The Day I Gave It Up

The experience is rather vivid still in my mind.

I remember myself as being one whom you might term as being staunchly religious. Brought up in a Christian family, I was essentially born and bred to be religious. The earliest memories I had of myself being in church stretches back some many years ago. It was for me, quite the most boring thing ever to be sitting amongst the crowd as a child, listening to sermons from the pulpit that I could not grasp or understand.

Years go by and this weekly visit to church was a routine. A routine that I remembered that I abhor. It was like a time vacuum that took away any fun that I could of have. So then it was when I entered my teens and I could slowly understand what it was all about - the doctrines and the lessons in life. I began to understand the concept of God.

It is strange today as it was back then, that I never could grasp "belief in God". It was to me, the most difficult thing to consciously will myself to believe. I couldn't. It was a constant struggle to figure out how to "believe". I struggle as I simply cannot believe something that I have not felt or experienced. Unfortunately (or fortunately maybe?), those experiences never happened to me. Of course, this was my little secret.

I understood the doctrines and to a point, I "believed" in the tenets of love and peace central to my flavor of religion. It appealed to me morally, philosophically and ethically. Belief in God however, was still elusive. For the longest moments in my life, I thought that the fault was mine. Maybe it was just the "Will of God" that this belief would be purposefully difficult for me to find.

I remembered the time, many years back, that I stopped going to church. I just could not reconcile all of this within myself. While I've left, it was always my hope, that someday, I would be able to understand and "believe". So it was for the many years in my life, led in "spiritual wilderness".It wasn't that much of a bother for many years since and for the most of it, this became a non-issue.

Throughout those years, the Christian religion for me, was one that was well embedded in my head. I was theologically sound and for the most parts, able to reconcile the doctrines and tenets of the religion into a "philosophy" that I believed in. I could explain, most of life with what I knew and was silently content and quietly confident of my understanding of the "Truth". All I had to do was to hang on, until God opened up a way for me spiritually.

It was a few years back, when I stumbled upon a book by Richard Dawkins - "The God Delusion". Foolishly, priding myself as one being theologically sound, I viewed the book as a challenge; one that I should easily overcome, given my conviction. Whatever was the deeper motivation for me to do so have long since escaped me.

Quietly, I read the book, page by page, from cover to cover.

I was dumbfounded. There wasn't a comeback that I could put forth (at least not in a way that I can accept myself). However, the most memorable piece of experience I felt, was an excitement within that was indescribable. It was a realization that I didn't needed a spiritual reconciliation. It reminded that all that I've ever needed have been inside me all along.

Giving up God and religion did not require me to give up the beliefs that I held up to this point - that of love, tolerance and ethics. Instead, my door was opened to a true appreciation of the sciences and with it a whole new world of possibilities in which I can feel completely fulfilled.

This realization puts me a on a whole new journey of intellectual stimulation. A journey of learning about humility. A journey that positively embracing ignorance. A fulfilling journey of being human and learning to live life to the fullest by appreciating the many wonders of life and nature.

For the longest time in my life, I have found peace within myself - the same day I gave it up.