There is Only One God

He’s dead. He’s everywhere. He’s a she. And religion is a human construct.

Evolution strikes me as infinitely more spiritually profound than Genesis.

—Maggie Nelson

I woke up the other day to this quote from The Argonauts. That, combined with the prompt—“What are your thoughts on religion?”—brought back many lengthy conversations with my father and his family about the origin of life.

His side leans towards creationism (…), and though they’re aware that we disagree on basically everything, they must derive some sick, sadistic pleasure from respinning their cycles of drivel.

I’m open to discussing most things, but whether God created the world in seven days or seven million years, or at all, has gotten redundant. I simply DO. NOT. CARE.

Guess what, even God doesn’t give a rats ass.

Being raised with Sunday school gives me the advantage of using their own claptrap to clap right back at them.

Proof is found in 2 Peter 3:9: “With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day”.

Omnipresence and eternity render time rather redundant. (Duh!).

I started questioning the doctrines as a child, because, contrary to what my father insists he does, I actually do think for myself.

At six I wondered how we could be so sure our God was the right one, when all the other religions were equally hellbent on theirs.

I later came to understand all of our Gods to be the same, and they’re not a vengeful robed man in the clouds but an energy that flows through all things. I refer to it as spirit.

I view the stories found in religious scriptures as expressions of an innate human desire to explain the unexplainable using our vastly limited reference points.

‘The Holy Book’ seconds this in 1. Corinthians 13:12: “Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully”.

Those storytellers too acknowledged that they, in their current form, couldn’t do justice.

You’re not a human being having a spiritual experience. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Spiritual beings inhabiting human bodies, we inherently seek the beyond ordinary. Unfortunately, this yearning is weaponized by those seeking control over others—another ingrained human trait.

Religion is manmade to exploit our fears as a means to an end.

I’m a believer in the divine, compelled not to rationalize and only to feel; to experience in its purest form.

On my journey, I’m ever-charmed to encounter others who share this consciousness without a need for doctrine.

When I moved to the Pacific Northwest at twenty and ‘discovered’ indigenous culture, I declared to my family, jokingly, yet not joking, that I’d converted to the faith of the Native People and that Einstein is my guru:

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

A decade and a half later, I’ve evolved, but the basics remain. The above still reflects the bulk of my belief system:

We’re all connected. We’re all one. Let’s be kind and love all as we love ourselves.

(And to hell with organized religion).