God

I grew up in a very religious home, a fundamentalist, evangelical, protestant, Christian home. My parents were missionaries. The rules were simple: don't smoke, swear, drink, have sex, listen to rock 'n roll, have lustful thoughts, dance or go to movies. Do go to church, read your Bible, pray. A lot.

The God I grew up with was a god of rules. Religion was a set of rules and an intellectual exercise: explain everyday life in a way that matched the stated dogma. It was hard to do so, life often did not match what I believed. During that time I developed a fascination for philosophy: the examination of beliefs, belief structures and the logical implications thereof. I spent two decades, from ages 10 to 30 trying to reconcile the world I observed with my faith.

Absent in my life, even my religious life, was any emotion, any passion. I occasionally saw it in others: people weeping with love for God, overwhelmed by his tangible "presence". I wanted to feel that, I longed to experience God in the immediate, real way in which these people experienced their God, the way in which they felt connected to the universe. I never did. I tried believing more, praying harder, it never worked. I was convinced I was doing something wrong, but I didn't know what.

I got older, began my scientific studies in high school, then college, then grad school. I found that the world I observed every day, the world I lived in, studied, calculated, examined did not match the world I claimed to believe in: a world of miracles and spirits, justice and order. At great personal cost, I finally gave up the fight of trying to apply the filter of faith to the world I saw. Having failed to observe even a shred of evidence for the existence of God, I became an agnostic, then an atheist. My family of origin all but disowned me. I was now one of "them", the damned who would burn in hell for all of eternity. My relationship with them never completely recovered.

The world was now simple: all I had to worry about was what was real, what I saw with my eyes, felt with my hands, heard with my ears. I loved it. I could stop worrying about how to reconcile an omnipotent, good God with the horror of the Holocaust and Rwanda, starving Ethiopian children and childhood leukemia. I didn't have to reconcile the fossil record and the cosmic microwave background with the creation story of Genesis. My world finally made sense.

On a few occasions I experienced wonder and awe, a sense of mystery, of being part of something big (the Cosmos). For me these mostly happened in moments of scientific discovery, when I was learning something really cool about how the universe works (e.g.: the Euler Identity). Once it was a real discovery, something no one had ever understood before (Bose-Einstein Condensation in 2-D systems IS possible after all). I also experienced that sense of purpose and belonging with my first child, feeling like I was part of the great "circle of life". It was wonderful every time: tingles and butterflies in my stomach, lightheadedness. It was like being in love. I haven't had such a moment in a very long time.

I lived that way for 15 years, then, recently, my world fell apart. I found out my wife had been cheating on me, on and off, for most of our married life. For that reason and others, my marriage began to fall apart. Feeling lost, I have started to feel the need for a sense of connectedness to the universe, a sense of wonder, mystery, belonging. A friend of mine believes in God. She is someone I respect. She is smart, rational, self-aware. She says that occasionally when she prays, she gets those butterflies in her stomach. She really feels, at a visceral, emotional level, the very presence of God. I envy her, and my siblings, and my parents, all these people for whom God is real. I want to feel that. I don't even care if God is "real" in the scientific, physical sense. The effect that God has on people is real, that's good enough. God makes them feel like they belong, like they fit in the universe. I want to fit.

So what is God? Is God a person, as I learned as a child? is he a feeling, a sense of wonder at the beauty of being alive? I don't know. I don't care. I want to feel that, whatever it is.

I'm going to church this coming Sunday. I am hoping that it has been long enough, that I am in enough of a sensitized state of mind that I can feel God. I may be disappointed, but I want to give it a shot, see if God is out there.

I'll let you know how it goes.