There Comes a Day.

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - 1 Corinthians 13:11

I always liked this statement.

I write today to commemorate and appreciate what I've learned growing up how I have. I've spoken a lot lately about how I've been traumatized by religion when growing up and how I've moved away from faith, but another part of my journey lately has been recognizing the good that came from this subculture, for it is just as true.

Without Christianity, I would not have made the friends I have. Without Christianity, I would not have ended up the person I am today. Without Christianity, I would not have the unique and powerful perspective I've ended up with, nor would I be able to do what I will do in the future. For this, I am grateful, among a thousand other things. I can still debate theology with the best theologian out there and stalemate them at best, and that is something I take pride in. Not because I find theology to be true, but because I find it to have been a useful tool for abstract thought and for the development of a very unique sort of logic.

God, as a concept, is wondrously fascinating to me. Growing up, I went through phases of what I believed about god. I believed in his sovereignty and his absolute deterministic control in high school, and it's intriguing to note that I was also more rejected and alone than I ever have been in my life during that time. I needed control, I needed someone who could give me a measure of control, who could assure me that everything would be okay, and if that meant I affirmed that infant deaths resulted in more souls in hell, then so be it. Horrifying, but where my soul was is still apparent.

I then became intrigued with god as a lover. When things got better in my life, I began to be intrigued by these notions of god as a pursuer, god as a gentleman, god as not necessarily a father or even male, but genderless and transcendent, sublime and complete and still wanted me regardless. I was no longer looking for security, I was looking for love. Yet, in my pursuit I found these people broken by something, refusing to be great out of "humility" or some such concept. Time after time, my soul would not resonate with the people I met, and I often felt that they did not believe in the same god I did.

"We shape our god, and our god shapes us." Rob Bell could not be more right about this. Truly, every experience I have had of god, every spiritual experience has been a resonation with humanity or a realization of some greater reality that I was not conscious of previously.

I am sure conservative Christians would read what I write as "he never believed in god to begin with, we should save him by bringing him to our one true expression of Christianity." I've never been a person to conform to a group, and the more right a group thinks they are, the more questions I ask. The more authoritative a leadership figure is, the less I care about what they are saying. Truly, I have a "rebellious spirit."

This is a good thing. People aren't created to be lead, they exist to be what they are, no matter how scary that is to people that are afraid or lonely. Nothing can stand in the way of the truth.

At some point, one must call a concept what it is. There is no doubt in my mind that two things are true.

1. There is more to humanity than biology, more to life than the surface of what people deal with every day, and there is something that transcends what we as humans know through current science. We must push forward with every aspect of philosophy, every science and every art, to understand more and come up with more questions.

2. In the context of church and political history, scientific discovery, and the nature of the "supernatural" (anything beyond our current understanding), if there is a god, he is nothing like the one in any major religion. This is because we shape our god, and when a lot of people choose to shape god the same way, we end up with a religious movement that, if it lasts, will become an established religion. This is nothing more than a psychological phenomenon combined with our adolescence as a race, and none of it proves a god.

I am, without a doubt, an atheist. I would term myself agnostic as well, because I do not think our race has come to a point of making definitive statements about whether an ultimate deity exists, or even whether there are higher developed life forms which can be considered deities exist.

I also know that I will spend a good portion of my life studying the concept of god and learning more about it, studying humanity and learning more about our race's psychological makeup, and making a combination of the two. Like I said, Christianity has put me on this path, and for that I am grateful.

Christianity has also lead me to the example of Christ, at once a beneficial and a harmful role model. When I was a child, this shaped me a great deal, and I still respect Jesus as an intriguing and beneficial figure, though not necessarily a historical one by any means. However, my idolization of the hero archetype must now become an intrigued study, for I am no longer a child.

I am a man, and my former ways are cast off. How terrifying, and what a great adventure.

Hellfire

I've been on a wonderful and terrible and entirely necessary journey lately, grappling with my transition away from faith. I've wanted to skip to the end of it for a while, to be at the point where I can say I'm well again, but I have to journey through some very painful and very rewarding territory to get there. I haven't written here for a while because of this, and because life has been insane and awesome and beautiful and exciting lately, and admittedly a little terrifying.

I was raised to fear. One of my most fundamental emotions is that of being afraid, and it's one I have struggled against for my entire life. I've dealt with crippling social anxiety over being afraid of rejection from people, and I've been afraid of failing or, perhaps more commonly, of succeeding. I've been afraid that I will be crushed by those I trust. None of these fears are unwarranted, as the way I grew up contained a lot of very intense experiences involving all of those things. I've even been taught (somehow) that every good thing is a trap that is designed to make you hope, after which it will crush you, and that cynicism is the way to live, with no faith in people, even if they give you every reason to believe in them.

All of this is terrible, and I'm still processing most of it. However, there was one fear I was taught specifically growing up that I have been grappling with for the past few months.

I fear what will happen to me after my death. Ever since I've transitioned to faithlessness, I've had haunting memories resurface of vivid descriptions of hell. There is fire everywhere, unquenchable fire that burns you eternally, and it never stops. There is smoke and sulfur, to the extent that the very air you're breathing is poison, but you are not allowed to die, and you are not allowed to go into shock or lose consciousness to escape your torment. You are separated from God, the ultimate authority/parental/guardian figure and the meaning of life, the only source of security for you, and he does not want you. You did not accept him in your 100 (or so) years of life, so he will leave you in agony for eternity.

The entire notion, I've come to feel for many years, is absurd. The logic I grew up with, "That's what the Bible says," even before losing my faith seemed entirely hollow and meaningless. How could something so implausible be true?

Yet, when you are told something when you are 6-7 years old, these thoughts don't enter your head. All you can think about is how terrible it is, how much you want to be good and you want God to love you, and how you want to live forever in heaven with him and with angels and all good things and where there is no pain. You make decisions based on the fact that you are terrified over something you have just begun to understand, yet it takes over your brain. It inundates you, and you grow up with it. You learn to hate or love or be angry or vengeful or kind and compassionate based on the things you come to believe.

I learned fear, and I learned that most of the human race will be tormented for eternity because of their lack of belief in Christ. How could I trust these people? How could I believe anyone when they don't have a moral center, when they don't have a god to please? Isn't morality simply a toss up if someone doesn't believe in God?

I had emotions, open-mindedness, charity, sexuality, philosophy, science, other cultures, and humanity demonized for me, and I was told that all of my answers lie in a book I tried to read every day and fell asleep doing so. I did not want to go to hell, so I became a fighter against anything that could threaten my and other peoples' faith. I did confrontational evangelism on the streets of Costa Rica as recent as 9 years ago because I thought it was my duty, my way of keeping people from endless torture for eternity.

Eventually, it came to be framed a different way. In recent years, I stopped believing in a literal hell after I studied the Bible and church history and could only find a solid source for this theology in Dante's Divine Comedy and in a very specific and literal reading of what is admitted to be some of the most metaphorical parts of the Bible by all but the strongest literalists.

It stopped being about not burning for eternity, and it started being about being in God's Kingdom. I reframed the horrifying vision I'd been taught growing up with one of eternal glory in God's presence, and began speaking of how God courts humanity and is a gentleman, so he will not force man to choose him. Hell became less about eternal pain and torment and more about man choosing himself over God, and living with the consequences of that choice. For this portrayal, see CS Lewis' "The Great Divorce," a beautifully written myth regarding the heaven/hell reality. Heaven became the only place where anything is real and about people being larger and more, and hell became about people shrinking into themselves and becoming small and petty and never going anywhere.

Like all theology, it's about people.

Sadly, however, this is only a more palatable version of hell. For instead of flames, there is only cold loneliness. Instead of endless conscious suffering, there is eternal emptiness. Instead of God throwing you there, you choose it yourself, whether you realize it or not. In some ways, this version of hell is more horrifying, because it's something you can no longer be angry at God about, and just as terrible.

"But Daniel, is the question not whether it's horrifying or not, but whether it's true?"

Hell is simply inseparable from Christian theology. I've run from this notion for years, and in many ways, I can understand why people get so angry over a book like Rob Bell's "Love Wins." When the doctrine of hell is threatened, the mythology of Christianity loses its' teeth, and fear is no longer a weapon in its' arsenal. Or, to put it another way, what is the point of getting saved if you're being saved from nothing? Does this not make Christ's torture and death meaningless? Meaningless indeed.

I was 7 when I first learned to fear in the name of hell, and even though I no longer consider myself a Christian, the entire notion still chills me at the most basic level. Because even though I haven't believed in hell per se for years, I am now one of the people that preachers ranted about when I was young. I am a secular humanist, someone who believes homosexuals and women and all people regardless of how different they are are equals. I don't believe in the Bible and I understand the evidence for Evolution and the origin of life. I think the entire notion of hell and scaring people into line with it is absurd.

Yet still, there is a fear that takes hold of my heart when I even think about it. What if I am wrong? What if I will burn for eternity because I've allowed philosophy and my lack of Christian morality and my own desire to do what I want to delude me from the truth presented in Scripture?

Scripture, which I don't believe in and is historically the product of a religion that cannot be trusted. Morality, which is demonstrably not from an ancient book and obviously not confined to a single creed, especially considering how bloody and politically cut-throat church history is. Philosophy, which is an inescapable part of life, as natural to humanity as breathing. The entire notion that I will somehow burn in hell is absurd, but fear makes me take it seriously, and it's 27 years of it that I have to somehow come to terms with.

Like I said, this journey has been wonderful and painful and rewarding and entirely necessary. Be who you are, be intelligent, think critically, and have compassion. Do not let fear dictate your choices.

The Strength of Greatness, Vis-à-vis Love

How small is a person, and how vast is the truth of our existence, not to mention all of reality itself? We live on a planet that has been around for 4.54 billion years in a universe that is 13.75 (or so) billion years old, with an observable size of approximately 46 billion light years, and it is expanding, possibly into infinity or other universes. We have only begun to comprehend our own reality, our own universe, and it is now theorized that our universe is only one part of reality. We live only a fraction of that time, and even our planet is a tiny, tiny fraction of the totality of our universe, let alone existence.

On this planet, we kill each other over petty things. We speak of men that lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, become angry at others for not aligning with their teachings, and kill each other. We don't get the smallest bit of our small planet when or how we want it, so we kill the people there and take it. We disagree about things like love, a connection with another person that is both inexplicable and beautiful, and kill or do violence to others because of that. We don't like how other people conduct themselves or we quarrel over how to divide the resources of our speck of cosmic dust, so we kill each other, do violence to each other, and make other peoples' lives miserable. The worst part is that we developed this way.

Tribal division is ancient and has its' roots in our subconscious. We want to own things, control things and have power, even if in the vastness of the universe the power and control and wealth we do gain are less than meaningless. We create subgroups and fragment ourselves, compete and kill and alienate ourselves from others, but compared to the vastness of the universe, we are all right next to each other. We are all we have, and we are on the verge of annihilating ourselves from the universe instead of discovering new ways to extend our race's life and influence and meaning.

We have evolved beyond this. It is unstable and unnecessary to get into petty squabbles over stupid things like other peoples' choices (so long as they don't harm others) when we could be encouraging people to find meaning and love and to do great things. We raise our children to hate and be divisive and viciously competitive when we could be  encouraging curiosity, discovery, companionship, and respect. We get angry over mythological theory, territorial conflict, ideological problems, and matters of pride, yet we cannot take the time to understand another person's perspective or to appreciate how diverse and fascinating reality is.

Feelings are a window into who a person is, and every person is their own universe. Every person has a world that can be observed, all flowing from that spark of energy that makes them unique. Whether it is a product of instinct and sentient thought and emergent consciousness or whether it's some higher spiritual form of reality that people exist on as well as what we can easily see, every person is a unique exploration of humanity. All are fragments of light, and the more we learn the more we illuminate the fullness of the experience that is humanity.

People should be loved, because love creates a greater meaning out of the lesser meanings that are individuals. It is a step toward greatness, and it is why that connection between two people that truly love each other is so beautiful. They become greater than the sum of their parts. It is also why that connection can become terrifying or damaging. People can be run over and hurt and damaged very easily when they love, and they must eventually rise back out of the ashes of their pain, which is a very difficult thing to do. So difficult, in fact, that some people remain in the ashes, constantly grieving and living in the past instead of building on it, reaching for the heights of who they are as a person, and regaining the ability to take the risk that is loving.

Humanity is small indeed, but each of us are deeper than an ocean, even if we don't realize it. I choose to be an explorer, and to allow myself to love and be loved, allow for the possibility of pain, and allow for the possibility of greatness, with those individuals I meet who are like me. Anyone can choose this, but they must recognize the necessity of connection and respect being balanced. They must recognize that people are who they are, and they must lose their intentions that take away from that greatness. Power-hunger, pettiness, jealousy, the perceived need to control others, selfishness, lust and greed will only destroy those that go after those things. Live a great life, move beyond yourself.

Bleary and Half-finished, an Intermission and a Beginning

It is not what you do, but who you are that is important, because one's actions flow out of one's heart, out of who one is.

You can only lie to yourself for so long. Eventually, the truth catches up to you, mirrored in the eyes of those you affect, those you love. Even if you think you are the only victim of what you do, others are inevitably affected. There is no action that is meaningless, and there is no real connection with others that is casual, no matter what the pretense may be. There is always something happening, always a meaning.

Humans spend a lot of time looking for connection with others. It is perhaps the one thing beyond our existence that we all have in common. For some, the question is why? Why look for connection when it causes so much pain, so much dissonance and there is just so much risk? Is it better not to trust, not to risk, not to even try connecting?

For some, the question is why not? Why not risk when there is so much to gain? Why not risk, if the reward is that connection one has been looking for? Why hold back, and why stop living?

Sometimes, people need space. And sometimes, when all we want to do is to connect, we have to learn to give that space, to respect others, and to allow them to be without interfering. Respect and trust create a balance, and that balance is unique to each person.

When one lies to themselves, they inevitably lie to others. One cannot speak the truth when their heart is full of lies. One need not complicate matters to understand them for what they are, one need only stare the truth in the face, regardless of the cost.

And yet, when it's all deconstructed, when it all falls down and when we seem to have nothing left, on that ground we can build meaning. We build with our choices, create by deciding, construct by living.

Thought is very powerful. It has an energy that we cannot yet explain. From our sentience comes our wisdom, our consciousness, and even that is far beyond what we understand. How much greater then, is the mystery of why things sometimes happen in ways that make no sense? How much more is there to discover when simple thought can transform any situation, regardless of whether action is taken on it? When thought itself is an action, we must then acknowledge that everything counts, everything has meaning, everything matters. There is so much yet to discover.

More relevant than any other time, even an end has a start. Let us move beyond anger and the pain in the world of one man, and begin again. There is so much more.

Schrodinger's Soul

Sometimes things happen, and we lack the ability to figure out what they actually are until later. Circumstances come about, things change, and we later call it the beginning of something we couldn't know existed until we look at it in retrospect.

A relationship between two people falls apart, but you don't really know until that one deciding moment that ends it. Yet, in retrospect, it was all over weeks or months prior, you simply did not have the data to know that it was. Or, to be more specific, their intention was not actualized into any sort of reality because of their indecision or their inability to say what is really happening. Or perhaps, your decision was not actualized, and you simply don't know where you are, sometimes frustrating that other person to no end.

A person loses their ability to affiliate themselves with organizations of a faith, but they hold onto that faith for a long time, until all context is lost, all of the fundamental tenants are broken down by evidence to the contrary, and they end up looking back on their loss of affiliation with the faith as the beginning of the end for it.

That in between place, that state where we are neither one thing or another, neither loved nor rejected, neither faithful or wayward, neither positive or negative. We just are in between, in stasis, and probably confused about something.

It is such a natural place for humanity. We do not know everything there is to know about reality, but we are also not completely and willfully ignorant of it. Supernatural events occur, but some say they are inexplicable, and some say that we simply haven't found the real mechanisms behind those supernatural events. Some even attribute them to anything but faith, even if they have to make an educated guess about a person's psychology or their circumstances or science to do so, because they're realists. Some hold faith in the inexplicable supernatural events long after they are explained, because their faith is that important to them.

We are an in between race, in our adolescence, still learning and trying to stand on our own and figuring out reality. When we discover something, in our lives or about reality itself, we look back and say "oh! that explained so much!" and many who feel that they already have it all figured out can accuse us of inconsistency or confusion, when we are more in

Furious Grief

I once read a book called the Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning. He spoke of God's "Furious Love," describing it as a torrential and unstoppable force that one cannot resist, except to choose not to feel it at all.

Sometimes, we have to hurt, we have to let ourselves feel the wounds of the past and we have to allow people to affect us to even term what we're doing living. Yes, we may lose for a while. No, it will not feel good, and it will not be like the movies or shows or books you grew up being inspired by. But it's the only way to move forward.

When you're affected by something serious, it's tempting to close up, to stop engaging those around you and stop dealing with how you feel. It's less dramatic to allow your heart to turn to ice and just have fun, in an apathetic manner. I've tried it, and it was enjoyable. And then life caught up with me, and I found that my heart had silently drifted into the blackness of death, simply because I had stopped living.

I'll not reiterate the notions of my religious crisis here. If you want to know about it, read the post "Faithless." What's important is that I have lost what felt like an old friend in God. I still pray every once in a while that, if he is there, he will show me. Surely, if I have been designed to think and look at evidence and reason and feel and understand, the God that designed me could show up in a real manner? Why does faith have to be a prerequisite to this? I've had faith for years, and I've been nothing but damaged, nothing but hurt, nothing but taken advantage of and nothing but mislead. "Sin" is no excuse for the fact that I can count on one hand the trustworthy people I have met that still associate themselves with the faith of my past. So if I can't trust people, where is God? Is he so powerless that he can only reveal himself in circumstances that could be attributed to dozens of other things? Does he care more about testing my faith than about me? Or is he, as I'm suspecting, not there at all? The more I figure out about what we have discovered as a race, the less likely it seems that there is a god, especially not one like the Christian God. This is cause for grief, for I've spent 20 years trying to understand something that is apparently nonexistent. It hurts, and it's lonely.

I don't understand "Furious Love" beyond conceptually, but I do understand the pain this period of my life has left me with. I understand the grieving furious anger of having to look at years and years of faith and religious fervor that have affected friendships, romantic relationships, education, family, life choices, intellectual integrity, philosophy, sociology, psychology, emotional makeup, mental capacity, and my very being, and having to reframe all of it, reprocess all of it, and try to figure out what to do next. The only comfort I have is knowing that I am extraordinary for enduring so much dissonance and remaining sane.

I want to just say that Christians have hurt me, and that's because people will hurt me. I want to say that I know God and have a personal relationship with him, and I want to have the faith I used to have. I want it to remain in my heart. However, I want to know the truth more. I want to know what reality is, even if it's the blackest and most meaningless explanation ever, or even, shockingly, if it turns out God is actually there and I've just been angry and hurt. I don't care which one. Some may call me optimistic or even idealistic, but I think there's more to reality than merely what we can measure. Supernatural events happen every day, and the more we learn, the more of them we understand. Spirituality is connection, and there is, without a doubt, more to reality than we can sense with our limited perception of matter and energy. Even the emergent property of consciousness currently eludes us, and that's one of the simplest things about us as sentient beings. There is more.

I've been abused by women that did not even know that they were abusing me. They would take advantage of my kindness, allow me to help them and give nothing in return, and use their knowledge of who I am like a knife, stabbing and twisting. Manipulation is commonplace among those I've trusted, and I trust easily because I want someone that has the quality my close friends have--that honorable quality of love, of looking out for me and taking care of me as I do for them, of family. I have trusted too easily, and I have been broken for doing it. It is so entirely frustrating to know you want to find someone that can love you, and only find people that don't understand what that even means. When I confront them with what they did to me, some have cast the blame right back at me, because I volunteered to help them, I choose to try to fix them, because that's what I love doing. I love listening, I love helping people find serenity, I love bringing peace and healing to others. And now, I am choosing to bring it to myself. I can no longer allow people in that will not take care of me, regardless of what they may need or want. I am too hurt, I have been too damaged, and I have been used up. I am tired of it. I am done with it. It cannot stand, and I will not do it anymore. I grieve for this part of my past, the part that's allowed too much, that's assumed too much and tried to fix people instead of letting them be who they are, and has been left behind, discarded after those I've pursued no longer needed or wanted me, or worse, needed me for entirely too much, without the ability to even stand with me as an equal. It hurts, and I will not do it anymore. Some have apologized, and for that I am grateful.

Don't take it personally. These things happen, and I've learned to stand instead of lean on another. You should too.

I have friends that feel betrayed by my recent decisions. They don't understand, they think I'm making a stupid decision, and they worry for my soul. It is their decision what they wish to do, but I'd hate for any friendships to be lost just because I've moved to another stage of life. It hurts to lose people, especially without explanation, but sometimes these things happen. For this, I grieve as well.

I am not bitching and moaning about my life. This grief is beautiful, and it is my burning anger for now. If there's one thing I've learned to use, it is that rage that drives me to change, drives me to be better and to look the past square in the face, call it what it is, allow myself to process and feel what it is, and move on to be a better person.

Do not be afraid to grieve. Do not be afraid to be angry. Do not be afraid to live.

Pain, Trust and Honor

Every action taken has a meaning. No action and no word is isolated, in a vacuum, pointless.

Some people assert the supernatural sounding notion that we are all connected, that there is something beyond us being mere matter, mere creatures acting on instinct and doing what we want to survive. Do humans have souls? Perhaps.

Two people can look at each other and have an entire conversation without saying a word. Some can look at people and know precisely what they are going to do and how they react to situations. Friends can remain friends no matter the distance, no matter the circumstances, while some people can live close to each other and never speak again for seemingly no reason. Some people click, some people don't. Some people click for a time and fall out of contact, and some people refuse to let that happen, constructing a friendship where there was no natural connection. Sometimes one's heart breaks due to the inaction, the apathy of others, and sometimes actions are useless, irrelevant and an annoyance at best. Silence can be valuable.

We all have this complex emotional makeup, and we all value different things. Sometimes our apathy is another person's passion, and sometimes we take on the passions of others, learn them as if they were our own. There are no rules, some say, while some say that social interaction must be tightly controlled to avoid pain.

Why do we avoid this pain? From a biological standpoint, it hurts our chances of propagating our genetic code, of reproducing. So humans adapt, they make pain into something beneficial, since there is no avoiding it. Blackness becomes the basis for an elaborate construction of a personality, a structure of personhood that has a way of acting, thinking, and believing.

Every action has meaning because it tells you how that person deals with reality. Perhaps they spend their time escaping reality, or perhaps they construct beliefs based on it and have learned to act in accordance with what tends to happen. Sometimes, people even know that they are detached from reality, and they don't care because it gives them a sense of well-being. Hope, if you will. Some hope is based on reality, and some is based on fantasy. Some hope poisons the hearts of those that hold it, for their construction of reality is warped, sick, and broken, even if they can't possibly know why. Sometimes trust is twisted and becomes a knife that stabs someone in the heart, and sometimes things turn out more perfect than we can possibly imagine, usually because we've been taught not to hope.

Regardless, there is something between people. More than words, more than actions, there is connection. There is trust. Trust can be as simple as choosing to believe that someone won't knock your chair out from under you and as complex as giving of yourself, knowing they will be there for you.

What level of trust is between people is not relevant, valuing it and choosing to act on it is. How does one act with honor? Their choices show integrity and value of the way things are. Their actions are measured and fair. Their words are carefully chosen and true. They care about reality, they are aware of what happens between people, and they choose to act with courage, valor, and their best estimation of what is right instead of manipulating, opportunistically taking what they want, and taking advantage.

I choose to value this for the simple reason that humanity can be more still than it already is because of it. We may have started out avoiding pain, but it can teach us if we pay attention.