Selective Listening (Losing My Religion editorial prompt)
By: Lowen Puckey
Tags: Humanism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Religion, Anglican

(Image/Unsplash)

I have never felt the presence of God. And I say that with sadness rather than defiance.

What I did feel in my Anglican upbringing was pressure to pretend to be something I wasn’t and could never be, along with judgement when I chose to stop pretending.

In Sunday school, we were not encouraged to ask questions but instead to memorise Bible passages. The most memorable part of the whole experience was walking through the graveyard to get home and scaring each other shitless by jumping out between tombstones.

When I was 10, my father left us for his secretary (totally lacking in originality, I know). From that moment, we were treated as pariahs in our local church — from a broken home and my mother obviously to blame for her husband walking away from their vows. It was also obvious to all that she was now on the prowl for a new husband who would, of course, be taken from amongst the ranks of married men in the parish. I stopped going to church after this — the niggling feeling of unease I had experienced in my early childhood blossoming into realisation and resentment of the hypocritical nature of many churchgoers.

However, I went to church when I stayed with my Grandmother, especially at Easter and Christmas. We attended the Christmas midnight service in a Victorian Missionary Chapel in Kaitaia (in the Far North of New Zealand). In that dark, solemn place, I actually felt something profound. The weight and love of my ancestors. Something rich and many textured. I do not know if it was God.

That lasted until one Easter when we received a vehement sermon judging us for only coming to church in the holidays. I never went to church again after that (I wonder if that was the result he had intended when he first penned his liturgy).

Before this ending to end all endings, I had sat many times in many churches and let myself open to the possibility HE was real and would speak to me. But I felt nothing but humanity. I have often felt that humanity gets in the way of religion — it’s a kind of spiritual bureaucracy. There are some that even think it blasphemous to attempt to have a direct relationship with God.

I went through an agnostic period in my late teens, a pagan phase in my 20s, and a Buddhist phase in my 30s. Now I would describe myself more as a humanist — I believe in the goodness that people are capable of and the potential of humankind to help and build up one another.

My husband works in a Catholic Boys College and even though we have no relation to the Catholic Church (I was, in fact, brought up to be terrified of Catholics) it has been an educational experience to see how religion works from the inside out. And especially enlightening when one of the brothers refers to God as “She.”

We didn’t baptize our children — not because we felt strongly against it but because we felt strongly that choosing a religion is a deeply personal decision one must come to oneself — it shouldn’t be done to you but with you.

My daughter went to a Catholic school and at the tender age of six decided she wanted to be christened. Although we discussed it thoroughly with her and she was adamant at the time she “really, really, really wanted to be a Catholic,” she now tells me at 16 she thought she had to. So I think it goes to show how inappropriate it is for children to make decisions before they are mature enough to understand what it is they are doing.

My desire to feel the presence of God lasted up until I had children. Two miscarriages and one severely disabled child later, I question — as millions have before me — what kind of entity would allow such suffering in the world? Either he doesn’t exist or he is not the kind of entity that I have any interest in being subservient to. Take away my life and my entry into heaven if you will, but that is how I feel.

Still, there are times when I envy other people who are so easily able to surrender their lives and their faith to a superior being. How safe and at peace they must feel. And I know some of those people have had similar, or worse, experiences than mine and turned to God instead of away from him.

But I cannot.

God may pass the final judgement but I’m afraid I have already judged him and found him sadly wanting.