-less

Godless...yeesh.

At this point, my struggle seems to be less ontological than linguistic. As a Christian, a person owns a label of goodness and truth, but there's such a pall that hangs over those who don't define themselves as such. All the terms I've ever known are the necessary negatives to the positive: the lost, unbelieving, unsaved. The godless. In losing my faith in the Christian God, I'm suddenly facing this term and the negative implications that it connotes--that it's just a matter of time before I'm shooting up heroin, murdering hookers, and, if I remain on my current path of destruction, somehow becoming a native of the deep, dark jungle where my godless state will lead me toward its logical career choice as a cannibalistic pagan.

But if I can accept the term godless, then it's not a problem, because we're all godless. I mean, I can vehemently insist that there is a tree that grows marshmallows in my back yard, but, despite my single-minded belief, I and all of my neighbors will forever remain marshmallow treeless. The fact that "marshmallow treeless" hasn't become linguistic shorthand for "depraved and immoral person" isn't ontological, it's cultural--having a renewing, sustainable source for marshmallows isn't a requirement that we, as a culture demand of those we deem "good."

I still don't like the term, though. It suggests that there is a God and those who can't accept that fact are simply lacking a part of the whole experience or have chosen against embracing a fact, and I don't feel like a person who's giving up any kind of truth; rather, I feel like I'm no longer able to sustain a belief that the oak in my backyard secretly possesses the ability to produce fluffy, confectionery delights--that the acorns all over the ground are never going to become marshmallows and it's in my best interest to figure out what to do with all of the acorns.

In this incredibly forced metaphor, the marshmallow tree belief is reliant upon "yeah,  buts."

[Those are acorns.] "Yeah, but they're really marshmallows."
[I don't see any marshmallows.] "Yeah, but they're there."
[I have a hard time believing that.] "Yeah, but it's true."

Christianity is very reliant upon the "yeah, buts," but, like the negative term "godless," there's a Christian-approved umbrella term that's got a positive spin: faith. Even when I believed, I had some serious doubts, but, but...yeah, but.

Until I ran across an acorn that just didn't work as a marshmallow at all and I was left with two choices: that God demands our prayers and our unconditional love and, in return, chooses not to intervene to better our lives; or that God can't intervene and misrepresented himself as omnipotent. I danced between both of these, "yeah, but"-ed myself into a corner multiple times, and ended up realizing something.

Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor? It states that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity," that the simplest explanation is usually correct, with "[simplest]  referring to the theory with the fewest new assumptions." In short,  it states that the more explaining and "yeah, buts" a theory requires, the further it is from the truth. Add up all the hours I spent in Bible class, in church, in chapel assemblies, at Bible camp--these hours amount to years' worth of "yeah, buts." Now watch this:

There is no God. Bad stuff happens because stuff happens and some of it is bad.

You really don't need any "yeah, buts." It works.

Oh, and here are some recipes for cooking with acorns.