I'll See Your God and Raise You Two Oak Trees

If I were asked what my religion was, while in the waiting room of a dentist, for purposes of determining whether or not I was Christian, I might want to know why. What possible reason could a dentist have for needing this information? Though annoyed, I would nonetheless respond that I am an existentialist. That would probably end the discussion, except it would be uncertain whether or not the interrogator, would know whether an existentialist is a Christian or not.

Any love I had for the Catholic faith was ground to paste in
this cold, forbidding structure.

I don’t believe in God, I think the idea of an afterlife is absurd and my main requirement out of life, is accountability. I have practiced existentialism since age 23, a big word for a simple religion. At the end of each day, if I ask myself, was I part of the problem or part of the solution, I must be able to render an accounting of my stewardship. What problem? What solution, you just might be asking? 

If you have to ask, then I’m glad you did.

Even with an afterlife being dangled, people still struggle to figure out what life is all about.  Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote, “What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? What’s it all about when we sort it out?”

Though heaven still enters the picture in this song, the answer actually is love. Love is what it’s all about and that works for me. Love will solve an infinitely greater number of problems in life than hate, but love by itself is only a bandaid. Love and a willingness to put your back where your heart is, comprise a sacred ritual in my religion.

When I say I do not believe in God, I am referring to a specific deity, who manages to keep track of me, among the billions of people on earth. I am supposed to believe that He watches over me, somehow, and monitors whether I am behaving myself, or not. 

Kind of like The Church did back in the Dark Ages. 

Crowd control became much more manageable when the masses were convinced a Supreme God was ready and available to smote them down, should someone step out of line. It worked then because there was no internet to tell them that it just wasn’t so. Maybe He can and maybe He can't, but even if He can, how was He supposed to have done so, before there were computers?

The required faith that I must possess, just isn’t there. I can’t manufacture it up out of nothing, so Christianity simply does not work for me. If it does for you, then more power to you-whatever gets you though this long and stormy journey of life. I mean that in all sincerity, for just as I don’t want folks thinking my religion is weird, I will never criticize another for any choice of religion.

What does work for me is to find a piece of God in every tree, rock and living creature I encounter. Granted, there isn’t much God in a tick, but then there are sunflowers, so what are you going to do?

Besides, I don’t know how much time, specifically, God spends in dentists’ offices, but I suspect it’s not enough. Otherwise, there’d be no need of laughing gas.