Something Much More Powerful

Ever since I was little, people around me expected me to believe in God. My mother, my sisters, my friends; they all just expected it. I unwillingly attended church every Sunday. I knew every prayer. I received my communion as my family’s teary eyes watched with pride. I even played an angel in one of the Christmas plays. With all this being true, I still wasn’t completely convinced that that was where I should have been.

Being a young child, I went along with it. I even believed some of it. Why shouldn’t I have agreed with the ways of my family? However, since I was about ten years old, there was a constant doubt in my mind. I was surrounded by circumstances that seemed to prove that there was no God. My mother had always told me that God would protect me. Although, when I needed him the most, it seemed like I was talking to nobody. Praying every night soon became tedious and empty. My faith was decreasing rapidly.

Perhaps what destroyed my faith the most was the fact that I did have people to talk to. I did have people to support me. God seemed to be the only person that didn’t help me out when I talked to him. I had a good family and good friends. I always had somebody to relate to and to point me in the right direction. This supported my growing belief that everything is in the power of human compassion and will.

Everything good in my life had come from either my mother or myself. My good grades were a direct effect of my mother and myself. My decent home was the direct effect of my mother’s determination. My health came from good genes and good hygiene. God didn’t bless me with this face; clearly I got it from my father. God was absent in my life for all I knew.

Soon enough I started to dismiss all thoughts of God completely. I believed in science. I believed in evolution. I believed in people, psychology. I believed that morals were something you determined on your own, throughout your life. Morals were not set in stone or God-given. Success was self-given. Hope was self-given. Everything good in life could come from you or the living beings around you. There was no need for a God. God was something created by those who had no other means of explaining the phenomenon around them. Would a just God let one baby be born completely healthy while another dies second term? Would a just God pick and choose whether a human life ends peacefully or at the hands of violence? Maybe these things were too deep for me to understand, but they just didn’t make sense.

Now that I am older, I have experienced a little more. I’ve held hands with one human and knew with my whole heart and mind that I would never hold another’s. I’ve given up all pride for this person. I’ve felt things about this person that do not come from evolution, or science. I’ve felt what it’s like to be completely safe, despite my surroundings. I’ve felt moments of complete and utter bliss in a world full of chaos. I’ve felt things that can’t be explained by any means of science. I’ve witnessed things that no doubt came from something bigger than us. I know now that there is something else out there.

With growing up comes a balance in belief. Sometimes things are not all black and white. I have discovered that I can use bits and pieces of what I used to believe and put together something much more powerful: my own belief.

There is no God. But this I believe as well: there is something more powerful than we can imagine out there. We just have yet to find it.