How lonely it must be to not believe in God. Not just the Christian God, but the Islamic one, the Hindu ones, the Buddha one, the Norse or Greek.

When people say they don’t believe in God, I have an overwhelming sense of pity for them. How lonesome they must be, how fearful, how lost.

I don’t attend church every Sunday. Quite honestly, I don’t like it. I’m always incredibly uncomfortable, like I am sitting on pins and needles. I can never stay focused on what the pastor is saying, my mind wanders off to other things like, “Who let her leave the house wearing that?” or “Dang, I have homework,” or “Ooh! Story idea!” It is extremely hard for me to stay remotely alert about what is being said around me when I’m sitting there in the pew around people I don’t know. I always feel like an outsider, like I’m not supposed to be there. Perhaps it’s because I don’t like being preached to (no pun intended).

My family would immediately assume that this can be cured by merely attending church more regularly. This probably won’t help.

In my opinion, you don’t need church to have God. You don’t need a man reading the Bible to you to be spiritual; you don’t need to be dunked in lukewarm hose water to be saved. Religion, to me, it what you make it.

I’m pretty sure God won’t deny me a right to Heaven if I haven’t been sprinkled with Holy Water or if I don’t know the Bible front to back. He should only deny me if I don’t believe in Him, or if I am not worthy.

However, this by no means, means I don’t believe in Him. I believe in Him just like I believe that today is Sunday (which it is). I believe that God has a plan for everyone, yet still gives us free will. I believe that God loves everyone equally. I believe that God made the universe and all the creatures in it.

Though I don’t follow a religious doctrine to the letter, and I don’t perform religious rituals, I still have my own religion, my own relationship with God. I pray to Him, I talk to Him, and like we all do, even though we won’t admit it, I question Him.

So this leads me to wonder how terrible it must be to be Atheist. Sure, believe in free will, and the ‘I’m in control’ stuff, but at the end of the day, when you close your eyes to sleep, who do you thank for everything? Yourself? How vain and egotistic.

Do you believe the world was created by a scientific accident? Do you believe that when you die, there is nothing?

How dismal. How terrifying. I’m feeling lonely just thinking about it.

I just can’t imagine there being nothing. I can’t even process what that might be. I can’t get my own thoughts to shut up for a second. What will it be like when they can’t speak up at all? Will we just float away in darkness and silence for all eternity? If this is true, what meaning is there to life? If we are all born to merely die—to cease existing—why even bother to do anything? There has to be a goal, something to work towards whether it’s Nirvana or Heaven.
I can’t imagine that this big, beautiful world just popped up one day. Someone built this for us, someone put together the stars and moon and animals and plants and everything. I don’t believe that He made all the evil in it, though. That’s where the free-will comes in. Mother Nature is the prime example. Illness, disaster: they were an act of free will by our Mother Earth.

If God only gave us good, why would we need Him? He lets nature take over—both human and otherwise—so when something goes wrong, we have Him to turn to, to seek condolence.

Then I think about the Bible-thumpers, or Quran thumpers if you will. How sad it is to believe that your religion is the only way. What about all those people who have never been exposed to Christianity? Are they automatically condemned to Hell for never being exposed to you and your faith?

I find it extremely hard to believe that Jesus is the only way into Heaven. I believe in Him, of course, as the Son of God, I just can’t believe that accepting him is the only way. What about everyone in third world countries who have never seen a Bible, or those who have never known anything but what their parents knew?

Heaven will be a lonely place if this is true. Only 33 percent of the world will be in Heaven. The other 67 percent will be burning in Hell. If you think about it, aren’t you really going against the Bible, indirectly albeit, by saying only those who don’t believe in Christ will go to hell? Shouldn’t you, as Christians, be less judgmental?
The world is a big place, filled with lots of different people. God will judge each when their time comes, I believe.
Another thought I’ve been culturing a while is the idea that we all have the same God, we just choose to worship and interpret differently. I don’t see there being hundreds of different gods all wandering around in the heavens never colliding or bumping into one another, all acting separately.
It’s a mystery to me, to everyone. Maybe I’ll only know when my spark flickers out and it’s over. Until then, I’ll keep believing what I choose, and you keep believing what you choose. I have no desire to make people question their religions, only to question themselves. Do you believe what you believe or what everyone tells you to believe?