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I’ve forgotten why I cared: The irrelevance of (un)belief in the gods

I’ve forgotten why I cared: The irrelevance of (un)belief in the gods

Last updated on: January 1, 2016 at 12:01 am by John Halstead

I’ve forgotten why I cared: The irrelevance of (un)belief in the gods 2015-12-28T18:06:05-05:00 John Halstead

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Have you ever asked a question and then, in the course of the ensuring conversation, forgotten why you asked the question in the first place?

I’m feeling like that.

I don’t know what happened. I remember caring about whether gods are real.

No, that’s not it. I remember caring a lot about whether you believe the gods are real. I remember caring a lot.

I just can’t seem to remember why I cared.

Of course, when I was Christian, I cared a lot about whether my God was real. If he wasn’t, then why was I doing some things I really didn’t like doing, and not doing some other things that I thought I might like to do, and feeling guilty about doing some other things that I did do?

And in my secret heart of hearts, I hoped that believing in God would be enough to save me, in spite of what I did or did not do.

And then I realized that I had made my God in my own image, that he wasn’t real, at least not in the way I thought he was. And that mattered too. It meant I could stop doing some of the things I didn’t want to do, start doing some things I though I might like to do, and stop feeling guilty about any of it.

That was a big deal for me.

Then I found Paganism, which seemed to be the perfect religion for people who realized that gods are made-up and wanted to go about making them up in a more deliberate sort of way.

And I learned about Jungian psychology, which explains how the gods are both made-up and real.

But then I met some Pagans who said their gods were real and not made-up. Some of these people got mad at me for saying their gods were made-up. And I got mad at some of them for saying my made-up gods weren’t real. And then we had all kinds of conversations about what “gods” means and what “real” means.

And then back in March, I had this acute feeling of apathy about it all.

Maybe it had something to do with my turning to prayer to my “personified impersonal” when I feared my son had a serious health issue. Maybe it was because I was becoming more active in support of causes I cared about, like marriage equality and a healthy biosphere. Maybe it was because I was observing Lent and made some room in my life for something new to enter in.

Maybe it was all of that.

Somehow I eventually lost that sense of apathy, and I got sucked back into the arguments again.

But now I’m having trouble again remembering why I cared.

It’s not just that, at some point, you have to stop caring what other people think and do your own thing. That’s part of it, but not all of it.

And it’s not that I’ve started to doubt my doubts about whether the gods are real. I don’t. They’re still make-believe to me (but a very real kind of way).

It’s that I have a this growing suspicion that the whole question of “realness” is a straw man.

Worse, I think it’s a sign that I’ve still been trying to be saved by belief.

Now I find myself excited at the possibility, not of new answers, but of new questions.

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