this is where soft girls bloom

About me: I was raised religious (Christian). I never really questioned my faith, and my father actively lived out Christianity for me. For a while, I even helped organize children’s church in our congregation. Because of that, I find it hard to clearly say what I actually want to express maybe partly out of fear.

The point is: religion doesn’t make sense to me. On the contrary, it sometimes feels very wrong to me. I think that to make this discussion a bit more precise, we need to look at the concept of belief independently from organized religion.

For me, belief means the idea of something greater in everything and nothing, and the notion that this “force” exists. I believe in this idea of a force call it God, the universe, nothingness, it doesn’t really matter. I also believe that language itself is a limiting factor that makes it harder to describe this more precisely.

However, the idea of God as a man who judges me, and the way religion is lived and practiced by many people often to further divide people into groups feels very, very wrong to me. The idea that God can only exist in the one form that religions usually describe, and cannot be anything else, also feels very foreign to me.

My main points where I’m asking for your experiences, opinions, or thoughts are roughly these:

1. Am I intellectualizing the topic too much? And if so, is there a way to counteract that?

2. What is the origin of your own belief, and how did it come about? (Maybe I just haven’t figured out yet what belief means for me.)

3. One could say that it’s fine to simply believe what I already believe—but part of the conflict for me is that I would like to remain religious. Ideally, I would just want it to feel sincere and authentic again, if that makes sense. Basically, if there is a chance to continue being religious, I would choose that.

The way you describe that “nothingness” could also be God is a new thought for me, and it’s one that takes away some of my fear of that nothingness. I believe that in Islam, a friend once told me, though I’m not sure if it’s accurate because I haven’t looked it up myself, that we all come from the same source of energy. Sometimes, that idea is what God feels like to me as well: the unity of all energies. But I don’t have a clear answer for that yet either.

I don’t want to disclose the origin of my religion here, but what I struggled with was that there were many different interpretations and no real sense of unity. What I did appreciate, though, was the mystical aspect, something I still find myself searching for everywhere to this day.

Sometimes I think I never truly gave my religion a fair chance before turning away from it, and at other times I feel that there was a reason why I left. Unfortunately, I am by nature a very indecisive person, and I don’t have clear answers to much of anything.

What I personally long for is simply to believe again. To believe in something beautiful, spiritual, mystical, but still connected to some kind of divine figure. I need that in order to feel happy, because otherwise life often feels very empty to me. At times I am afraid that religion and faith are nothing more than projections of human fears, desires, and failures. And yet, despite that fear, I still wish for it.

the universe has a plan for you, even if you can't see it yet.