I’ve always been uneasy with religion. I’m uneasy with
it/around it for many reasons that I know and understand and some that likely
are unbeknownst to me.
I’ve never been a churchgoer. I didn’t grow up with
religion. For this reason it seems foreign to me. It doesn’t seem natural to
me. Many aspects of religion seem cultish or wrong to me. I don’t mean to be
offensive about it; it’s just how I feel.
A lot of religious people seem like bad people to me. They
seem like hypocrites. They don’t seem like they’re worthy of the glories they
feel they’ll bask in one day. They don’t seem like they follow the rules and
words they preach or are preached to them.
I know this is likely only a small segment of churchgoers,
but I feel it’s tolerated by the others and it shouldn’t be.
That’s not to say I’m perfect. I’m not. This is also a
reason why I’m uneasy with religion. Any time I’m around religion I feel
judged. I feel inadequate. I feel wrong. I know this is supposed to be
forgiven, but I don’t necessarily feel I’m worthy of such forgiveness for the
things I do or have done. I can’t be around religion without feeling guilty and
it’s a feeling I’m all too familiar with, as it is.
But, the biggest issue I have with religion is that I’m a
man of many fears. Probably way too many fears for a man my age. One of these
biggest fears is death. I’m going to die. Everybody is going to die. It’s
something that I can’t even remotely think about for more than a couple of seconds
without wanting to burst into tears or scream at the top of my lungs. For this
very reason I push it back and don’t think much of it. However, when I’m in a
church or around religion or even worse around death the fear can’t escape me.
I can’t wrap my head around the concept of death. What’s the
point of living, loving and enjoying life when it’s going to end – and may do
so in a split second? The fact that I’m here now and one day I won’t be scares
me. The fact that people I love are going to die on me absolutely horrifies me.
I don’t know how people who have had close ones pass away can deal with it on a
day-to-day basis.
All of the religious people I know don’t fear death. Many
even welcome it, because they believe they will be better off in death than in
life because of “eternal life.” I’m scared because I don’t know that this is
the case. I’m scared that when I die that’s the end of everything and I’m just
gone. The concept of Hell and possibly being damned to it for all eternity
scares me even further.
Sure, many would say you just need to have faith, but the
word “faith” isn’t very comforting in this situation.
The only comfort would be proof that everything works out well in the end. The only problem here is there isn’t proof of heaven or eternal life or God. I understand that the whole point of religion is to believe in something without proof, but the fact that there isn’t any leads to the possibility of religion being nothing but a cruel joke. A child’s fairytale to make them believe everything will be OK, that’s been passed down for centuries as fact.
It’s nice to have faith. It’s nice to believe in heaven or
say you know heaven and God exist, but the honesty of it all is that nobody
really does know. That’s scary as hell.
I have managed to avoid these fears for most of my life, but
they have crept up upon me rather quickly. I always knew that religion was
going to cause a rift between me and my girlfriend (now fiancée). We haven’t
had too many problems in the eight-plus years that we have been together, but
when we do it’s almost always the result of religion. Religion is something
that comforts her and she wants to share it with me. It’s a nice thought, but
religion is something that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t have an issue with
her religion. I even like that she is religious, because I believe her to be
worthy of it and believe that it makes her who she is … the great, loving
person she is.
I knew that proposing to her a couple of months ago could
speed up some of the issues we’d face due to religion, but I had hoped that we
could fight through it and everything would be OK. She’s Catholic and in
Catholicism in order to be married you have to be baptized, something that I
have not been. To do this you have to take courses on Catholicism, religion,
etc. These courses, which I’m supposed to start today, are held every Monday
night at her local church. Not only will they be something that terrifies me
every single time I’m doing them, but they are also incredibly time consuming
(and time is something I don’t feel I have a lot of floating around). I also
don’t like the feeling of these classes being forced upon me. I don’t like that
they are mandated if you’re going to be married in a Catholic church. I don’t
like a system that says ‘you have to do this or else.’ I don’t like anything
about the situation, but feel I have no other choice but to participate. It’s
an ultimatum I’ve been given … her and the church or whatever comes of life
without her.
Both options scare the hell out of me.
