My testimony

This post has been a long time coming.  When I started my blog, I often found myself writing about the topic of religion.  I would probably write about it at least a few times a month.  Over the past year, I haven't written nearly as much, as I felt like pretty much anything that I could say would just be me repeating myself.

Well, it's funny how things work out sometimes, isn't it?  After a long struggle over my faith that lasted several years, followed by a long period of atheism, I finally felt as though I had ran through the arguments so thoroughly that I was pretty settled into who I was.  The "God" part of my brain was completely switched off.  I no longer had the occasional nagging thought of "Well, maybe..."

But God is funny that way.  That's right.  I said it.  God is funny that way.  Just when we think we have things all figured out, He goes and surprises us.  It happened to me just recently while teaching my freshmen about the rise of Stalin (in conjunction with teaching Animal Farm, as I'm not a history teacher).  We were watching a documentary on his rise to power, and it started with some back story about the Russian Revolution.  In it, there was a bit of discussion of how the Communists dismantled the Russian Orthodox Church.  Later on, the documentary showed how the worship of Joseph Stalin had replaced the traditional church.  Stalin had, in effect, become a god.  Why?  Because that's what happens when you take religion away, you have to replace it with something.

And this is what happened to me.  I replaced god in my life and had to replace it with something.  No, no, I didn't replace it with Joseph Stalin, I replaced it with myself.  I became my own god.  Instead of looking to a divine source for inspiration and guidance, I had to look toward me.  Ultimately, just as Stalinism has been wiped out, my system was doomed to fail as well.

I could only do so much for myself.  After all, I'm not perfect.  I suppose that I always realized that, but I was just unwilling - probably due to an excessive amount of pride on my part - to admit what the reason for that was.  No doubt this is why I had to seek a therapist a few years ago.  No doubt this is why I sometimes feel overwhelmed by what life throws at me.  No doubt this is also why I would always have to have a beer with dinner.

All of this hit me several days ago, but I had to wait specifically for today for me to finally write it down.  I'm not entirely sure what the next step is for me.  Obviously, I'm going to have to do a lot of "mea culpas".  I am almost tempted to erase all of my posts on atheism, and I was just about to before God went and intervened again by planting a thought in my head:  "I should use those old posts!"

See, this is all a part of what God wanted from me from the very start.  I now see that even my atheism was part of His divine will.  Who better than a former atheist - and a rather outspoken one at that - to help spread the Gospel to the nonbelievers?  If anybody knows what they're going through, it's me.  If anybody understand the arguments, it's me.  God, I think that I am ready.

Oh, and I'm also starting to think that this whole Astrology thing is perfectly sensible.

Happy April Fool's Day, everybody.