Feeling Empty

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. I’d meant to blog regularly about my journey doing atheism for lent, but I’ve found it extremely difficult to put into words what’s been going on. While the readings have been extremely interesting, honestly I’ve found a lot of them to be extremely difficult to read and get my head around – but perhaps that’s just because I’m not used to reading philosophy. I’m really looking forward to having some more time to read them again once the course is finished and understand them even more.

So far I’ve looked at some of the best (so I’m told) critiques of religion from the likes of Freud, Nietzsche and Marx. And more recently some theological critiques from Mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Mother Teresa and Paul Tillich. Naturally I’ve resonated with some more than others, and I’m finding as I’ve moved on to the theological thinkers (the ones who are critiquing Christianity from the inside) I’m starting to identify a lot more with the ideas they are expressing, even if I don’t understand it all.

Some of the arguments challenge the beliefs I grew up with, but on the whole, I’ve found what I understand to be very compelling. The majority of the arguments they make feel like they are talking about a god that I don’t believe in, beliefs that I’ve already moved on from or rejected in my own deconstruction. It’s only as I’m reading the critiques from the inside, that I’m resonating with them more and more.

As well as reading the material, I’ve decided to embrace atheism where I can in the rest of my life. I’m avoiding church as much as I can (leading a small group and doing freelance sound in a church mean I cann’t avoid it entirely), as well as abstaining from things such as prayer and reading the Bible. I know it sounds a bit crazy, given lent is a time where people traditionally fast in order to deepen their prayer and spiritual lives, but it feel like the best way I can really get to understand the arguments I am reading. I’ve found this to be generally helpful, getting some distance and perspective has helped me to see things in new ways. I’m recognising areas of my faith where I had been using “God” as a crutch, or projecting “God” into situations. It’s allowed me to think more critically about the claims Christianity makes and recognise the parts that don’t add up, and in all honesty, I’m surprised by how little it has changed my day to day life.

But there’s still something in me that is yearning for more, something deeper, something that doesn’t make sense in the rational. There’s an emptiness I feel that I can’t fill, a thirst in my soul that can’t be quenched. Perhaps this is just me projecting a God into my life, perhaps God really is a crutch that I lean on, and nothing more than that. But something tells me it’s not. As I said before, there’s a hum inside of me. A desire to be connected to the universe in ways that wifi and ultrafast 4G know not, what Paul Tillich describes as the “ground of being”.

Now that I’m reading the theological thinkers, I’ve started to slowly ease myself back into prayer and reading the Bible. Trying to engage with them in fresh ways with new eyes as I struggle to work out who or what God is to me now. I still don’t know where I’m going to end up, what kind of faith I’ll have, or what my life will look like. But I’m really excited to continue this search, to continue to challenge and disrupt myself in new ways. If life or faith is a journey, I’m really only starting.

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