>>Deep breaths, I’m wading in – again.<<
I was raised super-duper over-the-top Catholic in a very traditional family. I was forced to go to church weekly, to go to Confession every Saturday evening, not to eat fish on Friday during lent, that I would burn in hell if I ate an hour before I received Communion, etc. etc. My father insisted that I tow the line and stick with religion until I was confirmed in eighth grade – after that I was allowed to decide for myself whether I wanted to go to church. I kept going through high school then became incredibly disenchanted with the Church and its teachings. It made zero sense to me that if I was wearing a scapular at the time of my death I could bypass purgatory, go straight on in to heaven and it was all good; but a person who lived a faithful life following the laws of Judaism was going to burn in hell. It just didn’t compute and my faith started to fall apart.
I spent most of my 20’s and 30’s searching and wanted to be atheist so bad I could taste it. I read everything by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Dang I tried so hard to shake the whole “religion thing.” I struggled mightily with all of the hatred and killing in the name of religion and what I had come to believe a loving Creator was. I could not fathom the arrogance of people saying that the only way to land in heaven and the loving arms of our benevolent maker was by accepting Jesus Christ as one’s lord and savior. How utterly ridiculous that a person could life their life in any manner they saw fit and as long as before they took their last breath they accepted Christ, they were good to go for an eternity. WTH?!
But through all of that I could not shake my belief that nothing + nothing = nothing. I don’t care if one believes in science, the Big Bang, evolution, etc. Something had to have set all those things in motion and to me that something is God.
I searched and searched and searched and never stopped believing that there had to be something greater than me, than us humans. Finally I found a faith that makes sense. A faith that believes that the prophets of all the great religions are manifestations of God and they were all the perfect manifestation for their times. That man is put on earth to learn and practice virtues such as love, honesty, faith, etc. That there is no hell, only degrees of distance and closeness to God/enlightenment. That science and religion are in complete agreement and that “If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science, they are mere superstitions and imaginations.” It all made perfect sense to me and I believe that Bahá‘u’lláh (the earthly manifestation of God for our time) got it right.
I am going to come right out and say that there are some beliefs in the Bahá’í Faith that I struggle with and some things I seriously question. But as far as I am concerned it is a faith that makes sense and I believe with all of my being that there is a God and that I am finally on the right track. My faith has been shaken again and again and no, I can not explain why bad things happen to good people, why babies starve to death, or use religion to explain away all the pain in this world. That is not for me (or anyone else) in this world to know. I just know what I believe and why.