Religion

A deep subject for a sunny autumnal day but so, as they say, be it. I clearly remember the first time I had a coherent thought about religion, something slightly more substantive than putting the words “boring” and “sermon” into the same sentence. I must have been about ten and I was in church, sitting next to a girl whose father had recently died and at one point during the service, she knelt to pray. Watching her, I was caught in an avalanche of thoughts and emotions.

The strength of her pain and grief was overwhelming, no matter how silently she knelt, her lips moving with her thoughts, her eyes closed, her head bowed, and I really felt for her. She was experiencing something I could not imagine and yet a small part of my brain was quite clinical about the whole thing. I observed that her loss marked her as being different from the rest of us and I understood what she was doing. Whether she was praying for herself, her father or her family, I never asked, but I knew what she was looking for: comfort and hope.

Here’s where, for me anyway, it got interesting. No sooner had I registered these thoughts than another popped into my head and I realised that if I was in her position, no amount of prayer would make any difference. Why? Because I didn’t believe in God.

I don’t know how many people make that discovery about themselves midway through a church service, but there it was, a simple truth that was rather frightening and yet liberating. I don’t think I knew the word “atheist” and I certainly didn’t have enough worldliness to distinguish between religion and Christianity, but I suddenly knew enough.

The village church in Llanfair Caereinion, Wales (13 November 2010)

Skip forward a couple of decades and not much has changed. I’m no more likely to develop a faith than I am to grow (upwards). I can see the appeal. In fact, there have been times when I’ve wished I did belong to a religious community. But I don’t feel that my life is lacking anything that a spiritual belief could bring, and so the world continues to turn.

If only that was the end of it.

Without wanting to go all “my best friend is gay” on you, I know a lot of people of all different faiths and beliefs and that’s as much a part of them as the colour of their eyes: they are who they are and I don’t think they’d be in my life if they weren’t good people.

However, I intensely dislike the minority who use their faith to judge others and find them inferior. But I can live with that. Until, that is, said faith and judgements are used to insist that everybody should live their lives according to those “standards”. As far as I’m concerned, that’s stepping so far over the line to render it nothing more than a distant blur in the background.

I could rant on with examples, but I don’t think there is any need.

What also gets my goat, possibly, almost, just maybe more than the above is when atheists do the same thing to people of faith, as though not being a believer makes one morally superior. There’s a whole world of difference between a (small p) political assessment of a religious institution’s policies and looking down on an individual for having a faith – and yet I know so many people on my side of the fence who are more intolerant than the religions they claim to speak against.

When I was a student, I crossed swords with various different political factions and admit to being most annoyed by The Far Left, mainly because they shouted the loudest and longest. On any subject. Anyway, there was one woman who was quite a good laugh and confessed one night, after a few too many pints, that she despised the politics of all of us, for many different reasons, but couldn’t bear most of the members of her own faction and was tormented by the thought of being stuck in a lift with them.

I throw that in because it’s one of the few times she ever made sense and I’ve never forgotten it. I just wish more people would open their eyes to the same thing.