the need to believe

I come from a christian, roman catholic family. I wasn't raised catholic, though. In fact, my family had always been somewhat atheistic, or perhaps agnostic, before my dad's sister passed away.

After my aunt's passing, my dad turned to catholicism to soothe his grief.

Being christian isn't particularly common in my country, and neither is going to church (although there are hundreds of churches scattered all around). Both my mom and dad started attending church when I was around 15 years old.

The local parish is a very small, tight-knit community, but they welcomed both of my parents with open arms. My dad got baptized about a year later.

Even though I didn't grow up catholic, I did spend my teenage years in close proximity to catholicism. The priests would visit our home often, and we used to invite them over for dinner at least twice a month. Of course, my parents also started observing pretty much every catholic tradition there is.

Being a teenager did kind of affect my view of it all. Even though my parents never outright forced me to participate, they did occasionally guilt trip me and my sister into joining them for the religious ceremonies.

Sometimes, though, I wished I could be christian as well. Being one of the priest's lambs seems like a rather comfortable position to be in.

Your social life and circle of friends are basically handed to you on a silver platter. Being christian, you'd automatically have something to bond over with the people around you. You'd always have someone to talk to (confessions, anyone?).

That being said, even though it all sounds lovely, I don't think I could ever bring myself to proclaim that I'm catholic.

It would constantly gnaw at me that I don't actually share the one thing that brings all these people together.

Because, well... I don't believe in god.

Believe me, I've tried. I've tried convincing myself that there is a god, but no matter how hard I try, I can't shake the feeling that I'm just deluding myself.

So christianity and the other abrahamic religions alike are a no for me.

Then came the phase when I experimented with esotericism, wicca, and spirituality.

Yes... it was during the pandemic, and yes I might've gone just a tad bit crazy.

I started learning how to read tarot cards, practiced mindfulness, and got into meditation. Eventually wicca piqued my interest. I particularly liked its connection to pre-christian traditions and paganism.

But wicca is ultimately a theistic religion, and I seem to have a rather significant problem with believing in divine entities, so I abandoned that practice as well.

My boss at my current job is a buddhist who studies the diamond sutra, and the contrast between buddhist teachings and the theistic religions I've explored so far really intrigues me.

I've been reading a little about the teachings and the lifestyle, and it honestly sounds pretty fascinating. I might delve a little deeper and make a separate blog post about it sometime.

I just fear that I'm too much of a pragmatist to truly believe in any one religion or follow one particular set of teachings.

I can't rationalize submitting myself to one ideology for the rest of my life, or placing my entire sense of morality into the hands of a religion. Especially knowing what's happened throughout history in the name of religion.

And yet, there's clearly something about religion that keeps drawing me back to explore it.

Perhaps it's the sense of belonging. Perhaps it's the comfort of having answers to questions that don't really have any.

Or perhaps I'm just curious.

Sorry for my ramblings. I'd genuinely love to know what your outlook on religion is. Are you religious? Have you ever struggled with believing in something you wished you could believe in?

Sincerely,

Teresa