on God

As a kid, God and Santa Claus were one to me. I don't mean that in a blasphemous way, but I believed God to be this sort of super-human, who lived in a distant land, could witness whether I did good deeds or bad ones, and would bring me an occasional gift. Sort of like Santa Claus, no? As I grew older, my concept of my God matured, and also became more personal. I attempted to characterize Heaven. 

When I was seven years old, both my grandpas passed away. Those were the first experiences I had with death, but I was too young to mourn; I was too young to understand, thus the loss of my family members didn't result in any sort of stagnation of my faith life.

My first time questioning my religion was Junior year of high school. How it happened was weird, too. I taught Sunday School at my church, and was running late to my 9:45 class. By that time, the parking lot was already full due to our abnormally large congregation size, so I had to park on a street neighboring the Church's lot. I didn't notice at the time, but when I got out of class and made my way to my car, I saw that I was parked in front of a fire extinguisher. Something I wouldn't have even made notice of had I not seen the piece of loose leaf paper under my windshield wiper. It was a letter from the owner of the house I had parked in front of. The details are a little fuzzy by now, but the letter read something like this: 

Thanks for parking right in front of the fire extinguisher that would keep our children safe in case of danger. That was very Christian of you.

Maybe this was a dramatic note to have received, but I'm sure the reaction of me parking in front of that fire extinguisher was more symbolic of that family's distaste with the church. Christianity is sort of like the giant glass dome that Springfield is enclosed by in the Simpson's Movie (it's 10 pm, the analytic part of my brain is off). When you're on the inside,  you don't really notice the flaws. When you step outside, you're persuaded by the negative opinions towards the religion.

Over the next two years, I lost my grandma, my cousin, and two friends in succession. Death became all the more immanent, and along with other mental and social lapses, I lost touch with God. Here's the thing; when you're going through tough times, you're either looking for salvation or for an outlet. If you feel like things don't get any better over a period of time, you turn to that outlet; I was mad at God, and my prior years in that spiritual trance. I felt somewhat betrayed. 

Shit turned upward for my life, though. Slowly, and surely, God crept back into the foreground of my being. I think like any relationship, a break from religion can sometimes be beneficial. It took those couple rollercoaster years for me to realize how important faith was to me, and the greatest part about it was, that I found out what God meant to me ON MY OWN. I wasn't being forced to go to church services, I wasn't swayed back into Christianity due to a friend, family member, or girlfriend; I just re-established my own faith. 

There's still questions I have, and facets of the World's workings that I don't think I'll ever understand, but I don't need to understand it. It's not for me to comprehend.. I trust I'm on the right path, and I'm staying patient through everything.

-Jack