I have to say that I've never really questioned the existence of God throughout my life. Certainly lots of other conceptions formulated in early childhood have fallen by the wayside but the idea of God never has. I have to say that my own personifications of God have gone through significant revision over the years from the man with the white beard in the clouds of my early childhood, to the multi-hued and highly complex being that I choose to call my higher power.
As an artist, I have been in touch with powerful emotional responses that I have had to attribute to some force beyond myself. This isn't a result of mere modesty or self-effacement alone. God has always made sense to me. It would be tempting to take sole credit for certain turns of phrase or particular artistic formulations but I don't think I'm that great, nor that brilliant.
Perhaps it's because I've always been aware of my own fragility and my own mortality. I couldn't see myself as my own God because I never felt comfortable in assuming that much responsibility for myself. The more I tried to believe I was the sole force in control, the more that events beyond my control would arise and make me aware of my own limitations.
I don't think belief in a higher power is the domain of the sick, powerless, and disenfranchised. I think maybe people like me have been granted a sense of irrefutable proof rather than this clinging, needy response to reach for a sense of control beyond oneself.
It was downright trendy in adolescence and among my band of dissident friends to thrust aside all the sacred cows for the sake of rebellion and rejection of the status quo. Had I bothered to look outside myself and my acquaintances, I would have found a wholesale sort of response among my peers.
And since that point in time, I have been treated to the beautiful postulates, theories, and general banter of several committed atheists. And to my credit, I have pondered each treatise with an open mind, but found each to be wholly insufficient. I hasten to call these viewpoints to be soulless, barren, and empty because I think they all have the hand of God upon them. I think that's the supreme irony of the Atheist--he or she only THINKS he or she is somehow apart from some higher force.
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I wish I had spirituality; I think I would be a happier person for it.
Embrace your spirituality. Whatever makes you feel better, that's what I always say.
Spirituality is that human need to connect with something greater than the self. I think that we all have that need.
You are so right, Kevin in what you said.
"I hasten to call these viewpoints to be soulless, barren, and empty because I think they all have the hand of God upon them. I think that's the supreme irony of the Atheist--he or she only THINKS he or she is somehow apart from some higher force."
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