If It Brings Me To My Knees

**this is purely based on opinion and personal experience**

Just one-third of Generation Z’s members consider themselves to be religiously affiliated. Within this thirty-three percent, most identify as women. But regardless of my demographic’s tendencies, I have always felt averse to the idea of god, at least in the Catholic sense. I can recall a moment in my childhood bedroom when I was holding a rosary, gifted to me by my great aunt (the nun). I remember feeling a sense of guilt wash over me as I held the beads in my little five-year-old hands. I was frustrated, because I couldn’t bring myself to believe in the story I’d been told by family members and priests. How is there a god? How is he everywhere? Is he watching me now? I can picture myself swatting at the open air in my room, recognizing that there was nothing there, and not just because I couldn’t see it. God wasn’t omnipotent and omnipresent—he was made up.

My parents were never devout in their practice but still told me the stories of the Bible, had me receive the Eucharist and make my confirmation. We’d trek to the church on Christian holidays, only with the promise of a trip across the street to Starbucks afterward. Church was synonymous with cake pops and pastries, never mind worship. I never saw my parents pray nor heard them say to leave it in “god’s hands.” We were raised on the doctrines of our own thinking.

Something in my adolescent mind reassured me that I was right; despite my understanding of sin and its “consequences,” I never acted with a god in mind. Or, at least, not with a god governing my mind—I actually thought about god a lot, but in a way that was critical and challenging. I remember whispering to myself (or to “Him”), asking for a sign if it was all real, knowing it would never come. I felt a sense of superiority—though one I had to keep quiet about—for seeing the truth. I wondered how adults could believe in such a subjective story, such a specific, rigid set of rules to adhere to in order to experience the goodness of life. That child who questioned everything lives within me today, and her thinking has only grown more critical as she grew—especially through academic theories learned at university, the Jesuit university from where she types. If anything, it’s irony that’s omnipresent.

In riding my agnostic high horse, I realize I am not exempt from contradiction. I still acknowledge the overwhelming coincidences of the world—those that seem to have come only from something larger than myself. I believe in an idea or a concept larger than humanity, beyond the scope of our universe. But I find fault with idolatry. Humanity and expressions of humanity are subject to flaw—to the maximum. I perceive humanity as something far removed from divinity. We can’t interact with or touch the laws of the universe, therefore we cannot conceive of what they would look like, feel like, or what they’d supposedly expect all of us to do. This ambiguous force comes to us in subliminal ways that are unique to our personal experiences. My religion is my conscience. My religion is my gut feeling, my decision-making skills, my psyche and my gauge on life. I can eat meat on Fridays and still avoid eternal suffering, because my religion of selfhood told me to quit veganism and reincorporate meat into my regular diet to save my life. If there is a governing force, it knows that two things can be true at once—humans can be shockingly alike and connected in strange ways, but at the same time, have unique circumstances that shape thinking and attitudes.

I also think that, if a higher power were to be watching over us, it would condemn society’s hierarchies and disenfranchising power dynamics. It would certainly not want to inflict new ones in the forms of religious leaders, prophets or religious shaming. But what if the gods are trying to teach us a lesson about inequality? That could be true, as we slowly but surely watch monopolies and billionaires infiltrate government and head toward fascism. But to have these hierarchies mirrored in religion, a practice meant to encourage goodness, seems blasphemous to me, by Christian definition. Why would we allow the evils of humanity to overlap with peacemaking? That doesn’t sound pure to me. That sounds like imperfect humans speaking for the divine, even as the divine is something meant to be a mystery—again, by Christian definition. 

But Campbell, what about community? What about culture? What about the history of religion as a means to bring people together? You got me. I don’t necessarily denounce that aspect of religious practice. I think Islamic pilgrimages are beautiful. I think shaking hands at the end of a mass is sweet. I think choirs and hymns are enchanting. I find cultural anecdotes of religion to be powerful and invigorating, with the jurisdiction to push a group of people toward a similar, good goal. I’ve been on service trips with the congregational church in my town. I saw what religion, in a communal sense, did for members of a community—both my own and those who we were there to serve. But I still think the purity of humanity can exist without harsh rules and standards. I still think god didn’t tell us we couldn’t have premarital sex with someone of the same gender. I still think people can mobilize and work toward a greater cause through education and the cultivation of their own expository minds. But then what is the consequence of poor decision-making? Conflict with peers, conflict with authority and conflict with the self. Not conflict with an extremely-evil-but-also-extremely-pure man in the sky who will damn you for eternity unless you strictly abide by his rules. 

These harsh rules and standards are extremities, ultimately setting followers up for failure. People will find good on their own, as long as they’re allowed the occasional indulgence. People will feel guilt on their own, as long as they feel the weight of a decision they came to independently. It is the natural balance of life. 

Life is a religion. A book written by flawed humans is not. We are all on the path to self-mastery at all times of our lives. No human is above that. No human can be.