The Mad Rants of a Raving Genius

Well, it happened. I made the mistake of showing my mom a financial aid application on which there was a section called “Religion”. The form was already filled out. I had marked “none” as my religion. As you can guess, a grilling soon ensued.

“What does it mean ‘none’?”
“Are you a Christian, or are you not?”
“Where are your morals, if you aren’t?”

And so on. I was hoping this “discussion”–if you can even call it that–had waited until I was out of the house and on my own. As it happens, she even asked me why I hadn’t moved out, if I didn’t believe in her religion. That didn’t make too much sense to me, but it sounded to me a lot like a guilt trip. Ah man, I really don’t want to confront her and apologize. The apologizing part I can deal with. The look that says “You’re going to hell and there’s nothing I can do about it”, I can’t.

If, by this time, you’re completely lost, let me explain. I grew up a Christian. Lutheran, to be exact. In the past half-year or so, I’ve grown apart from my religion. I decided–through what process, I don’t know exactly–that religion wasn’t for me. God didn’t appear to be very active in the world, so I decided to call myself an agnostic deist. In other words, I don’t know if there is a God for sure, but I believe there is, but I don’t think this God is anything like the Christian God. As my Comparative Religions teacher so succinctly put it, “He started the top going and walked away,” meaning that God created the Universe (I have yet to find a suitable explanation as to the question of how or even why), but then…left. I don’t know where or why, but if God really was watching our every move, then why is there so much hate and misery in the world? Yes, yes, I know the old argument about how having us deal with our own problems makes us stronger, but how is AIDS our fault? Or any sickness for that matter? Is God punishing us for something? Did the human race as a whole do something so unspeakably horrible that we’re stuck with cancer?

My answer is no. If God was anything like the Bible says–loving and merciful come to mind–then he wouldn’t do this to us. No one can ever do something so evil that the whole of humanity must suffer for it. The reason we’re saddled with so many problems is because God isn’t there. He left us to our own devices a looong time ago. To put in the required Star Trek analogy, this is sort of like Q’s little Robin Hood game in the TNG episode “Qpid.” He created the scenario, but then gave it a life of its own. The same goes for God and our Universe.

Now my mom knows I’m not a Christian, and I can only guess at how she must be feeling. I should really talk to her, but I don’t think she wants to hear any of the things I have to say. And on top of that, my dad (who knew this all way before my mom did) keeps trying to get me to rethink my decision about not associating with any religion. Eh, I suppose I can put up with that. As long as my Grandma doesn’t get involved. She’s so hardcore Christian that she believes the Bible is completely factual, with everything in it being literal. In short, the Earth was created in 6006 BCE, there was a flood that covered all of the world up to the tallest mountains, and Jesus was God. In my opinion, that’s all bunk, but apparently the opinion of a Godless teenager doesn’t count for much in my family.