What A Fool* Believes

(Deep breath...)

I am an atheist.

(...exhale.)

I don't talk about it much. I never bring it up and, until quite recently, I would perform all sorts of linguistic gymnastics to avoid saying those four simple words. It's entirely possible that you have witnessed the very first time that I have made such a simple, declarative statement regarding my lack of belief in a supreme being.

Part of my aversion to directly admitting my atheism can be chalked up to cowardice, pure and simple--to the fear that people will think less of me, to the fear of damaging relationships with friends and coworkers. But a whole other part of that aversion is that to define myself as an atheist is to focus on what I don't believe in rather than what I do.

Contrary to persistent¹ belief, atheism doesn't necessarily equal belief in nothing. While I wouldn't dream of speaking for other atheists, I am at long last ready to speak for myself about what I do believe.

I grew up in a non-religious household. My father was raised by a Catholic mother and a Protestant father (my Nan and Pap.) Pap wouldn't allow Nan to attend Catholic church, much less take my father. Though Pap was nominally Protestant, he apparently rarely (if ever) attended church and appeared to harbor some anger toward preachers of all sorts until much later in life, when he was baptized in his kitchen sink, read Our Daily Bread and listened to cassette tapes of sermons provided by the minister of a church down the road. Despite his own misgivings and outward lack of belief during my father's childhood, my grandfather forced my father to attend a Protestant church from the ages of eight through eleven or so.

My mother was also only loosely affiliated with church growing up--attending Sunday school with friends, but not forced to do so by her parents. She fell away from church entirely when she was fourteen and the minister questioned the length of her skirt (a hand-me-down) in front of the entire congregation--she did not believe God cared about fashion choices and that moment became the perfect stand-in for all kinds of misrepresentation and hypocrisy that she saw when she looked at religion in general.

As kids, my closest-in-age sister and I occasionally attended Vacation Bible School or Sunday School or even regular church services with friends, but God and religion were mostly not on our radar growing up. Both of my parents were big fans of the Don Williams song "I Believe In You" with the lyrics, "I don't believe that Heaven waits for only those who congregate/I like to think of God as love/He's down below, he's up above/He's watching people everywhere/He knows who does and doesn't care." Rightly or wrongly, I've always kind of thought of those lyrics as representative of the entirety of my parents' religious philosophy.

The one time that I can remember the subject of God coming up between my parents, my sister and I, it was a fairly disastrous conversation. I was seventeen and my sister sixteen at the time. Though we had never been encouraged, let alone forced, to attend church, when it somehow came out that my sister (at that time) identified herself as an atheist, there was yelling and tears and door-slamming. To my recollection, I was mostly a stunned bystander, as was my mom--though she tried to intercede a few times in hopes of calming things down a bit.

I clearly remember my father at one point demanding, "If you don't believe in God, what do you believe in?" and my sister responding, "I believe in people." And I remember, too, my father yelling, on the verge of tears, "I am telling you I have seen God! Doesn't that mean anything to you?!"

I understand my father's anguish much better now, twenty-and-then-some years on--one of those universal parenthood moments when we feel we've failed our children in some fundamental way. 

Even in the face of that anguish, though, my sister did not back down. Not one tiny bit. Though there were tears on all sides, she refused to say she believed in something she did not believe in and she continued to argue vehemently for her right to express her own beliefs while at no point attacking or belittling my father's beliefs. Her answer to his shouted assertion about having seen God was to say that she was glad it was a comfort to him at a time when he needed it (Vietnam).

In contrast, my part of that conversation was to sit with some relief as my sister took the heat, content to get away with the wimpy and evasive: "I'm not sure really what I believe." even though at the time, my beliefs were pretty well lined up with my sister's.

Wimpy and evasive succinctly sums up my approach to religious conversation ever since. I have become adept at non-committal answers and well-timed changes of subject. A time-worn favorite of mine is to say "I'm a lot more sure of what I don't believe than what I do." and then not elaborate on any of my beliefs or non-beliefs.

There comes a point, though, where it is far scarier to continue hedging and dancing around the things that are important to you than it is to just come out with it. And here we are.

I do not believe in the Christian God or any other supreme being, but I do believe in the power of thoughts and in a kind of prayer. I believe that love is a verb, not just a noun--that, ideally, it is not merely something we feel, but something we do. I believe, too, in compassion and empathy and tolerance and forgiveness--and I have tried mightily to practice these things, not merely preach them. (I fail miserably on a regular basis--but I try to spare myself a little compassion and forgiveness, too.) I believe in learning a little more each day to live my beliefs.

Though I do not believe they are bestowed from some force outside ourselves, I do believe in blessings, miracles and sacred wonder. I believe in something like a soul in each of us--if it is merely the product of firing electrons and stewing chemicals in our brains, it is no less precious and may even be more so.

I believe that religious faith is an inclination we are born with or not. Environment and training can contribute to what you come to believe in, but I don't think they have much influence over whether or not you believe in (or seek) a higher power. A substitute teacher I had in humanities during the Bible unit my senior year in high school said it best when he said, "I believe you either feel that spark or you don't." Perhaps it's not quite that simple, but I believe it's close.

Finally, I believe that sharing what we believe is our only hope of seeing each other as more than just the labels we attach to ourselves and to one another.

I am an atheist. And I believe.

A is for Atheism
~~With thanks to Little Sister and my father for allowing me to pick their brains about a difficult moment in our shared history. Thanks, too, goes to Tara at Faith in Ambiguity for leading by example and nudging me in the direction of living (and blogging) more openly.

*Just to be absolutely clear, the fool here is me.

1. Though stubbornly persistent, this belief is not as popular as it once was.