What do I believe about religion?

When Kim died, I was offered the chance to speak to a priest that night. My response was to tell him to get the hell away from me. There is no way God would do this if he existed. Over 40 years of being catholic, getting confirmed, even visiting the Vatican and seeing the pope, was erased that night. Well, it was erased for a few days.

Here is what is crazy. Every day there is death and loss around us. Bad things happening to good people. Its on the news, its in our towns, and we often know people getting hit with the unbearable. We should all be ready and expecting when this happens to us too because we all are going to have to eat a huge shit sandwich in life more than once. Yet, when tragedy strikes YOU, it is almost as if no one else ever had this happen to them and this is a first for mankind. On the flip side, if we walked around all day, so aware that one day something bad was coming for us, what kind of life would that be? Living in fear and preparation for the inevitable? No, so we need to find a balance. For many, religion is that balance. It says, look, bad things will happen and when they do, I HE is here for you. I wont lie. It took me a little while to remember that, but what I believe today is not what I believed 3 years ago.

After Kim passed, I wanted answers. My first answer, where was she? So, Kim never got baptized. In the catholic religion I was raised to believe you need to be baptized to go to heaven. Kim believed in God, and went to church with me once and we brought Ava. We wanted to get Ava baptized which we hadn’t done. Kim left that up to me so in Jan 2019 I started to go back to church alone. Then Kim and Ava came with me. Ava didn’t react well to it so I went alone and Kim stayed home with Ava. We talked about baptism and Kim said she would get baptized too, because I was told in order for Ava to be baptized, Kim had to be done first. I was looking into it, but man, it’s a process for an adult. There are classes to take and Kim was just so busy at night with work and school, it wasn’t till 2019 when we were able to commit to that. When she died, I panicked? She wasn’t baptized! Where is she? I begged God. I pleaded. Please have her with you God. Don’t do this to her. It wasn’t her fault. She believed in you. She was an amazing person. She once said, “Robert, I believe that even though I’m not baptized, as long as I live a good life and am a good person then Ill be ok”. Even though she was gone, I needed to protect her. I paid for special masses to be held in her name at monasteries I found online. I googled. I posted in message boards. Ultimately, I set up meetings with the priest at my church, an evangelical priest, and a pastor. I needed answers.

I obsessed over religion. What proof was there? Is there proof Jesus existed? I read everything and I had questions. The bible states the Earth is about 6000 years old, but what about dinosaurs? We have tests t hat show the earth to be 65 billion years old at least! If we come from 2 people, how could that genetically be possible? Wouldn’t offspring be genetically mutated? Where did Noah’s ark go? A boat that big must be somewhere, right? Oh yeah, I had questions. So, I met with these 3 religious figures and we talked for hours. At the end of it all…. After all my interviews…after all my reading… after all the documentaries I started watching…. The answer I got was, you just need to have faith.

Wait, what?

Yeah, that wasn’t going to cut it, but what was happening, was I started to feel this drive by asking questions. I wanted to know more. I was able to setup Ava’s baptism, because I needed to make sure that got done, but unlike most times where families celebrate this day as a milestone, for me, it was something that brought on so much guilt. Here is part of what I wrote that day:

Today’s Avas baptism. Now before anyone gets hurt that you weren’t invited, there wasn’t an invite list. Originally Kim and Ava were going to be baptized together. I was supposed to arrange it. I didn’t. That’s a guilt I will always have. Please don’t feel the need to talk me down from that one. That guilts not ever leaving. It’s part of me now. I’ve accepted as much. Today should be a celebration but honestly, I want it to end as fast as it can. So happy the Pats are on at 4 so I have a distraction. As far as invites, look, people I talk to regularly and some close families are coming to the church but anyone can go who wants to. Its church, you don’t need me to invite you. If I was THAT guy and it was MY house Kim would still be here. If you feel uninvited to church talk to God. I didn’t rent a hall; I didn’t hire a photographer. Just like most other days, let’s just get this over with.

Yeah, not the way you want to celebrate that day, but again, if I say I am not healed today, because I know I am not, imagine how I was doing less than 2 months after Kim passed? My religious awakening was just beginning. I put the bible app on my phone. I studied verses. I learned more about the bible than I ever knew. It became interesting. Then I remembered a talk I had with someone I worked with once. He was Muslim and we would joke around openly. One day he said something pertaining to Jesus, and I joked and said, “How do you know who Jesus is?” Yes, I can be ignorant. He explained that Jesus is in the Quran. Huh? Really?? Yup. Oh, and not just that, but as I researched the bible, I started to read about other religions, and Jesus is in those too! I found that many religions, almost connected together in many ways. No matter what, all the religions I looked into came down to one thing. Love. They were all based off of love. Without love, you truly couldn’t believe. I started to wonder about how much of what we think we know about our respective religion is misinterpreted. Is Heaven really UP in the sky somewhere, or is it closer? If hell is beneath us, how would everyone fit? Were the UP and DOWN metaphors more so than navigational directions? Again, I read.  In my next post I will continue on with where my reading brought me.