My Experiences With Religion, Faith & Beliefs

"If you climb the mountain you will see, there is no great distance between the Lord and me" - Thin Lizzy: 'Downtown Sundown'.

It certainly feels like in this day and age that if you have a faith, it's a dirty thing to have. People instantly try to judge you for what religion you are. If you're Jewish, some people might think you have a big nose and are after all their money. If you're Christian, some people might assume you automatically disagree with homosexuality or you're going to try and force your religion onto them. If you're Muslim, some might think that you're secretly plotting a terrorist attack or that you're awful towards women. The list goes on.

Obviously, all of those were stereotypes. And I don't agree with any of those. But there are obviously going to be some people that do. Recently, two Muslims were thrown out of a Donald Trump rally after people starting shouting accusations at them that they were carrying bombs. It's despicable. And it almost feels like that if you have any kind of faith, you're a bad person.

Now, I'm very ashamed to admit, I thought this for a short time too. (I never thought for a moment that every Muslim I meet would try and kill me or that every Jewish person was after my money but for Christianity I definitely thought this stereotype was accurate). I have a friend who is Christian and, in my eyes for a while, she seemed 'brainwashed' for a better word. She was saying a lot of things I was disagreeing with and it felt like she was trying to convert me to her cause. At the same time this was happening, I was coming to my own conclusion that God did not exist and that I was, by all accounts, Atheist. So, my own exploration of religion mixed with the things my friend was saying at the time didn't make for a good time. So I, wrongly, assumed all Christians were going to try and convert me.

Obviously, this is not the case. My friend has since found more stability in her beliefs and many things she says I still don't completely agree with but I agree with many of the sentiments she articulates from time to time. Not only that, I've been wrestling with my own beliefs on faith again.

I've been trying to figure out what I believe in since the age of 12. My mum is a Spiritualist and I was raised with that belief system in the background. It was never forced upon me but I always had that kind of spiritual aspect in the background. Though I was never 100% sure that I believed in it as well. When I was 12, I decided that I didn't believe or agree with a lot of what my Christian educational upbringing suggested. I went to 3 Church of England primary schools and the sort of thing they came out with was very much the same. Of course, it wasn't like a church sermon but I just found myself not believing in the God that our local vicar presented to us. Not only that, at the time I was convinced that God giving me Aspergers meant he didn't love me. (I was very ashamed of having it back then and being different. And when you think God hates you by giving you this disorder, it's a very dark and lonely place to find yourself. Trust me).

It was also around this time that I started to fully appreciate the scale and severity of events such as 9/11, 7/7, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and it occurred to me that, if God was as loving as our vicar maintained, why would he allow events like that to occur and why would he allow people to die in such horrible ways? To my 12 year old mind, that didn't compute. So I went searching for a new belief system.

One day, I decided that Judaism might be the way forward. But then I found out who you can get into Judaism as someone who wasn't born to it and, frankly, the circumcision didn't seem that attractive to me. Nor, coincidentally, did the idea of giving up bacon but that's by the by.

My spiritual quest, however, came to the attention of my woodwork teacher, Mr Harris. Who, very kindly of him, decided to do some extracurricular research into religions and beliefs for me in order to aid my journey to a new faith. (I seem to remember him saying he spent an hour looking at things like that but I was still very flattered and humbled that he decided to help me in this way anyway!) Eventually, during a woodwork lesson, he informed me that he found a religion that combined both the faith and belief aspect as well as my love of things sciencey and sci-fi. It was called Ralienism.

Now, upon further research, I discovered that Ralienism is more of a weird cult than a religion so I decided to leave it well alone. But, either way, I decided to keep looking.

I continued looking for a number of years until I came to the conclusion, in my mind, that God didn't exist and that science had all the answers. And I firmly believed this until my friend, who's studying physics at uni, started explaining a lot of things science is doing right now. It occurred to me here that science doesn't have all the answers and that, like religion and faith, there is room for human error. I'm not going to disagree that we have gravity, we have cells in our body or that blue is blue but when it comes to a lot of the theoretical stuff that's where I start to draw the line.

So, atheism it was. For the long haul. Or, so it seemed.

However, over the past 6 months, I've realised that for a long time I've felt empty inside. Not only that, I've done that stupid young person thing of doing some dumb shit. Which everyone does but it didn't sit well with me. So I decided to do a bit of soul searching to try and find what I felt empty about.

Then it hit me.

I was missing something to believe in. I evidently didn't believe what I thought I believed strongly enough. Which led me once more on a mission to try and work out what I did believe again. I spent whole nights thinking about what was missing and what I needed. I tried a multitude of things but nothing seemed to work. So I went down the path of faith again. I spoke to my housemate and another friend who has faith and I realised that I had a very narrow view on what faith could be.

I didn't realise that faith could be individual. I presumed that you subscribed to a religion or a denomination and abided by their rules and scriptures but I now know this isn't the case at all.

And then, one night, it all hit me. One certain event made me realise that I was perhaps more spiritual than I thought I was.

I followed a particular Atheist page on Facebook and, for the most part, didn't really pay much attention to it. However, one night shortly after the horrible attacks in Paris and Beirut back in November, an article appeared on the page about a group of "Christians" forcibly evicting and attacking Muslims in Central African Republic just because they could. The article was shared with the simple tagline "religion fuels violence".

Regardless of what my belief has been in the past; when it comes to religion I may disagree but I will always defend someone else's right to express it. And I did on this occasion, but it felt different this time. This time, it felt like a personal attack.

So I commented on this article and said how stupidly naive they were to suggest that all religion fuels violence and gave my opinion that religion is often hijacked by people in political power in order to appeal to a larger community and justify their nefarious acts. I like to think I argued the point quite well but, obviously, the atheists on the page didn't agree and argued back. Fair. I like a debate. And, to be fair to him, the young man that took me on did put forward a decent case.

However, what annoyed me most about him was that he seemed to dismiss the political angle every time I brought it up. He wasn't to be shifted and, as I made it clear, nor was I. Which we respected about the other in the end but it did make for a good debate.

There was another woman who tried to suggest that I was too young to know what I was talking about and started being quite juvenile by saying "I think someone needs to do some wider reading, not mentioning names - Joshua" and things like this. (But then I just told her that we were having a grown up conversation and if she wanted to continue making herself look stupid then she can carry on).

After this though, I felt better for defending religion in this aspect and it felt right to do so. It was at this stage that I knew that it was a faith that I was missing. Like I said before, that post felt like a personal attack and, in my gut, when I realised that it was faith that I was missing it felt right.

So, to cut a continuing story short, here's what's happened since that night.

• I've discovered that I don't believe in a single entity called God. I believe that God is a metaphor for everything that's good within the world.
• I also believe that, if God is a metaphor for all that's good, then it's logical to have the Devil as a metaphor for the bad. The Christian faith, in many ways, is like a comic book. There's an eternal battle of good over evil and sin over love. Just with different participants along the way. (Though, as a Guardians of the Galaxy fan, if the Bible had a talking belligerent raccoon I would've reconsidered this whole thing much sooner). 
• I believe that there was a man named Jesus. I also believe that he was a very good spiritual teacher. However, I'm still not 100% convinced by the walking on water or the feeding of the 5000. I'm still very much open to the concept he was a time traveller but we'll take it one step at a time. (By the way, the time traveller thing was a joke in case anyone isn't used to my sense of humour).
• I also believe that most of the stories in the Bible are more like fables rather than historically documented accounts. From the stories I remember, Noah's Ark could be interpreted as a battle overcoming a terrible problem or David and the Lion's Den could be seen as a metaphor for facing your fears and overcoming them. That's my own interpretation. And I'd much rather have a faith where I can learn lessons about how to be a good human by reading between the lines rather than read a story about a boat in a flood and just accept that these animals decided not to eat each other and not worry about the fact they pee and poop. (Seriously, I can't be the only one that wonders that).
• I've also come to the conclusion that a lot of what religion is, or perhaps what I think should be, about the community feel. Why else would most religions have a meeting place?

There's also a lot more I've discovered about my feelings on this but I don't want to bore you. But, in case anyone has any questions:

1. Yes, I know reconsider myself a Christian. However, I'm open to teachings from other religions.
2. Yes, I agree with homosexuality and I'm 110% for marriage equality as well as same-sex parenting. (Considering I'm pan-romantic myself, it'd be hypocritical if I didn't agree with this would it not?)
3. I'm pro-choice. 
4. I do believe this is a power bigger than us that we can't yet perceive or understand. But I don't necessarily believe this is a single deity.
5. No, I don't hate every other faith in existence.
6. No, I don't like the Westboro Baptist Church. They're assholes. I don't care if you're one of them reading this. You guys have issues.
7. I would happily hold hands with other people and form a human chain outside a Mosque to protect them if it came down to it.

As well as this, I would love to experience different religious practises. One of my goals for 2016 (that I didn't put in the last post) is to visit a Mosque, a Synagogue and Gurdwara and observe how they worship and what they do in those institutions. And, if I'm allowed to, take part! 

I'm also writing about counter-terrorism and religious fundamentalism for my dissertation. And, to help out with that, I have brought a copy of both the King James Version of the Bible as well as the Qu'ran. As an extra-curricular exercise, I intend to read both from cover to cover as well as using it to help my dissertation research.

Because, here's the thing. RE was my favourite subject through school. I always found the concept of faith and why people believe things very interesting. I also loved learning about different religions and different cultures. And my teacher, Mr Craig, was very instrumental in this. But also, one of my friends' comes from a Muslim family. Their grandparent's being very involved in their local Muslim community. And I always enjoyed meeting them and discussing Islam with them because I discovered so much the religion that most people don't know. I find learning about different beliefs and cultures very interesting. To know how other people live makes me feel humbled and amazed about how wonderfully diverse our little rock in a little solar system in a cornucopia of different galaxies in a seemingly infinite cosmos can be.

In fact, if my GCSE results didn't need to be remarked and I was able to do RE at A-Level, I probably would've gone on to do Religion and Theology at university.  However, this was not the case.

And I didn't write this to boast or to glorify my recent efforts or anything like that. I wrote this because I wanted to convey a very simple message.

Religion and faith is not inherently bad. Everyone can have their own faith and you don't necessarily need to conform to a single religion or denomination. And, contrary to popular belief, you can be spiritual and not be religious. And you may not agree with everything religion stands for but it can be good for many things. And no religion is inherently violent in its nature. While I believe humanity is not inherently violent, you cannot argue with the notion that people can dick about with a religion and make it look bad. (I'm looking at you, Rupert Murdoch, Trump and Britain First). So if you feel you need it, look for it. Seek and ye shall find.