I gave up on God, and I’ve never felt so free
‘Give me love in my heart, keep me burning. Keep me burning ’til the break of day…’
I was 5 years old, newly branded in a red school uniform.
My tiny, sweaty hands gripped a tattered hymn book as I sang along with my classmates.
Why were our teachers encouraging us to request arterial infiltration and incineration?
It was the beginning of a confusing relationship with God.
I went to Catholic school — the world’s largest non-governmental education system. A place where atonal priests teach you the stations of the cross and feed you scales of Jesus’ wafer flesh.
They warn you that questioning the almighty, wafer reptile is not okay.
He died for our sins, so you must respect the ancient truth of truths:
There’s a great king hiding in the sky who loves you. But if you miss Sunday service, masturbate, or say his biography sucks — he’ll toss you into an eternal fire.
Still, in spite of some dubious teachings, there were many good things about religion that I respected.
Over the years, I saw it bring solace to the grief-stricken, community to the lonely and purpose to the lost.
Convinced the good outweighed the bad, I called myself agnostic. Not strictly Christian, but open to a higher power.
Doubt reigns supreme
I’ve always struggled to accept the many contradictions and fantastical elements of Christian faith.
But I still felt there was someone, something, guiding me through life. Some indescribable force I recognised as God.
How could there not be? I was compelled to pray to him in times of need. And because I sought comfort in him, denying his existence made me feel guilty.
An upbringing of religious programming can’t be undone in a day. It’s difficult to disengage with something, when the alleged outcome is eternal suffering.
But the more I read, observed the world around me and spent time with different cultures, the more my faith waned.
Nagging questions weaved through my neurones, sniffing out longstanding views from my formative years.
As my thinking shifted, I began to find fault with many of my beliefs, behaviours and decision-making processes.
Rational revelations
You may believe certain actions help you swerve bad luck — like avoiding walking over drains, touching wood or saluting magpies.
We all have strange compulsions.
I’ve had one for as long as I can remember. I touch my forehead whenever I hear good news.
It’s accompanied with a fear: if I don’t, the good news isn’t true.
This worsened over the years. Now, even when I say ‘thanks’ or ‘see you later’, I have to touch my head.
This habit weevilled into my psyche, and I never noticed how ridiculous it was.
When I stopped believing in God, I unpicked my weird impulses. And I realised they were directly linked.
Why was I convinced I wielded such power? Why would I assume my inane actions could alter the natural course of the universe?
Because that’s what I’d been taught my whole life.
At the risk of using spiritual jargon, this felt like an epiphany.
Although it felt uncomfortable at first, I started breaking away from God. I made a conscious effort to stop attributing anything to ‘God’s will’, ‘retribution’ or ‘miracles’.
And that’s when life started getting easier.
Exorcising my angels
When a relationship ends, you’re left to analyse what went wrong.
I have two quibbles, which I can’t overcome.
The first is about problem-solving.
Religion can encourage you to defer responsibility to a metaphysical entity, leaving you with a sense of powerlessness.
And while that might be comforting, it can lead to negligence.
Take climate change deniers. If you’re convinced prayer and devotion can save you from natural disasters, you may not take logical measures to fix serious issues.
My second issue is the constant peddling of guilt and anxiety.
If things are going wrong in your life, it might be because you pissed off the Big G. Or he’s teaching you some kind of lesson.
So you end up scrutinising your behaviour in attempt to pinpoint the cause of your misfortune. What was your sinful action that demanded punishment?
It’s too much.
I get enough grief worrying whether I’ve left the hob on, without fretting over whether I’ve pissed off a megalomaniac who expects his loved ones to sing about how ace he is.
Finding peace in chaos
My views may seem pessimistic. Many people say life is sad, empty, and meaningless without religion.
But now I’ve admitted it’s not for me, I don’t feel desolate.
I feel liberated, in control and — above all — relieved.
There’s no stress about a mysterious force judging me — colluding with his angel spies to decide how many penalty points to give me for all that pre-marital sex.
I’m at peace with life’s randomness, coincidences and chaos, as well as the impact of my choices.
I won’t deny religion has positive aspects. If it works for you, I completely respect that.
After all, there are many arguments for the existence of God, or gods, and I’m in no position to say I know better.
Who knows? There may be a god who’s herniating with rage right now, furiously drafting my one-way ticket to Hell.
But I hope not. And I hope anyone who believes in the Abrahamic god, Hindu gods, or any other spiritual entities, can respect what I (and many others) believe.
That we’re born. We eat food. We poop. We die. We potentially have our organs extracted to give someone another shot. And that’s that.
In the process, we can choose to spread love and happiness, hate and destruction, or a bit of everything. It’s up to us, and we only have our earthly cohabitants to answer to.
I must admit, it can feel wrong to shun my roots at times. I still feel uncomfortable calling myself an atheist (probably because I’ve been conditioned to think it’s a swear word).
In all honesty though, I’m far more liberated by freedom and posthumous blamelessness than I ever was by Christianity.
I like believing that if anyone lobs me in a fire after I die, it will only be to cremate my senseless corpse.
That’s why I’ve given up on being holy. And now I feel more whole.
