My first week after exams, my aunt came to visit. We had a lot of fun, but one day, with my family sitting around she asked me, “As a science major, what do you think about God and religion”. Talk about being put on the spot.
Now, I managed to semi-coherently stumble through an explanation of trying to understand God better by looking how the universe works. However, the whole truth is something that you can’t just blurt out at the drop of a hat, and it’s been nagging me ever since.
While I remain utterly paranoid about divulging personal information over the net, a little background info will go a long way. Both my parents were brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, and both were fairly well entrenched. My father’s uncle was a Jesuit and he went to a Jesuit college while many members of my mother’s family went to a Franciscan one. (Which, on a side note, has yielded quite a few Jesuit and Franciscan jokes as I’ve gotten older. Utterly hilarious.)
So I imagine there was some surprise when both of them decided to raise their children in a different faith. I believe that the official designation is Presbyterian U.S.A., though no one has actually stated it. (Apparently, you can be religious without titles. Who knew?) The funny thing about Presbyterians is that they are free to break off into their own sects if they feel like it so there are at least ten in the US alone.
Anyway, I was a kid with a childlike faith in God. My God, with my specific beliefs.
And that was when 9/11 happened. It was a bit of a shock, learning what some people would do in the name of God, and it planted that seed of doubt.
And then I went to an all boys Jesuit high school.
In retrospect, it was a really good experience. I dare anyone who thinks that Catholic priests are stuffy to meet a Jesuit. Every class I had with a Jesuit I enjoyed, partially because they defied my every expectation. I have never been sworn at worse than by my freshman history teacher when he discovered that an earlier class had slipped a copy of the day’s quiz to a later group. I have heard the punishment of Adam and Eve described as “I’m going to make want to do the horizontal mambo, and I’m going to make the consequence hurt like hell.”
In fact, it was the Jesuits who were among the most liberal people I met in the school. When a teacher ended up chewing me out of my beliefs on abortion (which I foolishly decided to mention), it was a Jesuit who told me to keep my chin up. They never derided my faith or my upbringing.
But being all angsty and rebellious I ended up becoming more and more irreverent…which is a point where I found myself now.
But still, how did I get all: show me the proof?
One of my classmates died of leukemia. I won’t mention his name, but it’s been something which has bothered me for a long time and really did something. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, and one of those ‘career suggestion’ services had put the idea of ‘biochemist’ in my mind. While I was learning about that, I kept hearing school prayers asking God to look after our classmate. I don’t think I ever met him, or if I did, I can’t remember his face. All I have is the name which was repeated over the loudspeakers. My junior year, despite getting a bone marrow transplant and all the prayers of our classmates, he died.
I can remember sitting in the auditorium when they held a memorial service. I remember holding back tears to mourn someone I didn’t know. Perhaps it was the last of my childlike faith I was mourning: both in medicine and religion. I told myself that I would do something. My way of mourning would be to give something back to help, that I would become a scientist to do it.
It’s through several lenses that I see the world, and at time they can be really annoying and all swim together. I work to find my own line in the sand of where I put God in everything, and at the same time I continue down the path between doubt and certainty.
I think that if there is a God, then he would not put us on this Earth with logic and the urge to explore and be fine with us ignoring it. If we are given doubt, then why shouldn’t we use it to be constructive? I can look out at the stars and think they are beautiful, no matter whether they were created by an old white guy with a long flowing beard, a singular eventuality born out of chaos, or a drunken creature composed of spaghetti and meatballs. The world is objectively no different, only our perception of it.
Finally, as the bard said, “’Tis nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” So do yourself a favor: think. The God you save may be your own.
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