2001-04-11 - 10:25 p.m.

Crisis of faith.

Someone said those words yesterday - they set off a long chain of thoughts and discussions and feelings. Thanks S..I guess needed a kick, even though you weren't kicking me at all.

I was born to a Christian home. I went to church regularly through my childhood. Church camps in the summer, church pageants, church choir...all parts of fond memories of my growing up at WFBC. I was with other kids, doing things I loved, and worshipping a god I thought I had truly come to believe in with all my heart, soul and mind. I can sing all the hymns by heart, I can recite passage after passage, I can give you academic reguritations of Bible theory and fact. I learned all this growing up..but it was never forced, I accepted it and took it as my own.

When I left for my freshman year of college it was a Christian Campus in Mass that was the only school I had really considered. I had the grades and the talent to go to many other much more prestigous schools, but never a thought. I wanted to be in a place of God and Christ where I would be safe and nurtured in my faith..where I could grow and learn in a righteous setting. Feh!

It turned my prison. In those walls I thought would nurture me I was raped. In the surrounding pool of Christian thought I realized that a whole lot of people don't have a clue why they believe what they believe. I saw many good and wonderful things as well...but the illusion was gone...the atmosphere stifling...and after a year I left.

I still believed in God and Christ and my Christian faith and I searched ferverently to understand and grow and figure out why I believed what I believed. I read books and watched lectures and thought and thought and thought through it. And I came out knowing I was a Christian and when and why and how I believed in God and his Son Jesus Christ. I knew how I interpreted the Bible and why. I knew the life I had to live and how to do it. Another good illusion.

And I stand here today in a crisis of faith. One I have a hard time contemplating and a hard time accepting.

I realize after a long time that those books I read and the lectures I attended - they were geared towards one world view - towards convincing me I had tangible reason to believe the Christian Faith that I believed in. So I've come really to no answers - for I forgot to answer first the fundamental questions.

Can I believe that a benevolent, omnicient god created an earth with billions of people and then gave roughly 2% or less of them the right answer as to his being? Damning the rest to hell for all eternity?

That's the big one. Its a message of tolerance if not acceptance of other religions. Its a knowledge and an insight that I am not so powerful as to pretend to have the answers. So many of the traditions of the big religions align, so many of the tenants and thoughts are common. Why do we fight and die over the logistics? Why do we segregate ourselves rather than come together to worship a greater being in whatever form it may be. Why would a god command his people to kill eachother? Are there two fundamental powers of all existence - Good and evil? Is there a God and a Devil? Was Jesus Christ divinity or just an amazing man of history? We cannot answer these things - none of us, not without faith. So where did we find the ability to qualify that faith with a specific form and nature of god?

And all that shakes to the very ground the beliefs I have grown up "knowing" were truth in my heart. And I find myself in a crisis of walking away from those things. Easter is not far now....I cannot prepare myself for the event in deep prayer as usual as it seems far too hypocritical....and yet a part of me breaks that the holiday this year will pass in such a manner. I spoke to Christ tonight - standing on the porch under the stars. I asked him to show me what was right if this was wrong - and yet by what I've said in the past paragraph - how do I know there's a Christ there to listen? How to I know what is a voice and my head playing tricks - how do I know what is a sign or what is just a convienantly placed coincidence.

Do I believe in Christ and the trinity at the tenants of the Christian faith because I grew up with them and they're second nature - a learned behavoir?

-or-

Do I believe in it because its something inherent, a message from God that fills my soul and tells me its true.

-or-

Because I'm scared of being wrong and going to hell.

I can't answer that and its driving me crazy. My only consolation seems the line from Dogma - "Its better to have ideas than beliefs". And yet that seems oddly painful tonight.

I'm confused. My head hurts.