*Disclaimer: this is an essay I wrote for a college theology class.
When children look at the world they see a world of possibilities. Everything in the world is good and there is little evil. Religion teachers teach God loves everyone no matter what. The world really is not more complicated than that. We all have a moment when the world changes. When we see behind the curtain of everything is good and everything is love. We grow up. If some people have not looked behind the curtain or grown up, it can cause the people who have to feel isolated. Isolation occurs because the people who have grown up get put down for their new view of the world. After leaving Catholicism because of feeling isolated, I looked further into the church and found my personal relationship with God.
Growing up I was curious to why Catholics believed certain things, but my questions were met with rejection causing me to not have much to stand on in my faith. Always being in a Catholic school setting, I was permeated from a young age with the message “God loves you.” I believed in God, but my family setting was more nontraditional than my peers. My parents are not married, only my mom is Catholic, and I’m an only child. Theses three differences from what the traditional norm is in Catholicism caused me to constantly question why Catholics believed certain things. Whenever I would ask my religion teachers they said, “Just because that is our faith.” That never sat well with me. When it came to blind faith, I found it difficult to just accept. I was not willing to believe just because. But when I questioned my faith, I was always put down for not just believing, like having doubts meant something was wrong with me.
With nothing to back up my faith, when my beliefs in God were shaken, I felt isolated from the church and ended up leaving. My faith and world were shaken when I was 12 years old when my grandpa, who I was extremely close to, passed away from lung cancer. I went into a deep depression during this part of my life because I did not know how to handle something as major as someone passing away. The world looked different to me once my grandpa passed away. The God I had found kind of hard to believe in, now felt impossible to believe in. The world was not perfect and the God that loved me seemed unrealistic. But questioning the faith was wrong, so I decided I could not believe in the God everyone spoke about and left the church.
My life was not getting better without God so I decided to give God another chance in my life. Leaving the church at first felt freeing because I no longer felt isolated by people who told me to stop questioning my faith, but leaving caused me to feel isolated from my peers. I felt more alone then I had while being in the church. Through contemplation I decided that maybe God existed and maybe I needed to give God a chance. I decided if God really existed then I needed a sign that everything was going to be okay in my life and I would be able to move on and be more than my depression. After contemplating for weeks on whether God was giving me a sign, I realized that every time I felt alone or isolated I saw daisies. I saw them as the actual flowers or on people’s clothing. I realized whenever I saw daisies, for some reason, I felt calm, like everything was going to be okay. I believe God sends a sign every day letting me know I’m okay. Looking back now, I realize I was really focused on finding evidence God existed. I was not going “in search of God”, instead I was looking for things that could prove God (O’Malley 10). When I finally decided to just look for God, I found God. Seeing the daisies and seeing God makes me feel less isolated and these are the moments that give me hope I’m on the right track of seeking God.
Even though I have reentered the church, I still feel isolated sometimes. My parish is traditional so my beliefs often do not align with my parish youth group’s. When I talk about not liking calling God He and sometimes prefer She or just God, people often get upset or uncomfortable and I get labeled as being too liberal. When I bring up feminism, I get shot down immediately as being “whiney” or “blaming men for my problems.” Hearing this all the time is difficult and sometimes I think about dropping it and trying to believe like my youth group does. But every time it just does not feel right. There is a part of me that tells me to look deeper and go further. O’Malley wrote, “Doubt in your mind is like a pain in your body,” and this is exactly the way I feel when I try to only call God He (O’Malley 8). Every time someone from my youth group tells me I’m wrong it causes me to look deeper into myself and into the area I believe in. I think this causes me sometimes to have a deeper and more personal faith than some people in my youth group because I’m willing to keep looking and not just stop if the subject makes me uncomfortable.
Having a more nontraditional family and returning to the church gives me a different perspective on what I believe. I think having a personal relationship with God or with faith is one of the most important things in life. Even in isolation from peers, I was never isolated from God and through years of rediscovering my faith I understand that. God asks us to be in communion with others but never asks us to be exactly like others. My personal experiences in life have formed my relationship with God and have formed what I see to be true. If others disagree with my faith, I’ve learned to dig deeper and find out why I’m taking this, as O’Malley would say, “calculated risk” in my belief (O’Malley 9). I do not think God ever asks me to be content at where I’m at in my faith. I believe in a God that constantly asks me to step up and step out. To step up to the plate and let doubt linger and step out and look for answers in the world. God never says stop thinking and the more we think, I believe, the more we get closer to be able to understand God at a deeper level. I know I have been ridiculed in the past by my youth group for my acceptance of certain ideas or my willingness to admit that I struggle with ideas, but I believe God asks us to seek and to not just say “this is comfortable.” When we stop seeking we are shortchanging ourselves the opportunity to know God better.
Cited: O’Malley, William J. God: The Oldest Question. Loyola Press, 2000.