venite adoremus dominum

It's almost Christmas. Obviously everyone and everyone's friends and so on is excited. I'm excited. I love the commercial side of Christmas.

The religious side is what kinda gets me feeling uncomfortable. I like organized religion, as long as I'm not the one practicing it. I have good friends that are religious, and I support them. When people I know go to mass or pray or whatever, I'm supportive. When I think about whether or not I believe that there is some higher power out there, though, I get frustrated. It makes me feel kinda foolish even.

I couldn't say why. Couldn't even guess. I guess I just haven't even seen the need for the existence of divine power in my life so far. I can believe in magic without really having to think about it much. But belief in a God doesn't come as easily for some reason.

People used to need religion to explain what was going on all around them. The ancient Greeks didn't know why the seasons changed, but the Hades/Persephone myth made it perfectly clear that Demeter was pissy and lonely for half the year. Tada, seasons.

It's pretty clear to me that the only reason I'm so turned off to the Christian faith, is because I was raised to believe it was the only viable religion. Once I got older and read this, that and the other, I saw that different beliefs arose throughout history all over the world. It was really quite confusing.

I took a step backwards to see why everyone around me believed what they did. It seemed like people just blindly accepted whatever their parents told them. Where was the self-affirmation. Where was the scholarly investigation? Since when was it okay to agree to something without knowing anything about what you were buying into?

Maybe I'm naive or idealistic or just missing a huge piece of the puzzle here. Maybe all three. In any case, I have a message for any potential deities that might be real.

To whichever deity it may concern: I'm sorry if you do, in fact, exist. You must find this whole doubting business of mine quite offensive. You will, however, assumably be happy to know that I am not shut off completely to the idea of a higher power. I just like proof. It really isn't important to me that I make up my mind on the whole religion issue any time soon though. Again, sorry for being such a skeptic.

Have a wonderful day,
~Me