You Gotta Have Faith ... But In What?

  Many years ago, my family & I attended church, regularly.  One thing that happened one Christmas morning, was that the vicar encouraged the children of the congregation to bring in a toy that they had received for Christmas.  I was about five or so, maybe a little older, and had, this particular year, been given He-Man's trusty steed, Battle-Cat, and his opposite number, Panthor, upon whom Skeletor was wont to ride around Eternia.  (Just typing that felt weird, given that I have not mentioned He-Man, or much else of my childhood toy collections, in many a long year.) This is what the Panthor toy of the time looked like:

  The idea was that the children would line up, and the vicar, armed with his trusty little microphone, would go along the line and ask the children what they had been given for Christmas, and to say a little bit about it.  I presume there may even have been some higher purpose to this incongruous Q&A, or maybe it was really just a community thing.  I'll never know.  Anyway - I plonked my Skeletor action figure in the saddle and stood in line.  I seem to remember a boy with an Action Man helicoptery kind of thing - just imagine the range of toys from the eighties divided between about ten kids, really - and the vicar eventually got around to me.

"And what do we have here?" said the vicar.

"It's Panthor, from He-Man," says I, proffering the toy.

The vicar puts his finger in the jaw, between the teeth, and says "I bet he could give me quite a nasty bite!"

[pause]

"It's only a toy," I say into the radio mic, and the congregation burst out laughing.

ZING!  Take that, Christianity!

  That really is one of two stories I can think of involving my time at church.  The other one was my last visit to church as a member, a few years later.  Someone was talking to us about boy scouts, I don't know why because  I may have zoned out at the start, and I never heard the end of his talk, as at one point the fellow removed the woggle and neckerchief of a nearby scout, and was holding the piece of cloth up to show us, and I whispered to my father, "Is he doing a magic trick, Dad?" at which point he decided to sneak us out and never look back, and I think that was our last Sunday morning as good honest Christians.  It was an easy mistake to make, because the way this scout was on hand to lend his neckerchief, could have made him a glamourous assistant, had his boy scout jumper been a bit more glittery.

  This service, I should mention, was not the reason we stopped going to church.  There had been undercurrents boiling up about this with my parents, to which my sister & I were completely unaware, and I think at its heart, lots of things about Christianity weren't sitting comfortably with them, and it came to a point where they decided that the juxtaposition of their personal beliefs and religious leanings finally collided in a Big Bang of revelation for them.  But, I'm not here to write about my parents' beliefs (or lack thereof), as it's not my place to go into any further detail than that.  No, there's something I wish to tackle.  Maybe in a fishing kind of a way, maybe in a rugby kind of a way, but seeing as I've never been fond of rugby, and I can't fish, we're just going to have to assume I mean with words.  In a "deal with something verbally" kind of a way.

Fast forward more years than I'd like to openly admit, until we get to three weeks or so ago.  I'm in my kitchen, listening to the radio.  I'm doing toast, drinking tea, I've just listened to 'The News Quiz' repeat on Radio 4, and the previous night's 'Any Questions?' is now being repeated.  A question is raised about the laws on assisted suicide in relation to terminal illness, and a politician, Constance Briscoe said:

"...Well I have a major problem with this one, because of course, I'm a Catholic ... and as you know, one of the things that we are against is taking your own life.  I was brought up to believe that if you take your own life, you're certainly not going to go to Heaven, and that's the end of that, you go to some other place ...  against that, can I tell you that I started to work in a hospice, before I went to university, when I was 16, and I continued to work on a voluntary basis up until 2005, on a Sunday, just sitting with some of the patients in the hospice, who were dying, and it really did break my heart, so many of them died in great pain, sometimes on their own, and sometimes I'm absolutely certain, that if they had been given a choice, they would have chosen to go slightly earlier when things were a little bit better for them.

So I am in two minds, my faith tells me, as a Catholic, that this is quite wrong - I'll never see my God if I take my own life (I'm not quite sure I want to see him 'cause I've got quite a few issues with him, but that's another matter).  Having said that, it's not for me to dictate to others, so the jury is out on that one."

For me, hearing this, the jury was not out.  This actually cemented some of the things that flit through my mind whenever people "talk beliefs".  Here's why:

  This is what I believe a moral dilemma is, if you know something is right or wrong, in your heart-of-hearts, and your religion tells you the exact opposite, it creates a paradox in you.  Your "beliefs" are telling you to do something that is on the other end of the spectrum from what you know to be a good, honest way of being a human being.  It's like your body urging you to jump into a skip full of broken glass, razor wire and nettles while your brain is shouting "Nooo!"

  Now I should, at this point, say - I have no problem with faith as a concept.  It can make people stronger, and that little bit more able to get through the hardest of times.  If your belief in something can help you & give you strength, then it absolutely should and I will not contest that for a second.  In the above quote from Constance Briscoe, the things that keep her from fully believing that the right thing for the people she sat with in the hospice are things that had been drilled into her whilst growing up.  A religion whose apparent message is one of threats and fear - "do this or you won't get this" - as opposed to the best interests of people in pain.  (Mercy is a virtue, right?  Just checking.)

  I will tell you what I believe in - the faith I have that keeps me strong in the hardest of times.  Life.  People.  Laughter.  Kindness.  Love.  The things that people can do that are inherently good are fantastic.  Every day I see some small act of kindness that makes me smile for the rest of the day.  I believe in treating people the way you want to be treated, I believe in expressing myself and using the skills for which I appear to have a knack to express myself as best I can.

  Maybe there is a higher omnipotent entity, maybe it's made up of all our collective consciousnesses?  Who knows?  We are definitely on a spinning rock in the middle of nothingness, and it is indeed miraculous that we are here at all, much more so that we are able to make music, drama, words, comedy, sausages, lighthouses and boats.  There is so much in life that is bad, that is scary, and that is man-made evilness, but there is so much good, too!  We don't necessarily need a God/some Gods to thank, or to put on a pedestal in order to ask for guidance.

If you do believe in God, believe.  Believe with all your heart if you need to.  But don't let God rule over choices in what you know deep down is the right.  Only you can decide that.