Is God Real?

Sprawled out on the 2 steps that separated our living room from the front hallway, one of my brothers and a neighborhood friend discussed the existence of God. Though I can’t remember the specifics from conversations a week ago, the points my brother made this day, over 30 years ago, lodged deep into my psyche.

My brother was in junior high school (I was in elementary school) and was right on track developmentally. He was evolving into the rational stage of development. From this place, he argued his significant doubt in the existence of God, and postulated even if God did exist, why it shouldn’t matter to how we live. Our neighborhood friend was younger and was Catholic. He argued for the existence of God. Interestingly, I don’t remember a thing he said.

The 3 main arguments my brother made were:
1. Before science, God was used to explain so many of the mysteries of the universe, then science came along and explained them rationally. Where plagues were seen as God’s punishment of a people, science learned it was, in fact, germs and bacteria that spread plagues, not bad behavior. Science took the superstition out of life, it empowered us. For those mysteries that still exist, science simply hasn’t found the answer yet, but they will, and using God as the answer was ignorance and superstition.
2. The people who believed in God were the weak people of the world. They needed a crutch because they didn’t have the strength to handle life. Those who knew their intelligence and power didn’t need a God to lean on; they created their own destiny.
3. Even if there was a God, what mattered most how we lived our life, not whether we spent our time praying and worshipping God. If, at the end of our life, we had helped make the world a better place, but never prayed or thought of God, this was what matter more than if we led a life focused not on changing the world, but in praying and worshipping God every day. If, he argued, he was judged badly at the end of his life for not praying to God, rather than the good he had done, then this isn’t a God he’d want to pray to anyway.

I found these arguments very disturbing because they actually made sense. The one that worried me the most was the second, as I did feel very weak in life, compared to my brothers, and I worried that my love of God was only because I was weak and needed a crutch.

Upset by what my brother was saying, I ran out into the kitchen to tell my Mom that he was arguing that there might not be a God and she had to go tell him to stop. My Mom looked down at me and said, “Well maybe he’s right, maybe there isn’t, how do you know?” I was shocked. I thought I had only cared more about God than my family, but to suddenly realize that they doubted God’s existence at all was terrifying. I was suddenly alone in my belief, which shook me, especially because I loved and looked up to my family's strength and intelligence so much (I am the youngest of of 4 children and the only girl). Developmentally I was still at the mythic stage, and I no longer had the illusionary comfort of conformity among my primary group, my family.

Later on, I heard my Mom also talk about the irrelevance of praying to God, repeating my brother's third point. I still am not sure who actually came up with that theory, but I felt its influence in my life. The interior life did not matter, relationship with God did not matter, what mattered was the result in the exterior, the bottom line, did I improve life? Being of a more contemplative and devotional nature, this emphasis on doing, on external activity left me feeling a heightened sense of "not enoughness". I also found confusing my Mom’s requirement that we go to church every Sunday - a liberal, rational church yes (The United Church of Christ) - but church nonetheless. At church, however, the same values of service, changing the world were held, and the interior life went largely unnoticed, so I guess it wasn't really all that strange.

Though my brother's arguments upset me, in my heart I knew there was a God because of my mystical experience, and I knew that my brain had not made up that experience. I also knew I’d never be smart enough to intellectually prove to him, my Mom, or anyone else, that God was Real, beyond anything human, beyond synapses firing off in our brains. Thus, my life in God went even more underground than before.

After this day of witnessing the argument over God's existence, there was the added twist that my intellect now doubted what my heart knew. My brother's points haunted my mind, thus the split between my interior and exterior life now included a split between my heart and mind. My mind was not at all certain it trusted my heart, and thus I lived externally from my mind and ego, but interiorly, I still prayed, talked and loved God as much as ever, this is where I felt genuinely “me”.

The great gift that my brother gave me was he forced me to evolve my spirituality. With my naturally religious bent, if I had been raised in a religious family, my beliefs wouldn’t have been challenged as they were now…why was God relevant to living a good life? Could I be strong and still desire God in my life? Was God just a cop out from living in the mysteries of life? These questions pushed me into a life of inquiry, questions and doubts, that have made my spiritual life so much richer, deeper and wiser than had I never been provoked. These 3 questions, and many more, will be returned to as this blog continues to chronicle my spiritual evolution.

God’s gifts are not always easy, but when we stick with them, they reveal the pearls of great price.