Part 2
Just a side note
A lot of things may
have been different in my spiritual trek, if Christ’s emissaries (the priests)
had been the only stumbling stone.
Unfortunately the path has been filled with more rocks than exist in a
gravel pit. In retrospect my foundations
that were expected to support a belief in God were not built of rock but of
sand.
I know now that both God and Satan are truly in
existence. God gives us choices in how
we decide to live our lives. Satan on
the other hand, seeks to control our destiny through a very devious method. The use of doubt, fear and deceit are very
effective. I believe that God gave us
the grace of salvation through Christ because He knew mankind could not
withstand all the temptations of evil.
This is even truer when Satan’s ability to deceive us and to cloud truth
is part of the equation.
One might think that doubt is the first step toward disbelief
but it’s not. The first step is actually
the improper construction of beliefs in the first place. We don’t come into the world with an
understanding of our nature, but we do arrive in a state of neediness. We are totally dependent and when our needs
are met (even in a sporadic way) we have a kind of growing faith in our
providers. That faith spreads from our
basic needs being cared for to believing what our providers choose to teach us. We tend to believe what we are taught and
what we see in front of us. When it
comes to my own personal spiritual growth most of what I was being taught was
from a negative outlook. I don’t mean I
was taught that bad was good but being taught that doing “bad” would have
terrible consequence. Making choices in
life because of a fear is not a very sound building block. It’s quite difficult to build a close
personal relationship with a God you believe will eventually burn your soul for
eternity. At the very least this created
a weakness in my foundation that would eventually lead to some ungodly turns in
my life. My belief system abounded in
fear. Fear is first as it makes for a
very unstable footing and opens the door for doubt to enter.
I can’t really blame anyone else for my round about
spiritual journey because it was I who made those choices: but one does the
best by what he believes. Fact, fiction,
truth and error were there in varying amounts and my nature was to find
“soul”utions to make sense of things. My
search for reasons and direction yielded very little means to hold my
foundation together.
My folks had done a great job of teaching me the difference
between right and wrong and that ethical sense was strengthened throughout my
Catholic education in high school and in college. Ethics alone will not necessarily build a
personal relationship but it is a good component. I did have a good sense of how I was
“supposed” to conduct myself by not doing bad things and by doing good things. By the time I went to the college I had a
head full of doubts fueled by a fear of punishment. I had not found any real
answers in my ignorance. I knew how to
behave in life, but I had no real answer as to why I should. I did believe in punishment as a deserved
result of wrong action, improper thoughts and desires. At the same time experience had proven my
inability to escape the ultimate punishment of Hell fires.
I had invited the demolition crews to pound my foundation
into the ground. Doubt and fear were in
a very subtle attack mode and the strength of my defense (my belief system) was
based on what I had been taught. The
answer to all my questions and doubts came down to one word. Because.
Part two:
My
spiritual foundation was built on the sound ground of “Because” and was constructed
using the tools of Fear.
I was ready
to enter young adulthood. I went off to
college in a better place than a lot of students, thanks to four years boarding
at the all-boys high school. I knew what
it was like to live outside the safety of my family and my home so I had
already grown out of the despairs of loneliness that some would suffer. I was however not quite prepared for the
freedom from being out from under the thumb of control. I remember the day I left home for college. I
remember promising that I would not misuse alcohol until I was at least 21
years old. When I arrived and had gotten
settled into my room a friend from my hometown met up with me. He commenced to show me the new ropes of
freedom, and long before sundown, I found myself totally drunk and hoping my
bed would stop spinning. So much for my being
faithful a promise.
My
relationship with God continued to create more questions than answers. I prayed, went to church, practiced my
religion but continued in my inability to be sinless. I tried to find answers in my studies of
religion and ethics but the resounding sound of “because” drowned out any possibility
of logic. My definition of faith
continued to grow. Fear of the Lord and
the fires of Hell defined my spirituality or lack thereof. To that point in time Christ’s purpose had not
seeped into my thinking. I don’t know
if it had never been presented or my ears and mind had been so closed off, I couldn’t
perceive forgiveness and grace. I simply
had no faith other than a belief in negative results. Regardless of cause, my spiritual
relationship with God seemed to remain in a growing state of unimportance. Within me was a growing state of
futility. The fears of damnation still
existed but it was no longer possible to believe that I would ever be able to
escape that inevitable end. I would have
to rely on the Church’s perks of plenary indulgences that had been offered
throughout my high school and college religious involvement. First Friday communions, Scapular medals, and
devotions to the Blessed Mother Mary, were my only chances of salvation, since
there was little or no probability of timing my confessions to my unknown time
of death. All in all, I was confronted
with a pretty pessimistic outcome for eternity.
My awareness of this situation was completely absent and I continued
acting out my religion, fueled by a fear of reprisal.
(Please be aware that most of my insights presented
are long after the fact.)
My first
three years in college had no apparent changes and throughout the next few
years I remained oblivious to the existence of a spiritual side to man’s
nature. The meaning of the words, “created
in Gods image” had no real relevancy in my day to day life and I slowly
meandered into a complete separation from God.
The only connection I had with that side of existence was the belief
that God was real and He would eventually condemn me to an eternity of the “gnashing
of teeth” and there was little or nothing that could prevent that from
happening. How in the world is it
possible to love in the face of fear of an ultimate and inescapable punishment? How a God could that supposedly loved me, who
was all knowing, create me just to burn me in eternal fire?
(These thoughts were not in the realm of my awareness
at the time, but they surely controlled much of my denial and lack of urgency.)
