My friend,
I have more to say concerning our conversation of earlier and I will repeat segments of our conversation for the sake of this blog and for recorded memory. I know the path I am about to descend down and I want to cry right now. My atheism is a statement or condition of a crisis of faith. It is not some permanent condition though it is part of an effort to rethink the world and to find happiness.
But, please, imagine for a moment me as a small child. I wanted so badly to feel loved by my parents and by God. I felt like an inconvenience to all those around me. I just wanted to be hugged and held by someone when I was younger. I wanted so badly for that to be the case but I always felt forgotten and unwanted. When I was young, no more than eight, I knelt down one day and prayed to know if God loved me. I remember how I felt so ashamed to even ask that question of Him. I felt like I was wasting His time by even bothering to speak to Him. But still, I wanted to know. I had to know. I had to know if God loved me for I felt ugly and unwanted.
I received no answer to that prayer.
I felt as though I had annoyed God and prayed for forgiveness. How silly of me to have wasted his time to even condescend to answer such an unimportant question. God had more important things to do than waste his time on such a pitiful thing as I. I knew it even at a young age that I was some kind of accident in the eyes of God.
When people spoke of the love of God in Church, I understood it intellectually but never believed it applied to me. God's love was for people that he actually liked. God did not even want to acknowledge me but had to because he was God and I was some accidental creation surely. As a teenager, I strove to understand the scriptures and to be a good Mormon boy. I just hoped and prayed for some confirmation that I was loved and wanted.
When I learned that I was gay and that it was evil to God, I felt so low. Surely this was a sign that God didn't really want me. I was truly ugly to him and unwanted. But still, surely I could somehow gain some level of at least God tolerating me. So I still studied and I still learned but I hated myself and hated all that I was. I hid that part of myself until I could no longer hold it inside. I sought for acceptance and love from others. And when I sought for help, support, and love I found it outside of my family and far from God. I felt abandoned and lost beyond words. Beyond description.
God had marked me as something to be avoided and despised. I never felt like I could ever reach even the basic level of God's love. On the mission, I never felt like I could receive inspiration or the Spirit because I just simply could never be worthy enough in God's eyes. I was also too wrong and too evil to even dare approach God's presence. But still I felt I had to, that I was commanded to. I just would ask for him to forgive me for even daring to ask for help. As I think back on those memories, I cannot help but cry. I felt that even my praying was a great evil before God but since I had to obey commandments I had to pray and that I just had to ask for forgiveness for offending God with my pleas.
I knew I was an abomination to God at the beginning of my mission. I was something that clearly did not deserve God's love. I wept then. I had spent three years before that hating myself for something I could not help. I hated that I liked boys instead of girls. I hated that every desire I had had ultimately, through that development, been rejected by God. I was so very ugly in God's eyes.
Why would God ever want me?
So, understand, then, that believing such a Being does not exist makes me feel happy. It is as though a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders. No amount of pleading in prayers to know if God loves me has ever yielded the answer that such is the case.
That is my answer to you.
Sincerely,
Your friend
Five Years Out
9 years ago
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