Religious Context

I grew up in the church; my mom made us go basically any time the doors were open for us to go. As a small child I would listen to the stories as if they were just stories, but as I got older, I started making connections and asking questions which really began to make me question whether I bought into the whole idea of God and religion.

One of the first things I remember questioning seriously was the gentleman's bet between God and the Devil in regards to Job. For anyone that doesn't know the story, God and the Devil were having a conversation in which the Devil was basically goading him into letting him try and shake Job's faith. God told the Devil that there was no way Job would renounce his faith, but God being the all knowing and all powerful being that it is, decided to let the Devil try and get Job to renounce his faith. The Devil took everything from Job including his health and in the end Job, sure enough, never renounced his faith.

The reason that was the first story I ever really questioned was because it was the first one that stuck out to me at the time as having flawed logic. My mom always told me that if you have nothing to prove then you shouldn't have to prove it. When I brought this up in a line of questioning no one could give me a clear answer as to why God let the Devil do it but they could always offer up the idea that it was a story about how we should never give up faith on God because God never gives up faith on us and that makes absolutely no sense to me. If God knew Job would never renounce his faith then what did he need to prove to the Devil? God is all knowing and all powerful which means he knew exactly how that scenario was going to play out but why did he need to prove to the Devil the power of faith and why did he have to let Job be an example? I understand that in the end Job was eventually given everything back and then some but why wasn't he just rewarded for his faith from the start by not being put through that in the first place?

It wasn't until after high school that I seriously began to question more things because it was at that point that I was finally 18 and able to make my own decision on whether or not I wanted to continue to go to church and at that time I knew I didn't want to go anymore. As I began to learn and experience more of life there were more things that I began to reconsider in regards to God and religion.

One of the things I began to seriously question was homosexuality. In college I took a Gender Studies class. It was my senior year and I needed to take some filler classes and I figured Gender Studies would be interesting and it was taught by my favorite English professor. In the class we talked about gender roles, gender identity, sexuality, consent, and as we were talking about homosexuality, we talked about other animals that engage in same sex intercourse and I had always known that some animals have sex for pleasure but when you apply this context to animals it highlights the fact that same sex intercourse is actually very natural. With that in mind I had to seriously question why there are still people in the room trying to argue that it is not natural then it dons on me that they must mean it isn't natural based on the idea that two people of the same sex can't make a baby OR they have some religious belief that says homosexuality is a sin because it is unholy thus it is unnatural. Then as we started to talk about same sex marriage someone said that they were fine with it but as long as they called it something other than marriage and at that point the conversation started to come into focus for me: Being gay is natural and the only place that marriage has ever been defined as being specifically between a man and a woman is in religious texts.

At this point in my life, after everything I have learned I have found that it is hard to say that God doesn't exist because science and the Bible do not dispute either but rather give an alternate understanding of the natural universe. What I mean by that is, religion was science before there was science. It was a way to explain the natural world and as our understanding of the natural world has evolved with science, so should our religious beliefs.

In summation, I am not telling anyone to abandon their religious convictions but rather put them into context. Before there was science people had questions about the natural world and religion was the answer key until science. Now that we have science, those religious beliefs like homosexuality is a sin can die off because it is my belief that the only reason homosexuality is even mentioned negatively in religious texts is because people of the same sex cannot procreate and that is deemed unnatural if you consider your purpose to worship God and make babies. Another point to consider is sex before marriage. I believe it was a way to teach abstinence so that way there weren't children out of wedlock; a form of population control and it's that idea that has made sex a taboo but not taboo subject in our society. I believe that religion has a place in our society but I think it needs to not take such a big place in our society and in order for the to happen religion and science need to be able to coexist with science being the main authority when it comes to political decisions in our society.

Image Reference