On My Personal View of Religion

When I was little, I had to go to church with my dad and grandma, the times she felt like going. Religion played a huge part in my life as I was growing up. Dad thanked God for every meal, and prayed for our safety on every trip that took more than an hour. In times of strife and pain, dad always prayed, always thanking God but never questioning His divine will.

When I was 12, a horrible illness struck dad, and I nearly lost him. He was in the hospital for months, while I stayed with my aunt.

While I brooded silently in my room and wondered if I’d ever see my dad again, I lost my faith.

“How,” I thought, “Could God take away my daddy? Doesn’t He understand that he’s all I have? Hasn’t dad always prayed and worked so hard, hasn’t he always given what he could to the church, hasn’t he tried to be an upright, honest man? Why? Don’t you care, God? Are you even there? Were you ever there?”

So for about 8 months, from the time dad got sick to the time he came home, I really stopped believing in any God I’d ever been told about.

Then dad came home, and you’d have thought I’d be grateful.

But no- I now not only realized that there was not only a God, but that he was kind of a jerk. Dad was the strongest person I’d ever known- still is, in fact- and yes, he was back, but… it just wasn’t the same. Since I’d spent a few months thinking dad had died and no one had told me, I’d gotten used to being pessimistic and alone.

Who was this person, I thought, masquerading as my father? My big, strong dad who had always taken charge of everything? He was a weak little man confined to the nearest chair.

I hated God even more.

Dad kept praying, and the more he prayed, the more I hated.

“Shut up!” I’d think. “God isn’t listening! If he gave a shit about us, do you think we’d be like this? Would you have gotten sick at all? Would the business be failing? No! Stop praying, God doesn’t care about us.”

And I kept thinking that way. For years. 6 years, to be exact. For 6 years, I wondered why dad put so much faith in a God that clearly didn’t give a damn about anyone but people who already had the means to help themselves.

When I was 17, I made a very stupid mistake and got married. Don’t ask me about my mindset at the time, all I can remember is being hurt about someone else and dating my ex just so I wouldn’t be alone, and somehow a marriage came out of that- if you can call it that.

My ex-husband was, as I soon came to realize, a total asshole. He cheated on me, and started forbidding me to talk to a lot of my friends- i.e., the ones who told me he was an asshole. Over the next few months, he started verbally, psychologically, and eventually physically abusing me. And through all this, I hated God all the more. “If God cared,” I thought, “He’d make my husband less of an asshole.”

One day, after being married for a few months, dad and I reconciled. (I’d run away from home when dad told me the guy was an asshole). And a few weeks after, I decided it would be a nice gesture to go to church with dad.

The church was much the same. (You can’t be a good Catholic church if you’re gonna be updating stuff all the time).

The priest was new, though. So I sat down, and for once in 6 years, I listened.

The sermon was about finding the courage to love yourself, and God’s relationship with love and the self.

That’s when it hit me… look at where I am. I graduated from high school despite all my attempts not to, I have a loving father and a good job. My husband is an asshole, but he was before I married him. I was stupid to think a piece of paper would change anything.

I’d been a retarded teenager all this time. I hadn’t had any faith in myself, so how could I have faith in anything else?

It was this sermon, in fact, that gave me the courage to leave my husband. A few weeks later, I’d had just about enough, and after one particularly bad fight, I called the police on him, packed my things and left- and more importantly, never looked back.

Things got better after that. I still carried physical and emotional scars from that period in my life- still do- but I was free.

I enrolled in school, got a better job, lost weight, moved- and things kept getting better. All because I just kept thinking “God DOES love me. He’s always made things happen in the darkest hour.”

But what I realized is that I couldn’t just sit back and expect God to do everything for me. You are the author of your own fate.

Now, as to how I believe in God instead of just the power of positive thinking, I think it’s because my dad never talked about Hell.

Sure, I asked about it, and asked if a list of various people were going there, and he always answered my questions, but dad never went into much detail, beyond the reading of Revelations.

Instead, dad talked about Love, and Heaven.

“Heaven,” he said, “Is a place where those with goodness in their hearts go when they die. This life may be hard, but if you’re a truly good person, God sees your heart and takes you to live with him forever and ever. There, you will see all your loved ones again, and everyone is eternally happy. This is why we never really lose the ones we love.”

I think as long as I believe there’s something better when I die, it doesn’t matter how much I suffer on this earth, because in the end, God will be there.

That’s something positive.