Sometimes the point of being lost is to find the questions you never thought to ask.
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Religion gets a bad rap these days, people look at religion’s history and some of the atrocities that have occurred, the actions of extremists, and they question whether faith is a good thing. Some turn their backs on faith and just walk away. Some avidly disbelieve yet strangely defend their disbelief with the fervor of a believer. Some turn to new religions, or old ones repackaged, trying to find an answer to the question “Why do we exist?” Some of us though, we lost our faith, it’s gone, never to be again. So what’s the point of faith if you have lost it, if you can no longer get it back?
I have to turn back time a little first, take you through what it’s like to lose your faith before I can show you the other side, the side where losing faith has a point. It happened when I was young, something bad happened, something in which I had no control, no say, just a leaf caught in a tornado. Afterwards you ask God why things happen the way they did. You ask him to help you forget, to take away the past, the pain, to make your future brighter. Yet no god ever answered, no savior, not even a sign. It doesn’t matter how strong you eventually you reach a limit where faith can’t pass. Night after night you ask, beg, plead and yet life moves on, unchanged, until you have a crisis of faith.
At best God is a heartless bastard, uncaring of his creations, simply watching on as the world around you falls down.
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Life is supposed to have its ups and downs but what if there was never an up? What if there was never a brighter side and silver linings just conducted lightning? You start to hate god, detest him and despise him. At best God is a heartless bastard, uncaring of his creations, simply watching on as the world around you falls down. At worst God has a plan and at some point God needed a punching bag, something the rest of world could take their anger and rage out on. You curse God, wanting to work out how to seek revenge, wanting to deny your faith in God because he does not deserve it. Yet the act of denial cuts low, because to hate, to deny, requires that you still believe in a God you want to deny, to still have faith in the beliefs you hate. Faced with such a contradiction the mind abandons faith, it can’t hold it tight. Circular logic simply collapses to a point then disappears from your mind. In its place is left a crisis of existence.
Where a crisis of faith burns hot an existential crisis is as cold as ice. What point has life, if there is no God, no plan then why do we exist. Are we just an accident in a very large universe? Is our only point to be born, eat, sleep, procreate and finally die? Why should I be moral and ethical, why not just give in and seek the most amounts of pleasure and resources I can. Somewhere inside me I wanted to live, to have a reason but it became buried under questions I couldn’t answer. I existed therefore I exist. I shut everything down, my feelings, my love of the world around me, and my pain. I walk through life a long time like this until I had a crisis of reason.
A crisis of reason is like a driving force, another tornado except I was no longer a leaf, and the tornado was created by the winds of my thoughts. A crisis of reason is … I don’t really know how to describe it. Contradictions and paradoxes start to make sense. If I take the wrong path to the right destination then didn’t I take the right path? Reason fails and then reasserts itself. Opposites can co-exist and be equally valid, or equally false. Your perspective on the world changes, you start to see that seeking happiness can make you sad while seeking sadness can make you happy. You start to see that a paradox is a place where a choice can be made, a place where beauty and wonder exist.
I saw the one thing in this universe capable of saving it – Life.
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I remember being at my father’s house, six months after I was separated, when I entered my crisis of reason. I was watching a documentary by Brian Cox about the life of the universe. He talks about the arrow of time, how everything eventually descends into chaos. Yet that is not what I saw. I saw him create, take a bucket of sand and create order, take the improbable and make it a certainty. I saw him for a time delay the arrow of time and it made me think, made me think a lot. In 100 trillion years the universe goes dark, that’s its fate and not a thing can be done. Yet that’s not what I saw. I saw the one thing in this universe capable of saving it – Life. Life may not be able to stop the inevitable but there exists the possibility we can make this universe last 200 trillion years, or 400 trillion years.
So in a documentary about the end of all things I found the beginning of all things. I found something I never knew I needed, a purpose. It’s a modest purpose, save the universe, not very large at all. I know the ultimate fate won’t depend on just me but I can save my little corner. I can add just a little more order, try and slow the arrow of time, delay it just a little. I worked out how to do my part, show people how to feel again, how to see that there is still beauty and wonder in the world, and that beauty and wonder are worth creating. My efforts will be miniscule against the scale of the universe, but someone has to start.
So what is the point of losing faith? For me it’s purpose. I don’t need faith anymore, I have my purpose. I don’t need a God to exist or not exist; in my mind God can both exist and not exist at the same time. Yet when I think about what religions teach in their scriptures they teach this very purpose. Fight against chaos, bring order to the world. It’s infuses our myths and fables, it’s in our comic books and movies, each and every hero driven to make the universe that little bit more ordered. I see the world around me in a different way now, I see life everywhere and how it’s driven to create, driven to order the chaos wherever it finds itself. From coral reefs to beaver’s damns to sky scrapers, this constant driving force, life, taking chaotic light from our sun and turning it into order.
So now I wonder what came first, faith or purpose. I wonder did we as humans somehow forget our purpose and replace it with faith. I wonder what it would be like to lose my purpose and only have faith to rely on; to need to be strong in faith to cope with life, to have faith that there is a reason or a plan for life. Yet I don’t see things that way anymore, life is the reason, it’s the answer to questions we haven’t thought to ask and I want to find those questions. I’ve started to wonder if the point of losing faith is to find the meaning and purpose behind faith itself. I have the answer now, life, but I don’t have all the questions yet, just a question that works for me, “What’s the point of losing faith?”
Source: 30dB.com – Poetry vs Video Games
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Photo: Getty Images
*A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. The Modern Minstrel observes the world around him and shares it with us as lyrical story. This series was inspired by Luke Davis, whose eye for story and ear for lyrical prose are featured here.
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