The God Factor

This is a subject I will probably be revisiting as my journey with Leuk progresses.

Learning you have leukemia quickly gets to the God questions. For some, this news pulls them closer to their faith, for others it pushes them away from it.

The question for me is not where is God?, its IS God?

I’ve been a christian all my life, but have struggled, always struggled, with religion vs science; creation vs evolution; the power of faith vs e=mc2. I found my own beliefs combining the two: that seeking God and seeking science are both the same search for Truth.

Now I’m not so sure, my philosophy is damaged. I wrestle with the basic question: does God exist? Is He real or only an invention to make sense out of a senseless world?

I haven’t completely lost my faith and I suppose as my health deteriorates I will pray a whole lot more than I do now. The old adage is probably true: there are no atheists in foxholes.

For now I would call myself an agnostic theist meaning I believe God might exist but if He does He is not as involved in our lives as we think He is.

I am not trying to dissuade my readers from their faith. I am only being honest about mine. If you have faith, cling to it,  I am trying to do that too because, after all, in the end all we have is faith and our family.

I believe in my family’s love, but as for God’s, well, Leuk has sent me back to the beginning. Back to where I was when first learning about God.  In this game of life, my seeking, if you could call it that, is back to square one.

I do still pray from time to time though it often feels like I’m praying to the air.  I guess that works as a metaphor: we breath in air and can’t live without it. Does that mean we breath in God and can’t live without Him? For now I’m not using the metaphor; sometimes it is, for me, just air.

I have family who read this post and I don’t want them to think I am “lost”. For me, right now, God is lost. I’m having trouble finding Him.  My hope is, however, that God has more faith in me than I do in Him.

A line from a song I wrote a few years back says:

So you say you don’t believe in God but one thing I know is true, He let his son hang on that tree ’cause God believes in you.

Maybe there’s more to Him than I think. Maybe He believes there’s more to me. I don’t go to church. I don’t read the bible. This is my time of reflection. My time of ponderation. A meditation on where I am in the universe, were God is, and how I fit in with both.

I guess when it comes down to it, I’m working on an exit plan… not how to exit, but what will happen WHEN I exit. Where will I go when I step through that door? This is, for now, my wondering. I know the ideology. I know the various dogmas. Those are now all washed away. I simply wonder if its possible to know Him.

We’ll see as I get closer to that fox hole.

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3 Responses

  1. Jan says:

    Also, what helps me is what a Catholic priest told me when I was going to a seminary in San Antonio about Karl Rahner’s philosophy–“The ABSENCE of God is (actually) the PRESENCE of God.” Reframing my judgment of what I perceive changes my attitude towards faith.

  2. Jan says:

    Science and religion resonates with me due to the silent retreat I just came back from where I discovered Teilhard de Chardin. He was a Jesuit priest, condemned by the Catholic church, but renowned as a paleontologist. He believe that evolution was God’s way of working, but that we are to go beyond survival of the fittest to unity. I am just starting to read about him, so that’s the little snippet I have. He said wonderfully mystical things, like:

    “Love is the most universal, the most tremendo9us and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces. . . .Is it truly possible for humanity to continue to live and grow without asking itself how much truth and energy it is losing by neglecting its incredible power of love:?”

    Teilhard de Chardin in his essay “The Spirit of the Earth”