There was about an hour today when I was feeling very emo, and then I got over it.
In other news, I've been thinking about God and religion and faith a lot more than usual lately. I don't know what to think or feel anymore . . . I want to go to church and worship God and feel like I don't have any doubts or concerns about what I'm doing or where I'm going, but I have some issues. Faith in God is a huge, blind leap over a dark chasm; it used to feel like settling down into a soft meadow, like coming home. But in the midst of my doubt, I somehow still feel like God is a constant and something that will always tint the way I act or think or feel. So how much of faith is repetition and how much of it is a divine gift?
Asking these questions, I feel like a heathen or like I'm breaking rules - setting a bad example, even.
When I was younger, I thought about God in a more methodical way. There were rules. You either accepted God and followed the path or you didn't. Believers are descended from the tribes of the faithful; generations of people fallen away from truth represent mere seconds among millenia. The truth is all I've wanted. Why does everything seem to be a test? I want to know the truth. What is going on here? What are we doing? Are we all merely earth and ash? Are we more than that? Or is it a product of our biology, our brains?
My sister has severe depression because she produces little to none of a chemical that is essential to experiencing happiness and avoiding fixation which produces isolation and anxiety. Without medication and/or daily concentration, she can not know what it is like to free from anxiety and sadness. Who is to say that a combination of chemical reactions is responsible for our feelings of certainty or happiness or faith? The moments in life when we give thanks to God for his mercy or his grace, who is to say that a series of coincidences didn't bring about a positive outcome?
I certainly feel better when I am dutiful for duty's sake, and when I hold a simple, unquestioning faith, but I become less and less capable of this. Yesterday I was reading something about faith, and I realized that it sounded like something written hundreds of years ago, something I would criticize or cast aside as being superstitious or primitive, even.
I probably shouldn't post this, but I have been wondering if other people have been feeling this way, too.
