the god debate…
I never in my wildest imagination thought I would end up writing or sharing that I have a belief in God.
It is odd that I or anyone, should feel that way, especially as faith and religion still plays a huge part in daily life globally. Most of the planet’s consensual inhabitants worship, follow or have a belief in a form of deity, or spiritual practice.
My family were not religious; we never spoke of God. I have never read the Bible other than what I had to study at school. Religion always seemed a dull pastime: boring school assemblies and enforced educational study. On the rare occasions that we attended church as children, it was always under duress. There was a sense that we had to be on our best behaviour and that God would notice us if we were naughty; this wasn’t a good thing. He was a name that instilled fear, and the concept of judgement and punishment.
Church clergy seemed pompously educated, as if the church was only for the well-read, because most services didn’t make any sense to me; I assumed families studied together to improve their knowledge. My family were never going to do that! I had a school friend who went to church every week; her parents were teachers. She played the piano and violin. Her clothes were handmade. She always smelled of fresh soap. Her mum baked cakes, and homemade bread and jam. I thought only families like hers went to church; were accepted in God’s house.
I also associated church with shame because of my parents, especially my mum; people spoke of her mental ill health and liking for men unkindly. It was an upbringing that taught the system of sins of the fathers/ mothers alike; that somehow, I’d be judged by their actions, which meant I was not good enough for the exclusive faith club.
As a result, religion always made me angry in my youth. I was someone who proudly boasted that I was not religious because it caused too many wars; that too many lives had been lost because of faith… because of God. I would moan about the wealth of the church, which felt wrong when so many people were homeless, sick or dying. I decided too that if God really did exist that he would not allow children to die prematurely or at the hands of a tormentor; that there would be no murders, starvation or manmade or natural disasters. I hungrily listened to the conspiracies in relation to the Vatican, stories of murdered popes, money laundering and child abuse; all of it fuelling and confirming that the God concept was definitely not for me.
Yet beneath all of this, I always, from childhood, felt a strong connection to Jesus. Amidst the bullying and the segregation that my family suffered because of my mum’s ill health and other behaviour, I needed a friend, someone I could talk to; so, I chose Jesus. I cannot tell you why, because his story and that of God was a total conundrum to me. I didn’t choose him because of his connection to God, I chose Jesus because I felt something in my heart, whenever I heard his name or saw a representation of his image. In the innocence of my youth, I went with what I felt over what I was taught at school.
Life then got in the way, and somehow, I forgot the faithful childhood friend; I dismissed him as a coping mechanism for dealing with an extremely volatile upbringing.
But here I am, decades later, recognising that everything to date has been purposeful; devised to show me the depths of my soul and the healing that has been required on this journey. I have learnt that religion, for me certainly, is not what can be learnt from books, but what is within me. It’s a feeling relationship; books and teachings, while insightful and helpful, are still only another person’s perception or interpretation of an experience or inherited belief system. Like all relationships, only those who are in it, can know how it feels. We do not read books to learn how to love or to be a friend or a good neighbour; we know it, our hearts instinctively tells us how to connect in these ways. But when someone is unable to connect with their heart, the essence of their soul, which is pure love, it is usually because life has broken them in some way.
Thus it was not God who made me feel uninvited into the church but the people who failed to recognise the child who wanted to belong, who needed to be included. It was not God who shamed my family, judged my mum, it was our neighbours and community who did that. It was not God who created wars, murderers or rapists, only people. It is not God, or Source, Oneness or a Higher Being, that creates sickness or global disasters. One could argue that some sickness is manmade through the way in which we poison our planet, which is our source of nourishment. It is perhaps this same poison that creates our Mother Earth’s dramatic responses.
There is a saying, that we reap what we sow; this echoes the belief in karma. Why do we think that this philosophy applies to only individual actions? If everything is energy, then together, as a planet, surely we can reap what we sow; breed karma collectively?
In my perspective, life happens and as some faiths believe, it was never meant to be a bed of roses. Life is a journey and it is full of ups and downs, twists and turns; there are good and bad, happy and sad days. Light and dark, yin and yang. We cannot avoid this. There are good and bad people too, but in the badness, there is suffering and sadness because ultimately we are all born perfect; but life shapes us and changes us and sometimes there are what we perceive to be monstrous consequences. But when this happens, I often think to myself, that that could have so easily have been me.
As a child, I heard adults calling my mother names; as young as 8 I was familiar with the words crazy and slut. Therefore, I ask myself what was the line that I didn’t cross that could have made me act totally reckless: harm myself or others out of revenge, anger, hatred or frustration, because I felt all of those emotions. My truthful answer is that from as young as I can remember, I allowed my heart to connect with Jesus, and for whatever reason, this pull, this deep knowing that nothing and nobody else’s actions mattered; only what was in my heart, was my truest guide. This is soulful self love. It’s the ability to act from the essence of soul, which is the intrinsic invisible connection we have to the Universal energy, which I prefer to refer to as my Holy Father.
I believe faith is personal, it cannot be solely learnt from a textbook. If every child was taught to meditate and to connect with the essence of themselves, they would see their own goodness and perfection.
In my own healing process, after I took the leap of faith to leave the unhealthy 20-year relationship, I returned to re-evaluating my childhood and the role of my parents in shaping my personal beliefs and behavioural patterns. In doing so, I rediscovered the comfort I found in Jesus and explored that relationship further as a fully grown adult to see if, for me, faith was still a feeling: an internal simple knowing. In doing this, I learnt that the feeling had never truly left me and that the need to connect with Jesus rather than God Himself was an element of my ‘child self’ connecting with the child, the son of God. As a child, I did not trust adults / figures of authority. Hence, I felt that I could only trust the son, Jesus, whose story I was familiar; a child born into nothing, born in a manger. Someone good but disliked by many, especially those in authority.
What I also learnt is that my views of God, as in an entity that instils fear and promotes judgement and punishment, is the biggest example of mirror work that I have acknowledged to date. What we see in others is usually what we need to see in ourselves; it has taken me decades to realise that how I view God or faith, is what I still need to address within myself. I needed to address fear on many levels and to learn self-love so that I did not fear judgement, because judgement only belittles someone if the power is given to do so. In loving myself more, I don’t worry about what others think of me. I realise that that is their prerogative and says more about them than me.
Likewise, defining what is punishment, what does it look like? Am I being punished if I don’t get the job I wanted or have I just been rescued from making the biggest career mistake of my life? Is punishment the withdrawal of affection or is it more physical than just mental? Thus, I learnt that I randomly throw words out into the Universe without really understanding and connecting with what I am claiming to be experiencing. I do this because it is part of my own behaviour pattern; I came to believe that the sadness and the disconnectedness I felt was a form of punishment. I still believed in the put-down narratives of my peers and my childhood perception of not belonging and not being worthy. Hence, how could I ever believe that I was worthy and the opposite of being worthy, is unworthiness, which is a form of self-punishment.
Hence, if we believe God is fear then that is what the experience of Him will be. Likewise, if we seek examples of karma then we are sure to find it, for we are looking for examples of punishment and retribution.
As soon as my relationship with God, my Holy Father turned to one of pure love, then life has become truly wonderful. I trust that I will be safe. I trust that I will not just survive but thrive, because I allow love not fear to be my driving force. I remember as a child hearing adults say, ‘do what you love…’: there has never been a truer phrase. It’s not selfish, but a reflection of our unique and individual divinity; God is within us, so ultimately, our relationship with Him is a connection with Self, because He is our Soul, the Holy Spirit within. Thus when we are truly heart led we are working from our natural state of divinity.
It’s not for me to try to ‘convert’ anyone; like I say, faith is a personal journey.
However, the next time anyone asks you whether you believe in God, I encourage you to pause for a second; to take your attention into your head and listen to its response. Then take your attention to your heart and truly acknowledge what it feels when you ask the same question; be open-hearted to what you experience and trust in your own inner knowledge.
It is here that you will your truth.
Finally….
Remembering With Love & Gratitude All Who gave Their Lives in the Name of War; You Will Not be Forgotten
11/11/24
"When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow we gave our today."
(Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue)
Sally Jayne
xxx