I never understood a personal God except understanding that I must say that I do know a personal god and a "god of the church." I guess they are separate? Growing up I was quite sure there was a God only because the contrary idea was never introduced but I never had this conviction that others had around me. Like they all seemed so adamantly sincere on their belief, but why not myself?
So I guessed I was quite good at tricking myself before I went to college. You know, relying on fallacy of causation with literally EVERYTHING and allowing the concept of "group think" in my religious community to fill me up with all the right EMOTIONS to help me recommit every Sunday.
But eventually, all of the emotion manipulation did not satisfy and everyone's absolute religious convictions started to become nauseating as I started to learn more about the mormon church so I took what I consider the last step to heresy for reasonable religious men: apologetics. I tried arguing others in a representative form of arguing with myself for belief. But that trick ended after about a year.
Then, embarrassingly, I turned on my agnostic inclinations to try to regain family trust and got back to the "perfect" mormon world since I hadn't come to peace with losing an entire community and tried to trick myself again because it think that is what a lot of other people do. They just fake it till they make it...but I can't do that. I rather be homeless or 6 feet deep. But luckily, my immediate family has been quite understanding since they have seen that I have tried and ended up down a road of living a lie. So I am quite grateful.
So can anyone out there identify with this? Feeling like you are being tricked, and then you know you were tricked you try to trick yourself, but you can't no matter how hard you try? Or it works for a period, like a bandaid on a shot gun wound but then the band-aid would just fall off?
So I guessed I was quite good at tricking myself before I went to college. You know, relying on fallacy of causation with literally EVERYTHING and allowing the concept of "group think" in my religious community to fill me up with all the right EMOTIONS to help me recommit every Sunday.
But eventually, all of the emotion manipulation did not satisfy and everyone's absolute religious convictions started to become nauseating as I started to learn more about the mormon church so I took what I consider the last step to heresy for reasonable religious men: apologetics. I tried arguing others in a representative form of arguing with myself for belief. But that trick ended after about a year.
Then, embarrassingly, I turned on my agnostic inclinations to try to regain family trust and got back to the "perfect" mormon world since I hadn't come to peace with losing an entire community and tried to trick myself again because it think that is what a lot of other people do. They just fake it till they make it...but I can't do that. I rather be homeless or 6 feet deep. But luckily, my immediate family has been quite understanding since they have seen that I have tried and ended up down a road of living a lie. So I am quite grateful.
So can anyone out there identify with this? Feeling like you are being tricked, and then you know you were tricked you try to trick yourself, but you can't no matter how hard you try? Or it works for a period, like a bandaid on a shot gun wound but then the band-aid would just fall off?
"Just call me Bruce Wayne. I'd rather be Batman."
