As you grow older, you have to start figuring things out for yourself. Things like who you are, where you fit in, and what you believe in. For most, these are difficult, and often long lessons, but they are important ones.
When I was little, I didn't question these things. I may not have figured out who I really was yet, and I didn't worry much about fitting in, but I knew that I had to believe in God and for a long time I did. My family was Baptist, I went to church when they did, I went to Sunday School, I said my prayers every night, and even had my own bible. I didn't question it because I didn't really know what to question. I hadn't learned enough to form any opinions other than the ones my parents taught me.
It wasn't until I got to high school that I began to question how my personal values correlated to those of the bible, and the more I began to form my own opinions, the less I believed in the faith I grew up in. There are a lot of bad people in the world and a lot of people who use religion to justify their own prejudices. I know that those people don't make up the majority of the religious world, but those are the ones that made me begin to see things differently.
The biggest issue I have is the myth that God doesn't accept LGBTQ individuals. I use the word "myth" not to offend, but to point out the hypocrisy in the statement. If God loves all his children, is the creator of all life, and doesn't make mistakes, then he must love LGBTQ people because he created them in his perfect image, right? I just could never get behind the idea that a group of people could be seen as less than in the eyes of the lord because of who they love or how they were born. Again, I'm not saying that this is how all religious people think or feel, but the fact that this idea exists at all just really bothers me.
Another thing that made me question my faith, is the belief that everything happens for a reason and it's all a part of God's plan. These statements bother so much because there are horrible things that happen in this world everyday. People losing loved ones to senseless violence, illness, accidents and so much anger, I have just never been able to understand how a loving God could make these things happen. Then that begged the question, if God does exist is he actually a good, loving God? All of these questions flooded my mind for so long but I still called myself a Christian because I'd always been one and I didn't know what else I would be. I remember arguing with my dad one day about how my beliefs went against the bible but I didn't care. I'm not one to compromise my integrity just because someone or something says differently.
In college I took a philosophy class. I ended up hating it-- but of all the things I didn't understand in that class, the one thing I took away from it all was the philosophy of the proof of God's existence. One day in class we were having a discussion about Descartes. My professor explained that according to one theory, we can prove that God is real because we can perceive him to be, and if you can perceive something to be real then it exists. That really made me think because if that's the explanation for accepting proof of an almighty being, that's not any explanation at all to me. Perception is the most unreliable resource there is; you can perceive anything to be real, but that doesn't mean that it actually exists in the true sense of the word.
I think I learned a lot about my faith that day. Even though it solidified my doubts, it opened my eyes to who I am as a person. I now consider myself Agnostic, which means I don't believe that the existence of a God can be proven or disproved. I believe in what I can see. But I'm someone who wants to believe that there is a higher power who's laid out the directions our lives are supposed to go in. To some extent, I do believe that. While I don't believe that everything happens for a reason, I do believe that we are all predestined for something. I believe that every decision we make in life is leading us to a specific destination. I believe that the universe conspires to get us to those destinations exactly when we are meant to arrive at them, and not a moment sooner. Those are the beliefs that get me through life.
