Just believe and everything will be fine

I remember the day I discovered atheism. It was like when people find God, but the opposite. I felt total relief and clarity afterward! It was like everything clicked perfectly into place.

I’ve been a black and white thinker for as long as I can remember, so I didn’t realize atheism was an option until I was around 19 or 20. I thought if you didn’t believe in God that meant you believed in Satan. I honestly didn’t realize there was another choice.

At some point later in my high school career, I did a comprehensive search for the perfect religion to join because I didn’t want be a Satanist, but I didn’t agree with Christianity. I was deeply unsatisfied with my results. Fortunately, I discovered agnosticism. God cannot be proven or disproven. I liked that. It felt right.

My family didn’t go to church growing up, but I went to many Christian youth group events with friends over the years. My father bought me children’s Bible stories on cassette tape, and talked to me about God sometimes. Adults love to tell children fairy tales, and I remember hearing things like thunder was just the angels bowling, and the crescent moon was God’s fingernail.

When your whole world is anthropomorphic objects coming to life, talking animals wearing clothes, and mythical creatures possessing magic powers, why wouldn’t the moon be God’s thumbnail? Children want to believe what adults tell them, especially when it confirms there is real awe and wonder in the world.

I think every child experiences subtle precocious moments during their childhood where the rose-coloured glasses slip down for just a second, and they see what they believe to be the real world adults experience. Sometimes it feels like bitter betrayal, but sometimes it feels like an aha moment.

I’ll never forget the time my friend Janele disclosed to me that she found a clue that she believed proved Santa Claus wasn’t real. She had received a Nintendo Game Boy for Christmas from “Santa” but written inside the battery compartment in her uncle’s handwriting was the name Luke. Why would Santa give her Uncle Luke’s old Game Boy? Curious indeed.

When I asked my mom about it later, she told me if you don’t believe in Santa then you don’t get any presents at Christmas. I promised her I still believed in Santa because I feared not receiving presents ever again. I couldn’t articulate this at the time, but it felt like a conspiracy, and my involvement somehow perpetuated a lie. It was very confusing and uncomfortable for me. (And one of the reasons why I didn’t want to tell my kids Santa was real. Somehow my mother forced me to let her do it and it turned into a whole thing, but I digress.)

Just how I pretended to believe in Santa out of fear of never getting presents, I began to see how many people do the same when it comes to religion. People just say they believe out of fear of not getting to heaven. It’s easier to believe than to risk the wrath of God or Santa.

The earliest I remember having doubt that God existed was in the third grade. We were learning about dinosaurs, and the facts from science class were not jiving with the information I had learned from the bible stories I had been told. I asked my mother how can these two things be true at the same time? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the timeline.

Mom was at the sink washing dishes. She was very deliberate in her response to me. She chose her words carefully, but essentially, she didn’t have a good answer for me. She stayed vague despite my pressuring for more.

That was the first time I remember my mom not knowing something. Up until that point I thought she knew everything! She was my mom and she was a teacher at my school. How could she not know the answer? I was frustrated. Either she’s lying, or I’ve stumbled upon a giant conspiracy. A conspiracy even bigger than Santa Claus!

Then one day on the bus ride home from school, an older student asked me if my family went to church. When I told her no, she informed me that if you don’t go to church you will burn in hell. Well, shit. I didn’t want to go to hell!

When I told my mom what happened, and tearfully asked why she and dad had been so careless with my eternal soul, she explained so long as you believed in God in your heart, it was okay to not go to church. Nobody in our family was going to hell. This calmed me down in the moment, but I was still worried.

Who made these rules? Why isn’t everyone following the same rules? Why risk not getting into heaven when all we had to do was simply go to church? It would be years before I realized this rationale sounded a lot like the conversation I had with my mom about Santa’s existence.

Having believed in atheism for my entire adult life, it feels strange to have this newfound connection with my mystical and spiritual side. To be clear, I yearn to be connected to the universe, not God, but I now consider myself to be a mystical atheist.

My friend pointed out that it sounds like I believe in God, but I just don’t call it that. Maybe God is the universe or vice versa. Joe Monteleone once told me atheism and theism often meet at their extreme mystical edges. I like the way that sounds, and I think he’s right.