I never did my confirmation as we had moved and I was in public school by that time. I vaguely remember being given a choice of whether I wanted to do it or not, and said no. So I may have started to lose my faith by then.
By the time I was in high school my faith was definitely lost. I was into astronomy and science and what I was learning about didn't coincide with my belief system. I don't think it was a conscious decision to stop believing in God, it was just the end result of believing in the Big Bang and evolution. I didn't know how to reconcile science and religion. I didn't even know if they could be reconciled. How could I believe that God created man in his image when I believed wholeheartedly that we evolved from some ape-type creature? I also had a hard time reconciling why God would let horrible things happen, especially to good people. It just didn't make sense to me.
I went through a very brief stage of calling myself an atheist, but then realized that I couldn't say for certain that God didn't exist, so I quickly started calling myself an agnostic as I couldn't be sure either way.
When I was 17 I hit a turning point. I suffered a sports injury that effectively ended what I had hoped would be a career in my chosen sport. I immediately became severely depressed. And confused. If God existed, how could he let this happen? What did I do to deserve his punishment?
I think it's fair to say that all this added up to one confused teenager. I didn't dwell on my lost faith, it was just something that happened. It didn't concern me at all. I didn't expect that a few years down the road I would begin searching for answers...
"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic" Charles Darwin
No comments:
Post a Comment