You Gotta Have Faith....Right?

I've been jotting my thoughts down in this post for a few months. Every time I thought of a question or a point I'd like to address I'd sign in, type it and sign back out. Then a good friend of mine recently took her daughter to get baptized into Catholicism and it reminded me about this post and all of the thoughts that have been jumbled inside my brain as long as I can remember.

I was also baptized Catholic when I was a wee one and I was raised Roman Catholic my entire pre-independent life. To say I was uninterested in Mass is an understatement. I did EVERYTHING I could to try to get out of it. I became an expert at slipping into a coma on Sunday mornings through my mother's nagging calls to "get out of bed or we're going to be late!"

I never felt a spiritual connection to the traditional atmosphere of the Catholic Church. As a child/pre-teen in the days prior to mobile technology, I felt forced to sit still and suffer through long homilies and bible verses. When we took time to reflect, I was going over dance team choreography in my head. Nothing felt relatable and every year, I was hearing the same things over and over again. Every so often, something (a word, a verse, a prayer) would change for (what I understood to be) no reason. It seemed like religion was all one big game of telephone. These words had been spoken, written, translated and edited so many times, who could even know for sure what the message was at the beginning of the game.

As an impressionable youth, I had so many doubts and questions. Religion seemed to be about putting all your faith into the belief that it all exists and that without proof (we'll say scientific proof), everything you've learned is the truth.

I don't completely discredit religion. I think that it's a necessity for many people who may not have anywhere else to turn. I know for a fact there have been times in my life when I needed it. It's a comforting thought to put your worries and cares in the hands of something or someone who loves you unconditionally, but that's also where I have a hard time transitioning back into the church. I don't feel like the majority of religious organizations that I've experienced live the message they preach. It feels a lot like a political message, which I interpret as, "Do as I say, not as I do."

That also leads into another issue I have - confession. As RIDICULOUS as this may sound, I was irritated by this while was watching the finale of Big Brother last week. One of the players happened to be Catholic and had played a ruthless and cutthroat game. His final plea to the jury members who were casting their votes for the winner included something about going to confession to cleanse himself of all the wrong he had done in the house. So that's it? You can just knowingly lie, cheat, steal, whatever you want as long as you plan on going to Confession for it? I know very well this is reality show, but I felt like this was the same scenario for many Catholics I've known in my life.

I will not invest time, energy and certainly not money into any establishment that does not endorse equal rights. I REFUSE to believe any church that draws a line between two people who love each other because of their sex, color or background is proclaiming the word of God - a God who forgives us for our sins, but only if they are clearly outlined as being forgive-able. To me, this kind of teaching only promotes hatred and discrimination.

Literal vs. Figurative - Another piece of the puzzle that I've never known how to understand. Which parts of the bible are supposed to be interpreted literally? Which parts figuratively? What makes it okay for some books to be discarded? Others to have been added? Growing up Catholic, I knew many people who thought the Eucharist was symbolic, whereas Catholics like my mom were telling me that scripture told us that it was transformed into JC's body and blood (say what?!). Christian friends were also quoting the bible, telling me to proclaim JC as my savior and that I'd be saved, but in Catholic land, I'd been doing burpees in Mass and confessing to reading my sister's diary for years to get to those golden gates.

I never want to offend anyone - believer or non-believer. I've just struggled with questions, with doubts, with bad examples, with decisions and with the Catholic guilt. But growing up has made me face a very real question:

Is fear of the unknown, going to hell and suffering for eternity the reason I felt the need to go to church?

That shouldn't be the reason you find yourself there and for me, that has been the case for many years. I don't know enough about the bible (setting aside my questions of validity) to get into a debate and that's not my intent with this post. I just wanted to express my thoughts and feelings on the struggle I've had with spirituality my whole life. At the age of 29, I feel like I've come into my own and I no longer feel the need to go to church just because other people say I do. I don't know that I believe, but I'll never tell anyone they're wrong because they do believe.