we must go through them to connect to God.
I know at one time I really believed in the existence of a Jesus just the way they described him. I think when we are young there is a real hope that an authentic Jesus existed. Unfortunately the young adult girls and boys who taught us at the Methodist Sunday school I went to had very little spiritual knowledge, and were simply parroting their parents most of the time. They tried to impress us with miracle stories about Jesus. Well at that time, on special occasions, magicians came to school and performed their magic tricks. As we grew older we learned sleight of hand and slowly figured out how these were done. Even if we couldn’t figure them out, once we knew they were tricks, they were fathomable. And with the science education we were getting, explaining the mysteries of life, well, for me, Jesus got lumped in with the magicians and I lost respect for miracles. So with the lure of friends playing in the park on Sunday mornings and nothing to hold me at Sunday school, it was a one way current, and I sadly remember running down the street arguing back at my mother that I was no longer going to church. Church was her refuge. My dad never attended. World War Two closed the book on any faith in a deity that he might have had.
From those I have talked too, it seems an atheist period is almost essential before one can renew faith. Well, I think it has something to do with the death of the false god that, religions, parents and society feed us as children. I was definitely raised on a version of the sky god. The large bearded mean man who sits up in the clouds waiting for us to screw up so that he can hit us with his massive bat! By the way, I believe that the bad reputation of the monotheistic God has been fashioned in part by 1500 years teaching the Greek classics in Western culture. All the bad behavior of those deities have been superimposed onto Yahweh, God, Allah; which especially suited the brutal mentality of the oppressed male psyche and the oppressors, until some modicum of freedom was attained through the twentieth century. I know there is some wisdom in the Greek classics, but there is also this other influence.
One of the clinchers for me was everything is forgiven because Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Then what is the point of carrying on in this world of suffering and pain if it is all taken care of? I might as well leave now and go straight to the glorious afterlife. Something about that didn’t ring true for me as a 19 year old. Maybe that is because I had only read two and a half books by the time I was twenty. The half was a science fiction story called, The Day of The Trifids, which was for examinations at the end of my school days. The first complete book was a Time Life volume on Matter. This book showed me how everything I could see was made of atomic particles: atoms, electrons, protons, nuclei, etc. Everything ‘solid’ was in fact an electromagnetic fiction because these particles were just pockets of electrical energy. Despite this, we can’t walk through matter because these little particles are dashing about at the speed of light, so there are always masses of these little electric shocks in the way. And another thing, if you could stop this whole thing and put all the atoms side by side, most of what we call ‘solid’ is in fact space! You could fit all the so-called ‘solid’ of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, London, or the Washington monument into a little finger! I spent weeks jumping up and down on floors wondering why I didn’t go through them!
At that time I rarely went to a library I regret to say. My interest had been piqued by the idea of psychology, which had such a low profile back then. To the working class English of that day, you had to be certifiably nuts to be associated with it. I tried to read one psychological book, the cover attracted me, but it just seemed like gobbeldy-gook to me. I wasn’t very discerning back then. Then I read my second book, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. I can’t remember how it came into my hands, maybe a jumble sale at my Mum’s church. I thought it was another book on psychology, but it was a kind of Christian book. Oddly enough, when I had finished it, I knew I believed in God. What kind of God, I don’t know? Just that I felt a connection inside to something mysterious and powerful in the universe, and that actually it was always with me and I now called it God. However, what I felt had nothing to do with religion, saints, prophets or any other supports. So unlike some, I’m glad to say, I didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I didn’t tell anyone about this, it was my secret. And it wasn’t a big part of my life, just something that was ‘there.’ I find it odd now that I didn’t act on this new awareness, I guess I didn’t know where to turn. I mean, if you really say to yourself, I believe in the existence of a God, doesn’t that have huge consequences for the way you view life? Like, perhaps I should find out a little more about It? (I now think there should be a warning on all religious buildings like the ones on cigarette packs: The opinions, words and behavior expressed in this establishment and by its members, may not be those of the deity they claim to represent or worship!)

Tags: religion losing faith sky god