In my little town in Iowa there were only two Midwestern churches, a brown brick Methodist church and a beige-brick Congregational church. Midwestern Christianity tends to be very brown or beige. So I was raised believing in God. I was taught that there was God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Three people in one. And, since Methodists, the religion of my parents and grandparents, were basically puritans, we were raised believing sex was dirty and shameful, possibly evil, and we should save up all our sexual energy for the one person in life that we would most love, as long as that person was the opposite sex and also pre-conditioned to believe that sex was evil and we should not enjoy it.
The thing is, deeply ingrained religious beliefs like that, based on faith and the words in the Bible, is almost the exact opposite that highly intelligent people who get turned on to science tend to believe. I had the misfortune to locate myself directly in the middle between these two high-powered magnets that were destined to pull me in two opposite directions at the same time. Why are such things always based on contradictions? Religion depends on faith, which Mark Twain suggests means devoutly believing what you know ain’t so. Science depends on evidence and experience, and rejects anything your heart tells you is true that conflicts with the evidence. Is there no middle ground? Of course there isn’t.
So what do I actually believe? I am a Midwesterner to my very marrow. I believe there is a God. The universe has an intelligence, a spiritual element, and is deeper and wider than my mere five senses can verify. In fact, Carl Sagan said in Cosmos that because we have intelligence and discernment, we ourselves make the universe conscious of itself. This is a profound point. The universe is alive and aware because our existence gives it those qualities. That’s the basic truth at the center of Existentialism. Existence precedes essence. A rock has to exist before its “rock-ness” becomes real. So I am an Existentialist who believes in God.
At this point many of the Christian people I know begin yelling at me. “You can’t be both a Christian and an atheist!” But I am not an atheist. I believe in God. Further, because I believe that love is the most necessary quality in the universe, I choose to be called a Christian because Jesus Christ preached forgiveness, helping the less fortunate, and everything else based on love. I also understand that the other major religions of this world are, at their core, based on love. So I call myself a Christian Existentialist (though I realize I could just as easily be a Buddhist Existentialist, or some other kind of Existentialist). I love people, even the bad ones, the ugly ones, and the ones who disagree with me (meaning practically everyone). I don’t wish to be stupid or blind. I don’t wish to be unfeeling. I think the Truth (with a capital “T”) lies between the poles.
