faith

I was born and raised a mormon. Full name: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so yes, we are Christians despite anything you've heard to the contrary. I know people do love their predetermined notions of other people's religions, so I hear my fair share of judgement calls on what mormons are and aren't. Feel free to ask actual mormons about mormon stuff instead of looking up skeptic stuff on the internet and walking away thinking I have 7 mothers and never cut my hair and think gay people are the spawn of satan, other fun rumors etc etc.

My problem, as of late, is something most people experience at some point or another. A crisis of belief, a clashing of logical thinking and faith. Growing up I can't think of a single time when I wasn't sure it was the true church. As a child, you accept things more at face value and I also think children are less jaded as a whole, and thus more willing to put their trust in things that haven't proven themselves to be true with numbers and facts. I'm at a point where I'm picking apart the things I've taken to be true in my life thus far and examining them up close. And with religion, there are lots of things to criticize. I know there are. My dad's a good example of a once-christian-now-agnostic-atheist because he was a little too cynical in all the wrong places I think. He didn't focus on the good of it. Because I've come to understand that with religion there's always going to be things you can't explain, but for ages people thought the world was flat. We're still discovering math. We have no idea big the universe is, or how it came to be if there was nothing to begin with.

I think religion is just science we don't understand yet. It's also sort of like that thought about a 2D world where everything is 2D and that's all they know, and if you were to try and explain to them your 3D world, you wouldn't be able to. If you stuck your hand into this 2D world, all they would see is cross sections of your fingers and continue believing there is nothing else, nothing more than how they are. We assume we would have some way of proving or disproving some greater power, but it's all in your attitude. If a christian tells an atheist they will be proven wrong if they just read the bible, that atheist will not care because if they don't believe the book to be true, they aren't going to set any store by what it says. Conversely, an atheist can list all the facts about science and logic they want, but if that religious person has sufficient faith, they will still find a way to trace everything back to God. I think we spend too much time pitting science and religion against each other. If there is a God which, even in this weird questiony time for me, I believe to be true, I think he must be the greatest scientist there is. He must understand all the laws of physics and chemistry and infinitely more to have created everything the way it is. It's just science we don't understand, so it's written off as wishful thinking and witchcraft.

I am a cynic. I question everything and want to know how everything works and why things are the way they are. With my faith, it's harder because stuff can't be proven and explained the way I usually prefer, but that doesn't mean I don't think there's something very worth while in it. I remember this one conversation I had with my dad when I was maybe 7 or 8, I don't remember exactly how old, and I don't know how the topic of religion came up but it did. I think he was asking me something about how I knew anything concrete about religion or something, and I remember saying something about it not mattering because my religion was giving me a good way to live my life, and it's better to have lived a good life and not need it in the end than not caring what you do in life and ending up wrong about it all and regretting not being better.

And religion, lived correctly, is beautiful. It's built on loving and serving and caring for others. People that focus on the wrong aspects of it are the ones being idiots about gay people and stuff that isn't any of their business. I'm friends with people of all kinds of sexualities and religions and cultures and my life is so much better for having them in it. I don't want to change who they are to fit some self-thought-up notion of what religion is supposed to do to people. If you boil most religions down, you'll find compassion and love and their core, so the standards of living that go along with that are fine by me.

So yes, right now I'm struggling a bit with my faith, but even if I don't work it out and find a way to keep my faith, which is unlikely I think because I love the gospel so much, I think I will continue living it. I will continue living my life like there is a God watching over me because in the end, having that sort of hope and happiness in my life seems like a much better option than living by the concrete and not having hope for anything more.