I also pray and meditate quite a lot, though I don’t consider most of that exactly spiritual. My prayers tend to be more of angry vents and pleas to God, interrogating Him why He allows so much suffering. Why I was allowed to be born such a genetic fuck-up, and why He seemed to intervene whenever I was nearest to death. Why did He seem so actively interventive in my life, but at the same time, allowed other children afflicted with terminal conditions and injuries suffer and die so quickly and young? I mean, while I was just barely clinging to life as a newborn, a kid in the room next door to mine died after getting hit by an SUV and being in a coma for months, seemingly regaining his consciousness up until a few days before he passed away. Why was that otherwise perfectly healthy kid allowed to die so young? Why did I manage to pull through despite my health circling the drain? 

My mom is beyond convinced God Himself healed me after one of her mystical friends came to the hospital to visit newborn me, and claimed she saw Saint Mary cradling me in her arms while I was gripped by Pneumonia and Sepsis. The day after my mom’s friend had that vision, my stats rapidly improved. Within a week, I was sent home. This, my mom says, is what solidified the existence of God in her mind. As time went on and I grew up stronger and healthier, her faith also further strengthened. Though, I've come to realize that her faith has always been very different from her dad's (my grandpa Lyle) faith. While my grandpa's faith is much more strict and conservative, my mom's faith has always been much more liberal and open. 

My dad, on the other hand, believes I’m just a strikingly abnormal case. “There’s always exceptions to the rule” he often says, “Doesn’t mean there’s a God out there. If there is, He is one sadistic, angry son-of-a-bitch!” 

My dad was a man of faith up until I was born. While he helplessly watched me suffer at the cruel hands of fate, taking turns with my mom to watch me breathe while I slept, a landline phone in his hand just in case my breathing became shallow and/or fast, he lost his once staunch Lutheran faith. After all, in his mind (and often in my mind), if there really is an all-good, all-loving, all-powerful God out there, ruling over the universe which He created by simply speaking it into existence. Surely, He wouldn’t have allowed me to suffer from the things I did (and do), or allow young people to suffer and die from cancer, or allow deadly pandemics to ravage the globe, or sit back and watch as man commits atrocities against man, on and on. 

Now, as a twenty-year-old, literally healthier than I’ve ever been in my life and still improving, I seem to be a near perfect mix of my mom’s Christian faith and my dad’s atheism. I am torn between the two different worlds. My Christian side wrestles with my atheistic side 24/7. There’s also a small part of me that calls itself religious, but not Christian. After all, the Bible isn’t inherent, for it was written by flawed authors and has been imperfectly translated from ancient Hebrew and Greek to modern English, time and time again. How can I trust the Bible (which literally just means Book in Old English, with roots in ancient Greek) more than any other ancient text? I have a long way to go before I find an answer to that question and others like it. 

Yet, for now, I still call myself a Christian. I still pray to the God of Abraham. I am still on the cautious lookout for a sound Christian church. I still own a Bible I read regularly. I am just not yet sure if Christianity is what I truly believe. Hell, I am not even sure if I truly believe there’s a God out there. Most of me is convinced that God exists. But, there still lives an edgy, 14-year-old atheist in my mind that likes to be a smart ass when it comes to Christianity, as well as a pagan (for lack of a better term) who believes that all religions worship and lead to the same Source. Indeed, sometimes I find myself speaking to the wilderness on my hikes as though it can hear me, or my inner atheist will butt in while I’m praying with something snarky like, “If God is so loving, why does He hate gay people so much?”

For now, I don't feel that I'm at risk of losing my faith in the Creator. I just have much to learn about Him, and I'm not afraid to ask questions and seek honest, solid answers to them no matter how tough they may be, or where they may lead. My biggest concern is that I'll come to believe things about God that are simply not true. Christianity claims God is love, justice, kindness, mercy, light. Yet, when I read certain stories in the Bible where God seems to mercilessly annihilate entire populations, or send a couple bears to maul forty-two kids because they made fun of a prophet for being bald, I often question if He really is the embodiment of love and mercy. I am especially bothered by people who claim to worship the Christian God, but live diametrically opposed to the things Christianity claims God is and Christians ought to be. I've experienced much of that abuse and hypocrisy myself, which has unsurprisingly left a very bad taste in my mouth. 

Honestly, I long for community with fellow believers despite my previous experiences with church, but I'm too damn scared to "take the plunge" as they say, and start checking out different churches. The last thing I want is to walk into a church where the whole congregation starts speaking in tongues and flopping on the floor like fucking fish out of water, or in churches where they claim to love others but weave politics and disdain in their sermons, or in churches that preach pure heresy.

Unfortunately, I've personally experienced all of that, and then some, in most of the churches I've been dragged into by my Christian family members. Perhaps, that's why I have such an uncannily keen ability to sense when I've stepped foot into another one of those places, without even hearing the sermon. I guess wolves in wool literally walk differently than those who are genuinely doing their best to be like Christ, and my subconsciousness picks up on that, raising my hackles.