My dark night of the soul

As you may have figured out its getting harder and harder for me to post on here. This isn't the "life is busy" excuse. I have often felt hypocritical on here and I think my decade long "dark night of the soul" is starting to weigh down on me.

For some reason I feel a weight of expectation on me about what I am supposed to feel or believe. Or that I am not supposed to lose the faith or something.

That somehow beginning a blog on faith means you're supposed to live up to it.

I really don't know where all this is going and I'm not sure what sort of label I am supposed to place here.

It's easy to say "oh don't worry about that". But the truth is... It bugs the hell out of me. Like a nail scratching the inside of my skull.

I see the church - and I can't relate.
I see atheists - and I can't relate.
I see agnostics - and I can't relate.

To paraphrase the Dane:
"Whether you put faith away or you don't put faith away, either way, you will regret it."

Even my Springsteen albums don't really do it anymore.

All the damage we did trying to help you

"We were worried about your personal salvation... was it heaven or hell that you saw when your eyes closed?
You smiled at us floating high above the question like you knew something we didn't know."*

Our spiritual interventions ended up doing more harm than good. We could not even consider the possibility that we were wrong. We put you in the state of fallenness, casting ourselves as defenders of the truth. It was the marker from which we would no longer discuss your inner life.

Well intentioned, but in the end, we did more harm than good.

And so. Old friends no longer discuss God or spirituality. Former lovers no longer talk. Parents and children are in different spaces and places now.

And still we tell ourselves "We were worried about their personal salvation."

* Taken from "Virginia"

Bazan on questions of spiritual salvation

I've had this song on loop for a few days now.  Classic Bazan, really.  I can't help but think that it's about the pain of looking back and realizing how damaging it was when you asked those close to you to prove they were "true believers".

But then again... maybe, that's just me.

God-shaped hole... or hole-shaped God?

Pascal is famous for a quote about there being a God-shaped hole in the heart of each us.  But I've been thinking about what we do to God to make him fit inside that hole.  Do we cut off the pieces that don't quite fit in?  Or do we fill in the spaces where we find our spiritual hole still not filled by this God.

Just how far are we willing to twist God to make him fit into the God-shaped hole that we defined for him?

[Inspired by the atheism for lent project.]

Atheism for Lent

In a nod to the "religious uses of modern atheism" school the team at iKon have a novel twist on this season of Lent. Instead of giving up something like chocolate or alcohol -  the idea is to experience a spiritual desert / dark night of the soul for Lent.

It is a 5 week Lent series covering strong atheist critiques of Christianity by Freud, Marx, Nietzche, Zizek with the aim of allowing believers to feel the full weight of the absence of the divine for Lent.

Here is the link for Atheism for Lent.

Dexter on Truth

"Trust those who seek the truth, but doubt those who claim to have found it."
~ Dexter

Of course whether you should take advice from television's most popular fictional serial killer is still a matter of interpretation.

Runaway Train

Soul Asylum's Runaway Train was a hit over twenty years ago. I never thought getting old would happen so quickly...

Every now and again that kind of thing hits you. Like how Marty McFly would be pushing fifty about now.

Kafka on starting again

"I don't know... only away from here, away from here.  Always away from here.  Only by doing so can I reach my destination."
"So you know your destination?"
"Yes. I have already said so. Away-from-here.  That is my destination."

There is no cure

"No religion is gonna cure you of your pain
How much have you changed?  
No, you're still the same..."
~ Joseph Arthur

For every one teenager raised up on unscientific tales of creation who loses his faith when he encounters the body of critical knowledge I fear there may be two more who were promised a cure for their depression and lose their faith when they find that, no, even after all of this, they're still the same.

What I learned about being a father last year

Christmas is a lot more fun with kids.

Fatherhood doesn't really begin in the delivery room.  What happens in there is more like getting hit between the eyes with a steel hammer with lots of blood and water thrown in the mix (none of it yours). Fatherhood begins a few months later, the moment your baby has their first chuckle with you.

Life before parenthood is just a dream you wake up from that you can't quite remember all the details of.

Did heaven and hell betray Christianity?

If we found out that our neighbour visited someone who was ill, or fed someone who was hungry, simply because they were going to receive a monetary reward for it, we would never look kindly on that act.  We would not say it was good, it would be viewed as selfishness - a calculated pulling of the strings in order to manipulate benefits for oneself.

But if someone converts to Christianity in order to receive eternal life, we don't seem to mind at all.

Patriotism and discrimination

From the Twittersphere:

"One day we’ll see legal dis­crim­i­na­tion by *place* of birth as evil as dis­crim. by other fea­tures of birth –gen­der, orientation, color."

— Charles Kenny (@charlesjkenny) June 25, 2011