Uncertainty

              Living life actively is living with change. It is a life of accepting mistakes and loss, but the rewards are the lessons learned. A stagnate life is death, but a slow death. Living in the past is a resignation, a declaration that the chaos can be ignored and one can slip into a dreamlike state of never growing up. Having my own life redefined repeatedly in the last couple of years, I have taken my lessons to heart. I refuse to stay behind. I prefer the hard lessons.

              Wait! This was supposed to an introduction.

              I am an atheist, though I prefer the term non-believer. The term "atheist" is culturally loaded, though it is an accurate definition. Simply said, I do not accept the claims of the supernatural because those claims have not met their burden of proof. There are no creeds or political movements associated with the lack of belief, only the insistence on evidence to support belief in the existence of God.

              I am a Christian. While I had long ago rejected most of the Bible, I was raised a Christian, by Christian parents in a predominantly Christian nation. My sensibilities are shaped largely by this experience. I cannot claim that I believe in the Christ-as-savior myth, so much like hundreds of similar myths told throughout the ancient Mediterranean, Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, many predating the Jesus stories by millennia. Nor can I say that I accept all of Christ's teachings, some of which I think are just dead wrong. I do believe in being Christ-like, that is, embodying the the universal idea of forgiveness, kindness, and social justice. There have been many figures in history and mythology who have served to remind us of our evolved morality and common humanity. In the Western experience, Jesus has been one of the primary foci.

              I expect I'll catch hell from some for my conflicting beliefs. I have had convictions of absolute certainty at least twice in my life. When I was a teenager and a young man, I was about as far right a fundamentalist as anyone could be. As far as I was concerned, anyone who was a liberal, atheist, Communist, Catholic, Muslim, homosexual, or anything else which did not fit my ridiculously narrow view of Christianity was beneath me spiritually. It was a bigoted and disgusting view in which I had been heavily indoctrinated in my early years. Sometimes I look back on my life then and shudder at the willingness I was ready to dismiss the lives of my fellow primates, and even condemn them to eternal death. The propaganda war of the fundamentalism accelerated in my childhood. I now see the fruits of those bitter seeds in the applause for the deaths of hypothetical patients and very real death row inmates during the recent Republican primary debates. It chills me to think that I could have so easily become one of them.

               My second bout of certainty came when I had lost my faith. As far as I was concerned, anyone who was a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, animist, astrologer, UFOlogist, or anyone else who did not fit my ridiculously narrow view of rationality was just deluded or unwilling to think. I feel fortunate that I did not hold to this for terribly long, as I did get the sense that I might have been falling into an old trap. Having seen the ugly side of Christianity, I began to get a sense of the ugly side of atheism. Invective and vitriol have no place in debate, and much of what is passed as commentary was so vile, that I had lost my stomach for it. I love to debate ideas, but I distance myself from those fellow non-believers who believe that the best retort is a personal insult.

               This is my introduction... for now. I can't say for certain where my beliefs will lie a year or a decade from now. I hope that my introduction will be continually changing until the day I shuffle off this mortal coil.

                Here is my current introduction:

I am a student. I am a wholesale delivery driver. I am aspiring to be a teacher. I am an atheist. I am a regular churchgoer. I am human. I prefer my contradictions and uncertainty because my knowledge grows, of the universe and myself. May my life continue to be fluid.

               When a friend of mine and I were talking about our church, I remarked at how much I appreciated and loved that group. No judgement has been placed on my lack of faith. We all have the same goals,and not just the church's commitment to acceptance and social justice. What we also seem to have in common is that none of us has absolute certainty. We are all simultaneously lost and found, and accept that fact. We enjoy our uncertainty because our knowledge grows. May our lives continue to be fluid.