A Crisis and Death of Faith
By: Jake Blizman
Tags: Philosophy, Morality, Mwc Death, Faith, Growing Up

As we develop into fully fledged adults during childhood, we live several lives and experience just as many deaths. Like a snake shedding its skin, we leave behind our old selves to become more well-rounded, worldly, and introspective people. Most of the time, these transformations are minor. Parts of our personalities erode naturally as our interests change and we understand our consciousness more and more. However, the most drastic changes are the most memorable. A huge portion of the person we used to be instantaneously vanishes which paves the way for a drastic change, be it for the better or the worse.

In my life, one such change came during my formative teenage years, when my mind and spirit were wet clay. My parents raised me as a Catholic and educated me in the traditions of the Church and its Scriptures. Most importantly though, my parents taught me the values of kindness, fairness, compassion, equality — they showed me the necessity of empathy in the face of a spectacularly large and anonymous world. These values went hand in hand with Christianity as a child, since my parents correlated the two. I trusted them, and they seemed to know a lot about the world while I was still figuring out how to tie my shoes and ride a bike.

My beliefs started to change during middle and high school. It was the first challenge to the sacred beliefs I had held for nearly a decade. Cracks began to form. I learned about the past of the Christian world in my history classes, gained an introduction to ethical philosophy in my literature classes, and verbally sparred with classmates in my debate club. Increasingly, I encountered arguments against my faith and understanding of the world that revealed just how little of my worldview I actually understood compared to how much I took on faith. I could not explain why I believed in the Creation espoused in Genesis or in the divinity of Christ; I could not satisfactorily answer the classic question of ‘if God is good, why is there evil in the world?’. I could not even explain why I believed what I did. While the epistemology of my beliefs started to break down, I started to learn the history of injustices perpetrated in the name of Christ. I saw how time and again, Christian beliefs had been twisted by those in power to suit their desires, even though these calls to actions conflicted with the values I had learned to call Christian. How could so many people, historical and contemporary, believe in the same God as me but use Him to justify their hatred and discrimination, which were so antithetical to the code of empathy by which I swore? It was a crisis of faith.

My US History teacher in high school used to always say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”, in regards to historical continuities. This phrase rang true on a personal level as well when I chose to leave the Church and abandon my faith. I was in many ways the same person as I was before; empathy and kindness were my preeminent values, but I no longer embraced Christian beliefs. By no means am I saying that Christianity or Christians cannot be empathetic, kind, and moral people; I would actually say that many of the Christians I have encountered are exactly that kind of person. On an individual level however, Christianity was no longer the North Star of morality that I had desired. The tenets I was being told to believe in my Sunday school increasingly felt like they clashed with the person who I wanted to be. One such clash came when discussing Hell, and why the kind and loving God we worshipped would condemn people who had lived otherwise good and admirable lives to eternal torment for choosing not to follow Christianity. It seemed like a great injustice to me that was antithetical to compassion and forgiveness. As a shy and obedient child, I was too angst-ridden to try and discuss my turmoil with my teachers or priests, so I desperately attempted to rectify them internally to avoid the death of my faith. After months of internal conflict, I eventually failed in this attempt, and found myself at an emotional crossroads: choose my faith, or my values.

Friedrich Nietzsche is a philosopher most famous for his oft misunderstood quote, “God is dead, and we have killed him”. Certain patronizing atheists (of which I have met many, who are all quite foolish) love to cite this quote as reason triumphing over religion and hail it as a supreme victory for humanism. They fail to understand the mournful tone of Nietzsche’s writing, where he laments the end of the meaning and morality inherently granted by belief in God. However, this makes us totally free in deciding the meaning of our lives and the morality of our actions. I know this is getting a little ‘Philosophy 101’, but if you will imagine, for a moment, how it must have felt to truly understand the meaning of Nietzsche’s message after the death of my faith, you will realize then; power, yes, but also the weight of responsibility that comes with being the sole arbiter of the morality of your actions. It is a liberating burden to bear. In many ways, I believe this experience marked my first foray (intellectually, at least) into adulthood and the trials and tribulations that come with its excess of responsibility and freedom. My revelation naturally led me to ruminate on the meaning of life, specifically the meaning of my life. After considering my values, I decided that the meaning of my life is to aid others however I can. A simple belief, yes, but it is the reason I chose my major in university, it is the reason I chose to volunteer on environmental conservation projects, and it is the reason I continue to choose to see the good in the world and help it prosper every day. While I may falter at times, I remain steadfast in my new beliefs knowing my deeds are my own. The death of my faith led to a rebirth in joyous moral optimism.