Losing My Religion

February 06, 2012

08:11AM

Dear Apa,

I'm having this weird thing happening to me. I would want to think that this is not a big deal, but it really scares me big time. I don't even know what this thing is, but the fact that this is something really alien to me is what makes it scary. In over a year now, I never set foot in a church. And to tell you honestly, I feel like my faith is slowly faltering. Not that I don't want to believe in a God, it's just that I started wondering if God really exists. I mean, don't you realize how crazy it is to talk to someone you haven't even met. We confide everything to "him" and we don't get any response but we still do anyway. We pray for the things we want but nothing really comes yet we still thank "him". We ask for forgiveness whenever we do wrong and we'd think we can already get away with it because we already apologized and then we'd do the same shit again because we know that we can always ask for forviveness. And we always will be forgiven.

It's not a bad thing to believe that there is God, we have nothing to lose if we believe anyway. But the fact that we doesn't even know if that someone we are talking to is real or not makes me think otherwise. What if there is no God after all? We all lived our lives believing in something that isn't real. We wasted our times hoping that there is that someone out there who's gonna make life easier for us, so we did not make any effort and do something to make our lives easy ourselves. If it turns out that God doesn't really exist, it would mean that we've been fooling ourselves all our lives.

It is said that God created man, but it seems the other way around; man created God instead. During the time when people were living in primitive tribes, there wasn't a God yet. But human was becoming more and more wise, they started questioning about many things. Where did man come from? How did the world begin? And since they never found out any answer, they decided to invent God. So for every question without an answer, they can always say that it was God's plan.

Suddenly, men became afraid of the things they don't understand. And because they are scared, they considered those things as "bad things" and they decided to make their God hate "bad things" so that people won't do it again. And so they're not gonna be scared anymore. A perfect example would be homosexuality. The people of that primitive tribe did not understand homosexuality, and since they are scared of the things they don't understand, they considered it as one of the "bad things" and made their God say that it is a sin to be attracted to the same sex and you will get punished for being homosexual. And so homosexual people became evil people and they should not be accepted. That's what their God said, or at least that's what they made their God say. And because people of our generation still believe in the same God that those primitive tribesmen created, homosexuality is still unaccepted.

Do you believe in God? Do you believe that the God most people believe in is good all the time? If God is really good all the time, then why is there bad things happening around us? Why is there still war and hunger and natural disasters? Isn't it that the God we believe in is supposed to be good and loving and "he" should be having mercy to "his" creations?

My grandma would always say something like "Galit na 'yan ng Diyos" whenever we watch TV and there are news on calamities. I couldn't help but think, is it really how a God should punish? Whatever happened to the merciful and forgiving God! Like in the bible when Noah was told to build an arc because God will make a great flood so the sinners will all die, it only proves that the God we always thought was forgiving is merciless all along. What's the point of repenting before the judgment day if after all, we'll all gonna die anyway?

Maybe I'm just being too doubtful, Apa. 

But if God happens to be real, can "he" blame me for having all these doubts when "he" is the one who's supposed to be responsible for this intelligence I own? If it is true that we only live our lives according to God's plan, then clearly enough, it is "his" plan to make me gradually lose my faith.

it's me,
Tuesday