Call me superstitious or silly. I don’t care.
All my (academic/professional) life, I’ve been surrounded by folks who are prejudiced when it comes to my belief in a higher power. Specifically, I believe in God. Capital ‘G’.
There’s this breed of hipster-intellectual types I’ve always seemed to surround myself with, who graduate from “agnostic” to “atheist” around the time they turn 30. This doesn’t make them bad people. And even though I believe in Hell, I don’t mean to suggest that I think they’re heading there after this life ends.
Now, on the few occasions they’ve challenged me about why I hang onto my “childish” Roman Catholic belief in this mythology of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I’ve tried to answer as honestly as possible. And what it boils down to is that I enjoy life too much. I don’t want it to stop — even if the perspective changes.
Say Miller stops making beer today. They’re going to sell whatever is left in the vats and that’s it. No more Miller beer. So I drink my last Miller Lite and switch to another beer. Maybe its better than Miller Lite; maybe it isn’t. If it’s cold and available at a reasonable price, who am I to judge?
I’ve tried to articulate this maybe a half-dozen times or so in the last decade. Maybe my analogies have failed. I have to believe in God and an afterlife because I don’t want to stop drinking beer. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Maybe that’s what bothers people about me. Honesty.
When it comes to what I believe, I have no shame. I believe in my union. I believe the Indians can win the World Series every year. I believe the Browns will beat the Steelers at least once a year. I believe my cats really do miss me when I’m gone, and I believe my wife when she tells me I’m the sexiest man on the planet.
Now, I’m not the kind of person that feels the need to pester anybody about my beliefs. And let’s face it, there aren’t any logic-based intellectual arguments that I’m going to win on my faith. I will say that I think the world would be a better place if more folks just believed in something — anything.
But you’re not going to get a lecture out of me. Nope. I’m not even a good Catholic. There are some things about the Church that really bother me, so I’m not going to start evangelizing anytime soon.
I think there’s a lot of us who feel this way. I certainly have, for a long time, and I know the Grapefruit Gal (one of those lefty, hipster, 30-year-old intellectual types, but also Polish) does too. There’s a lot to be critical about the faith, and we’re far from being anything close to holy, but the belief that there is a God does a lot for being able to believe in OTHER things.
I have a couple responses to the atheist types. The first is Pascal’s Wager, that there’s little to lose by believing in the Lord, so why not? The second is that we’re unique in our faith, being Catholic, because we were the first to follow the words of a guy whose words are mainly ignored by those who currently profess to be his “true” followers. Let’s face it, if more Americans were Christians in a philosophical sense we’d all get along a lot better. Dave Pirner wrote, “Jesus was a hippy/Peace and love was all he was about/That’s why they killed him/’Cause that shit’s something people can’t figure out.”
Yet all theological issues aside, I think I like believing because as a Catholic we have some really cool, special things that go along with the religion. I like not eating meat on Friday, or more likely, feeling guilt about eating meat on Friday. We should feel guilt about our actions, as they remind us that everything we do has an impact on something else.
I like Advent candles because they don’t make any sense (the purple candle is third, not last?) and St. Patrick’s Day because I’m Irish Catholic and the Grapefruit Gal has Paczki on Shrove Tuesday and we ALL have Mardi Gras. That’s not just religion, that’s ethnicity, and it’s our identity working to make who we are, and it has since the Big Bang was initiated by, well, God. I guess.
I don’t make it to Mass much anymore, but I love being Catholic. I know I’ll be married in the Church and will send my kids to Catholic school or whatever, but I do wonder how I’ll answer their question about why our God is the “right” one compared to their Hindu friends’ or whatever.
Yet perhaps the clearest voice for the benefits of believing in… anything… in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise came from those fine gentlemen from the hardworking union town of Mechanicsburg, PA. I think you know who I’m talking about.