(or: why this blog has been off the air) (or: losing some things, learning others)
“but you can’t live in the world without an idea of the world. But it’s living that makes the ideas. You can’t wait for a theory, but you have to have a theory”
Angels in America
Why this blog has been off the air:
Mostly, because majority of significant thoughts that I have in Japan don’t make sense to a blog audience without the back story. And they originate in a key reason why i came here: to take some time out from my normal hectic schedule to deal with an important transition in my life. There are some questions that you can only answer when you have removed yourself from all of the outside influences that would sway you one way or another.
And to be completely honest, posting about it seems self indulgent and self important. I just finished reading Gandhi’s “Experiments with Truth” and to be honest again, I do not recommend it. Thus, if i find Gandhi gratuitous in his recitations of his religious/philosophical journey than i really can’t justify posting up mine. But in the end, i figure, if you’re bored. Stop reading.
Losing some things…
“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What as holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us — for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
In early 2010 I made a final decision to reject Christianity as truth. It was a decision that had been coming for about 2-3 years. Prior to that I had been raised in a strongly (I can’t describe just how strongly) Christian family. I attended a Christian school and my life had revolved around Church activities. The Christian narrative is one that I passionately believed – from an experiential, emotional and intellectual stand point. I have read far more apologetics than the average (and started reading them at 10). But at university, I suppose I questioned my beliefs more rigorously. After a few years of intellectual and emotional (let’s say turmoil – because, well, I’m dramatic like that) I came to realise that the arguments for the Christian story couldn’t stack up. Emotionally and experientially as well I guess I came to the same conclusion.
This decision came in the middle of my honours year. And, well, I had a lot of things to do. I felt that I didn’t have time to properly process a lot of what had happened.
As well as making an intellectual decision there was certainly a large emotional element. I often refer to it as the worst break up ever – losing someone you loved for many years by finding out they never existed in the first place. It’s hard to describe and probably impossible to really understand unless you had experienced it. Thus, I will spare the sob story. But has been a painful process for me. I still know the words to every Hillsong song released since “people just like us” and remember promise after promise made by me to God and by God to me. Prophesies that are now pastors illusions and prayer that was a figment of my imagination. Love, money, years of my life – on something that was a lie.
My comfort, my shelter,
Tower of refuge and strength
Let every breath, all that I am
Never cease to worship you.
Shout to the Lord all the earth let us sing,
Power and majesty, praise to the king,
Mountains bow down and the seas will roar,
At the sound of your name,
I sing for joy at the work of your hands
Forever I’ll love you, Forever I’ll stand
Nothing compares to the promise I have in you.
Hillsong “Shout to the Lord”
People Just like Us (1994)
There are also social implications. Old friends who cannot accept the decisions that you’ve made. And, the worst, breaking the hearts of my parents (for the rest of their lives). After my devotion to God I suppose making my parents proud was incredibly important to me. But from now on, whatever I accomplish will never redeem me in their eyes.
Learning Others…
Then there is moving on. To decide there is no God is all well and good. But everybody lives with a view of the world/worldview/religion aka. Answers to life’s big questions. You can’t live without answers to these questions, at least not well. I personally believe that this is why so many people stick to religion, or go back to it, or sort of live in some soft acknowledgement that there may not be a God but go along with it because ‘it’s easier if you believe there is’. The alternative is somewhat difficult to sort out – and a whole lot more self directed. Secular humanism is all well and good (but let’s face it Peter Singer is crazy, or close to it). There is no almighty, all powerful answer to everything. No overarching plan for your life by a power greater than yourself. It’s scary. And for me, having grown up in an environment where the Christian answer was the ONLY answer, answering life’s big questions without it has been/is a challenge.
And this was part of the reason that I wanted to go somewhere completely different. I’m definitely appreciating the time to read and think and consider a lot of these things. But at the same time, it has been difficult. When you live alone, in a country where you can’t speak the language – its pretty difficult to get away from yourself. And I’m 100% the kind of person who over thinks everything.
I have made a lot of progress. But I guess the most important realisation – mostly made through reading an unhealthy number of biographies in the last few months – is that these decisions are the kind that you make over and over your whole life long. That it is important to have a base to work off of. But it doesn’t all have to be figured out. There are things I have learnt here that I will try to put into words later. But again, I think the greatest thing I have achieved or learnt so far is to let go of a lot of the things that I was holding on to. and the (somewhat christian) idea that i should be able to know the future and the meaning of everything in my life.
IN embracing Christianity one is told over and over again that there is a leap of faith – that you can’t have all the answers.
In living without a God, the same has to be true. Perhaps your beliefs make a whole lot more sense given the facts that we do know about the world. But ultimately the hard questions are always hard questions. And in my experiences so far I guess i have started to have some answers.
But in the end I think the important thing is to keep asking.
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
C.S. Lewis
We will then travel for 10 days through Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe and the general Kansai region. We will be in Kyoto for the O-bon festival, which, despite my fear of fireworks, should still be a blast.
