I am a believer by definition
Igot this message from my sister: “Do you believe in God?” It felt like I was being doorstopped by god-botherers. “Have you found Jesus?” they’d ask.
“Why, has he gone missing?” I’d answer, and then I’d go straight to hell.
But this was my sister; this required more nuance. “Huh?” I replied. Once, someone accused me of not being a believer as if it was the worst insult they could throw at me. I was baffled: not a believer in what? Not a believer in their notion of God?
If the mean god they painted was as narrow-minded as they were, then yes, I’d happily own the accusation.
But my sister is not the holier-than-thou type … it turned out that her son thought he’d once heard me say there is no God, and she was determined otherwise.
I recall the long-ago conversation that my nephew overheard, when religion was being used to support toxic beliefs about race and gender.
Well, I certainly don’t believe in that sort of god, any more than I believe in the Jedi or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
But how was I to respond to my teenage nephew now, via WhatsApp? I remember being a teenager, sitting in church convinced that I was going to hell for my sins.
In my head the Pet Shop Boys sang: “Everything I’ve ever done, everything I ever do, everywhere I’ve ever been, everywhere I’m going to, it’s a sin.”
And in the pews we sang: “The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”
I was convinced I was “the vilest offender” – I was 15.
So do I believe in that interventionist god now?
Well, I replied, while no one knows for certain, I don’t believe in a man with a beard sitting on a cloud with a stick, pointing, letting some suffer while others soar.
I work on the principle that the universe is so full of marvels that something greater than we can ever grasp created it. Call it God, call it science, but whether it is a “sentient” being as we would recognise it is unknowable.
We created “God” in man’s image, not the other way around, because what is out there is beyond earthly understanding, existing in realms and dimensions we cannot even begin to comprehend.