Teenage angst revisited

For the past few years I've been trying as hard as I can to keep religion out of my life. It stole my sanity for as long as I can remember - first as a christian perpetually overwhelmed with doubt, next as a skeptic fearing social rejection, and finally as an agnostic struggling through a year-long existential crisis in which I had to re-shape my life and learn to see the world through an irreligious lens. It wasn't easy finally being honest with myself and admitting I really don't believe this when so much of my identity was centered around my christianity.

Even now, my relationship with religion is strange and something I don't quite understand. I feel so drawn to it - or at least its imagery and romanticism, kind of like Nick Laird says in an essay comparing poetry and religion: "I like ritual and heightened states. I like mind-altering drugs. I believe in invisible forces - radioactivity, magnetism, sound waves - and I’m more than willing to sit for an hour listening to a church organist practice, which I did just last week. And I’ll let myself shiver along with the immense chord changes. I don’t like faith but I’m fond of its trappings- the kitschy icons, the candles, the paintings, the architecture and, especially, the poetry."

And I like all of these things, too - save the drugs. They bring back fond memories; they make me feel at home.

The problem is whenever someone describes a genuine religious experience to me, I can't handle it. I break down. I feel frustrated. I feel the way I always felt in church when others were having religious experiences around me -falling down on their knees and weeping - and wondering why I couldn't have those experiences, too.

Ever since I started going to church when I was little, I've had the feeling I'm missing something. Maybe a "religious experience" structure in my brain that's absent or microscopic. Either way, it never seemed fair. I never felt like my doubt and rationality were my fault, and I still don't. I don't even find it to be a fault at all on most days.

Sometimes, though, I get so angsty thinking that others believe in a God who made me and yet, made me in a way in which I can't believe. And I know I'm not alone in this; I know there are others who, try as they might, just can't have faith in any sort of god. The problem is to the majority of faith-havers, it seems us doubters just aren't trying hard enough.

If religious people are right and I'll have to answer to God in the end, I just hope he understands that I tried for years and years and years. I hope he understands that this brain he put me in is just too logical and skeptical. And most importantly, I hope he'll answer my questions as to why he'd make some brains wired in such a way that they can understand him better than others. I'd also like to ask him why he chose to be so damn mysterious.

Until then and after I finish this book, I suppose it's back to keeping my life religion-free. And that's okay, because I only long for religion when I think of other people's experiences. I'm perfectly happy without it, and I need to remember that. I need to remember that like Nick Laird, I don't need religion when poetry exists.