I have spent the majority of my life and childhood ignoring the question of God. As a young child, I followed everything I was told religiously. I listened to hymns, prayed with my whole heart, and believed in the Almighty, just like everyone else in my life.
Come adolescence however, I felt myself detach from religion. I started learning about atheism, and somehow, it spoke to me. I didn’t quite understand it, but I knew I couldn’t just accept it either. I had never felt the need for God, hence I ceased to believe.
I wish that these two paragraphs would be all that this topic needed, and this is where my experience with religion and God had ended. Alas, my need for a God was yet to come.
As I became an adult, I felt myself wishing there was a God. I had been fully convinced up to this point in my life, there was no God, and all efforts to find one where vain. But as sorrows piled up, and as grief tore my heart, I felt myself yearning to speak to someone. Not just someone, but someone just and someone residing above all else. I began to realize why humanity for eons had sought a God. The feeling of an all-knowing, and all-seeing being, who considers you their child, and is seeing your suffering—the acknowledgement is peaceful and comforting. And I don’t slight anyone for wishing for it. But my mind couldn’t accept if it was acknowledgement or delusion.
And hence commenced my path down finding God. Be it in prayers, or theology, logic or philosophy, I tried to justify the existence of God. I failed to find God in logic, and I was told “God materializes not in logic, but in feelings. You can’t find the Almighty, you can only feel them.” I failed to feel God, as well. Not in prayers, not in actions. No heavenly miracles happened, no God materialized. I was told that is too grand an expectation from a God, if there is one, for one who has dedicated very little to God. I was told people spend their lives working towards God, and waiting for them to show up. But how, I could not understand. How does one dedicate their life to God, if they receive no signs, no proof they are going in the right direction. Perhaps not a grand unveiling, does a non-resistant non-believer not at least deserve a sign?
Having failed all else, I shall now summarize my thoughts and my experiences, and what I feel comfortable to conclude.
I believe there is no God, and if there is one, they are deaf, blind and ignorant to my existence and efforts. And, this goes against the definition of a benevolent god in every religion. Now, does this guarantee there exists no God? No, I have simply failed to find one, despite all my efforts to find one.
My non-belief stems not out of a desire to not find a God, rather to the contrary, I need God, I wish there is a God, and I wish one day I am made aware of their elusive existence, and made able to believe.
I continue to wish to find God, but every passing day pushes me closer to concluding there is no God, that the world is indeed absurd—that you stare into the void, scream your questions into the void, but no one replies from the void. It seems to me there is no deeper meaning behind this existence, no Heaven to look forward to, no meaning behind pursuing the work of God; for what is the work of God, if there is no God? But if the meaning of life is not God, what is it? I can only find solace in philosophy, and in finding out I am not the only one failing—in reading the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus and Miguel de Unamuno.
I agree with those who argued for Fideism–from Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi to Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther to Blaise Pascal–I agree; logic breaks God, and God breaks logic—only I can’t choose faith over logic. I can’t take a “leap of faith” for I fail to find any in me.
I wish to find a God, but every time I try all I find is myself committing philosophical suicide. I need a God, but I am afraid that is a futile quest. For in my perils, all I find is the absurd.