It’s 2:30am. The dinner party has just ended. Andrew’s in his bed, and Andrea is on the spare mattress in the lounge, and I know there’s no way I can sleep any time soon, which is irritating. My mind’s running nineteen to the dozen on all sorts of topics, and tonight’s top of the list: God.
Never the small ones that bug you at 2am, is it?
My relationship with god is a weird one. I used to be a Christian, until I lost both my grandfathers in the space of a week. Then, well, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in god, it’s just that I hated him/her/it. Over time, that essentially teenaged rebellion mutated into atheism. But given my other half-mad beliefs, I actually find it currently impossible to disbelieve god, exactly. Oh, in an argument, I still take the atheist stance, simply because I think that living your life with an essentially atheist outlook, regardless of other beliefs makes more sense, and is a more useful thing to do, both for the individual, and society as a whole. But in terms of my belief god, it’s not even an agnostic stance – I’m a practising chaos magician, for god’s sake. If this shit works, and I have every reason to believe it does, then how can god not exist? Granted, I’m pretty sure he/she/it only exists because we believe it does, but still.
But I find that now, over a decade since my initial loss of faith, I no longer have hatred I did, expect on the most abstract level. I no longer have it in me to fight over people’s faith. Don’t mock mine, I won’t mock yours, that’s my view these days.
Odd thing, though: if I’d talked about this a year ago, I’d have been a hard line atheist, with a big old chip on my shoulder about how belief in god was unnecessary at this point.
What I can’t decide is if this change is for the better. It’s more mature, I think. It’s a good indication of the results of the work I’ve been doing over the last year, and they’re results I’m happy with. But I miss that white-hot certainty of unbelief.
Ah well. Time to get some work done.