Something that has come to my attention recently is a lack of faith. Not only does there seem to be a lack of faith in the people around the world, but also myself as an individual. It certainly creeps me out, and it is something that has slowly been manifesting the past couple years.
It is easy to see faith has left the world as a whole the past decades. With the U.S attempting to fix everything in the middle East, and the Middle East hating them for it after begging for it to happen. With no one actually thinking that South Africa would be able to host the World Cup without troubles, despite the fact that now it looks like they will be able to do so. With news outlets spinning news so far in both directions, no one has faith in them to actually do what they are supposed to do, broadcast real news. There just isn't enough time to go over everything that shows this lack of faith filling mankind.
So I want to delve into a little of my own. Recently I told Whit that I am scared because I don't feel like I have anything to believe in. I will say that I believe in our marriage and everything that comes along with it. But in regards to anything else, I am pretty much blank. I recently read "The Gargoyle" by Andrew Davidson. I can't say that it was my favorite book ever, but it did make me think about a few things. It is a story of a man going through his own Dante's Inferno and how he has to change his life in order to be happy with himself. Believe me I am not comparing moving to Switzerland and being burned alive, just some situations make you think about things that you normally wouldn't.
So I started thinking about religion more, no surprise since I read a majority of the book while on a train to and from Rome/Vatican City. I thought about how religion was such a key part of people's lives hundreds of years ago and what has happened to remove it from Western culture? Has the advent of science and increased skepticism throughout culture forced us to push away something that was vital to the human race for thousands of years? Now instead of putting our faith into a greater good, or a almighty being, we simply put it in our money. We think that our money will save us, that if we have enough money, that everything will be OK. But if we simply look back we see that people would believe that if they put enough faith in their God(s) they would be OK.
So, needless to say, I am stuck at a crossroads. I want to believe, in something, but unfortunately I don't know what. Right now I don't really have anything I can stake my life to, like a cure for cancer or a new pollutant free energy source, so that brings it down to either religion, which is only free in America as long as you don't count the collection plate. And come on, you know what I'm talking about, if you don't put anything in there everyone looks at you, especially your conscience. Or I can believe in money, which has been working for the past hundred years, but it kind of seems a little empty at the moment. Whit and I moved here because she would be making more money and really help her career, but all that has done is leave me a bit more lonely than I would like and put a severe strain on our marriage. I have never been a religious person so to put faith in something that I personally have kept at arms length because of my own skepticism doesn't seem like the right fit either. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I still don't know what I should be looking for in the next couple of months, but I do know I'm not going to find it under my pillow, or sock drawer, or under the kitchen sink; don't worry I already looked. I will just have to keep my eyes open to find something, because it is probably going to hit me in the nose before I even see it.
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