These last few months have been...different. I’m searching for answers to questions I’ve never asked before.
I haven’t told anyone this, but for the first time in my life, I’m questioning my faith. (I haven't told anyone because I'm embarrassed...I have some friends that might be upset with me if I demoted myself from "theist" to "agnostic.") I’m starting to feel torn over believing something that can’t be rationally or logically be explained. Before, I used to be a believer in Pascal’s Wager, which has four scenarios: if you believe in God and He’s not there, you lose nothing; if you don’t believe in God and He’s not there, you lose nothing; if you believe in God and He’s there, you gain everything; if you don’t believe in God and he’s not there, you lose everything. Get it? That made sense to me for awhile. But now I’m not sure that cuts it anymore. I could use the same logic to believing in, say, little trolls that keep bridges from collapsing, or something. You can’t lose anything by not believing in the trolls, right? But say the trolls wanted you to invest an hour a week to them. Then every week you’re losing an hour of your life for no reason. And you’re praying to a bunch of trolls that don’t exist. You have a crutch, and are probably overconfident that these trolls are going to keep weak bridges from collapsing, thus you don’t take any precautions by making sure the bridge is sturdy. My halfhearted analogies are lousy; something my SAT scores will surely reflect. But you get the idea.
So, for a few months, I’ve been battling these demons of faith, wondering whether God exists. From there, I wondered what happens if God does not exist.
If so, then life is absolutely meaningless. If there’s nothing to work for in the afterlife, then what is the point of this life? There is no good; there is no evil. There are no repercussions for any actions, except for punishment by man. So what? In a few years, we’ll all be dead, and it won’t matter who was in jail or who was out partying or who was out saving the whales, because we all end up in the same spot: a hole in the ground.
Whenever I was going through a rough time, I would pray to God, and I would usually feel better. What if that was just being naive and overconfident? If God isn’t there, then there is no one to help me but me, and that just scares me. I’m not strong enough to handle life on my own, and I don’t have any close ties that I know will always be there. I used to tell my parents everything, but not anymore. We live in the same house, but we don’t know each other. I don’t even know what my mother does for a living. I just don’t feel like I can confide in them anymore. I don’t want to confide to counselors or friends; they are merely fleeting hallucinations who disappear after a year (at best). Just like I wouldn’t want to invest money in a bank that closes after a year, I don’t want to reveal my sentiments to people who’ll be gone soon.
But God was always there. I knew that He would always understand, and never leave me, so I never truly felt lonely.
But now...?
Sometimes I feel like I’ve reached my limit. With nothing to live for, what’s all the stress about? It’s just a cycle of work, school, work, job, work, money, spend, work, money, spend, etc. There’s no reason to put up with all this.
I still can’t even contemplate suicide. As long as there is any doubt in my mind over the existence of God, then I don’t want to take chances. If God exists, and suicide is a sin that’ll send me to Hell, then what’s some stress versus a lifetime of swimming in fire? I guess you might say I live out of fear of the unknown. If I was absolutely positive there was no God, I would have been dead by sixth grade.
Though when you think about it, suicide is an awfully selfish resort. Not as much for me, because no one would notice I was gone anyway. But say one of my quasi-pseudo-friends committed suicide; I would be pretty pissed off at their selfishness. It’s just no consideration for the people you leave behind. I like to think that at least my parents would probably care if I was dead, although secretly I know that they’d be happy they wouldn’t have to worry about insurance for my TMJ anymore. But who knows what I’m capable of in the future. Maybe someday I’ll end poverty. If I died, then poverty would still be rampant. Okay, so that’s unlikely, but you know. I’m useless and unnoticed now, but someday I might do something great, and I might deprive the world of a future humanitarian or something. Although, if there is no God, and I become a great humanitarian, then so what? (See fourth paragraph.) A catch-22.
A nice solution would be to get run over by a car somehow and die, and somehow be totally innocent in it. Then there's no burden of burning or of life's tribulations. But with my luck (which has manifested itself into a 54% on a physics test that I almost completely guessed on), that won't be happening soon, at least not without it being "accidental" (i.e. not jumping in front of the car myself).
I’ve already acted selfishly, though. I cry so freaking much. Crying is kind of selfish. It’s a sympathy request. When I’m not crying, I’m acting bitter and cold. I think I’m making people feel uncomfortable around me, now. Except for my bus driver, who couldn't care less either way, as long as I wasn't tracking wet grass into the bus.
I haven't really mentioned what triggered all this. And I don't know the answer. I've been thinking about this God-situation for awhile, so it's hard to trace it back to a certain situation or even a certain month. My general attitude though has degenerated a bit. Much of it is end-of-the-year stress. Teachers giving me piles of work to do in the last month; that type of thing. There are other things that I don't wanna mention, but that's mainly it: stress.
I hope things get better during summer.