No greater believer than a penitent
I was cruising through my old posts today, and I bumped into one that made me be ashamed of my existence. I posted it into this forum a long time ago, after I had written it in an immature, unthought-through tone. I would like to re-express myself about it.
The fact is that life is life as we know it, and it's a fat chance that it'll ever change in our very own lifetime. Some of us choose to believe in a deity, some of us choose not to. Some choose destiny and inevitability and some choose free will and consequences. I'm going to retell a very nice and juicy experience with faith, so anyone can take whatever he finds useful from it.
Atheism was a big part of my personality's description two years ago. I would get into heated debates with people praising their Lord and Lords just because I felt wounded by that. I was so full of myself that I thought I had the answer to all and everything, and looked down on all men of faith just because formulas and quotes took too much of my brainspace to take faith into consideration.
What made the whole thing gruesome was the absolute arrogance and belief that I alone had the ability to control my destiny, ignoring the existence of others.
So, not a day too soon, it happened. Near death-experiences by the dozen. Government men knocking at your door and inquiring about your folks and friends. Nasty plane landings, HIV tests, being held at gunpoint etc. 90% of which I couldn't have avoided even if I wanted to.
And when it all piled up, the inevitable fate of all self-centered fools came to be : I was kneeling in front of the altar icons, broken in both soul and body, truly and honestly praying for the first time in my whole life. Praying at the bunches of paint on cement layers because it was the traditional thing to do.
The fact that I finally came out of what seemed to be a never-ending agony had little to do with the "unseen" and a lot to do with some hard decisions and good ol' luck. When all fell back to place, I stood there and realized that I was safe to be an atheist again, being that all was clear.
But something so deeply rooted in me that I couldn't shake it off just made me feel that it wasn't a greater force that suddenly came down and swooped everything back into position, but that it was my changed attitude towards other people.
What I've failed to notice in religion all these years is that it is not supposed to make anyone worship something, but to make one cherish life and acknowledge the existence of others.
Yes, people like the creators of "Bumfights" are what makes me loose my stomach acid the wrong way, but there is not a force that pulls the strings on the back of any of them. There is not a universal excuse for everything that goes bad except stupidity and evilness, and even those can't apply to everything.
What I'm trying to say is (following the old "There's no such thing as an atheist in a trench" say) don't flame all across the room against someone's beliefs unless you yourself have endured the toughest of life's temptations without doubt in your own.
As for the other party, prayers and faith alone do not make problems go away (although they sure come in handy as a moral boost).
If a single person finds something useful in this, this won't be 30 minutes of life lost in typing. Thanx
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