First of all, the term 'agnostic' is a Greek term that means, literally, to 'not know', and it usually pertains to religious beliefs. There are those that call themselves 'theistic agnostics', who lean towards some basic belief in the possibility that God or gods may exist, but don't commit to specific beliefs or dogmas, and 'atheistic agnostics', who do not. There are probably others, but who cares? ;) I am just an agnostic, in the simplest and strictest definition of the word--I don't know if there is a God or not. Some definitions I've read online go a step or two further and say that a true agnostic believes that it CANNOT be known if there is or isn't a god(s), but to me that's as much an irrational faith statement as any religious profession of faith. So I don't go that far. It is also not my desire to remain an agnostic (despite what it may seem by my criticisms of the religions I have studied), which also places me somewhat outside some of the definitions of the word that I've read online. But that's fine with me. It still seems to be the best way to describe where I'm at spiritually.
Next, how I came to be one. As far back as I can remember, I have had a fascination with God, the afterlife, and even the occult. Until my parents' divorce when I was seven, I was an unconfirmed Roman Catholic, thanks to my Mom and her family. My Dad was raised a Protestant, but until I was 11 he was much more an agnostic than anything. I think he even told me he was at some point. My Mom wasn't a strict Catholic or anything. Her beliefs at that time were more common with many other Catholics I have known--believe what you want, but go to Mass every Sunday. I have vague memories of her telling me about Jesus Christ and God, and it was from her that I first heard that God loved me, and so I loved God.
As I said, my parents divorced when I was 7 and, though my mother won 'religious custody' of us, we rarely went to mass after that. Mostly because both my parents had to work their asses off to support themselves and us kids. There was simply no time or energy. My Dad had always been a movie buff, and it definitely rubbed off on myself and my siblings. When my dad made the not-so-wise decision to try to juggle his construction day-job with going into business for himself and starting a video store (they were just then becoming all the rage at that time; his business failed after two years), and raise us kids all at the same time, all there was for us to do was watch movies, and watch 'em we did. Especially horror movies. Around this time, I developed a weird fascination with the movie, The Exorcist. I had never seen it--I was not allowed to-- but I had seen clips of it on tv, and it both terrorized the hell out of me and mesmerized me. I was completely freaked out about getting possessed by the devil. It's funny now looking back on it, but at the time I was absolutely terrified. That stayed with me for a very long time. I eventually read the novel that the movie was based on, and then when I was around 12 or 13 (I think), I finally watched the movie. It's still one of my all-time favorite movies. But the concept it portrayed, that there was a God, and that He would create a being that would become His own worst enemy and reek havoc on all the rest of His creation, just baffled me. And you don't have to be exposed to a horror movie like the Exorcist to be introduced to such a concept, you simply have to read the Bible. Despite my confusion, I still had my basic belief in God--He just didn't make sense to me. And I was alright with that, for a while.
As I entered my adolescence, my Dad (who had always had a strained relationship with each of us kids at best) had become a born-again Christian, and my Mom had remarried and gained the means to support herself and any of us three kids that wanted to live with her. So, I moved out of my Dad's and in with her and my new step-father. I lived with them from 6th grade till 11th grade, and went through all of the trials of teen-agerness with them. I got my first job at Little Caesar's Pizza Pizza when I was 16, and looking back, it was a very interesting experiences. Mostly because, in high school, everyone is very 'cliquey' and separated, but at work, you work with kids that go to your school but that you don't normally talk to. And there you are, all wearing the same uniform and having to work together. I worked there for a year, and really had a pretty good time. I met this girl that I really liked a lot, Janeen, and we hung out a lot together, which lead to us going out. We kind of started getting into astrology together--lightly at first, and then I really got into it. Eventually, I drew up my own natal chart and started doing my own horoscope. I had figured out that I was a Libra with the sun in the 11th house, with a Scorpio rising and the moon in Cancer in the 8th house, and blah, blah, blah (it just keeps going). I stayed in that phase for a couple of years I think, into my senior year of high school when I moved back in with my dad and my new step-mom, because I was no longer getting along with my Mom and Bill (my step-dad).
As I mentioned earlier, my dad had become a born-again Christian, and his new wife was a devout believer. Even so, they respected my beliefs--and my Dad (hell, my whole family) new that there was no point in even trying to force me to do anything I didn't want to do. I'm EXTREMELY bull-headed with a sharp rebellious streak, so they did very well to not push their faith or church on me. They offered, but never forced. And I actually got along quite well with them for quite a while ('till of course I turned 20 or 21 and I was over-staying my welcome).
For Thanksgiving of '95, my Dad, step-mom and myself went to Houston, TX to spend the holiday with my step-brother, Terry and his wife, Tracie. I was not prepared for the life-changing decision I would make during that trip. I had a very nice time, and we met up there with my step-sister Carrie and her husband at the time, Richie, from Los Angeles. I think we were there for like 4 or 5 days and on one of the nights, Carrie put on this 4-hour seminar video called (something like) "Rock 'n Roll Sorcerers in the New Age Revolution" for us all to watch. It was basically this evangelical pastor's presentation about how the most famous singers of the 50's to the present day were influenced by Satanic elements, if not Satan himself. This sounds ridiculous, at least it definitely did to me at first, but as the video played on, the guy actually weaved a pretty good argument. For an 18 year old's mind anyway. He convinced me. He presented written interviews, biographies, and video footage of the singers talking about their beliefs to support his argument. He showed that many of them (Elvis, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Sting, etc.) had stated an interest, if not a firm belief, in the teachings of people like Aleister Crowley, Anton La Vey, and Madame Blavatsky, all well-known Satanists and/or Occultists. Carrie had played the video hoping to convert Tracie, my step-brother's non-Christian wife. Ironically, after the video was over, it was me that ended up having this insanely long conversation with Carrie and Richie that ended with my conversion at about 1am, if I remember correctly.
That night I went to bed feeling great, having found God and all. I knew that being a Christian was going to be particularly difficult for me (astrology was out, among other things), but that was in God's hands. I had always prayed, and believed in God, but I had never really had a structured belief system, and I think it felt good to finally find that. In my experience, occultic beliefs like astrology are really just big mind games that people willfully play on themselves and others. They're very flexible--not structured at all. That's why they are a con-artist's haven.
Anyway, the next morning we were to hop on the plane home, and before we left for the airport Carrie asked me if I had told my dad yet. I hadn't, because I really didn't think it was that big of a deal. But when I told my dad and step-mom on the plane, they both sat forward and looked at me with the biggest looks of shock on their faces. It was like out of a sitcom, and I was just waiting for the cheesy laugh-track. None played though. I got home and did the Newly-Converted-Christian Spring Cleaning that new believers do--throwing out everything that was part of my heathen past. I was converted Thanksgiving night, and baptized on Christmas Eve. I went to my dad's non-denominational church for almost a year, but it was really too big for me, so I found a smaller Southern Baptist church through a Bible study group that met at Mesa Community College, where I was taking a few college courses. I got pretty involved there, meeting a lot of interesting people that I liked a lot, doing the Bible study thing, and going on mission trips and retreats.
In doing all of this, I became very interested in the differences between the many Christian sects and denominations. Particularly, I was most curious about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (and a little about Jehovah's Witnesses). The LDS Church is largely vilified by all other Christian sects because it blatantly claims to be the only true Christian church, and that it restored the true gospel that the other churches had lost or corrupted. And though it has become less and less so with the rapid growth of the metro-Phoenix, AZ area and all of the multi-culturization that comes with it, the Mormon church has a significant presence where I grew up and used to live, and I have had countless Mormon friends. I wanted to better understand the differences between it and the other Christian denominations. So, I started reading and researching. Oh so much reading and researching. I read a little of the Book of Mormon, a little of the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price, went to a church service, went to their Visitors' Center at the Mesa Temple a few times, spoke to missionaries, read books by ex-Mormons who had left the Church, and books by Protestants who were against the Church. Finally, I was working at KFC at the time, and I became friends with a new delivery driver named Loren. He was a great guy, and he was a Mormon. We would get into these long, deep, sometimes-heated-but-always-respectful discussions about our respective faiths, and I was slightly disturbed by the fact that we both had so much conviction in our beliefs, yet we believed in many different things. Through that friendship, I realized that strong conviction was not sufficient to determine the truth of one's beliefs, nor was it enough to convince someone else to change their beliefs. Eventually, it wasn't even enough to justify my own beliefs to myself.
So, since my faith was based on the claims of the Bible, I turned my studies there. I read the famous books (famous within Christendom, that is) by Josh McDowell, "Evidence That Demands A Verdict", and several others by him and other authors like F.F. Bruce. McDowell bases his faith on what he feels is strong early church tradition that the disciples were executed proclaiming the risen Christ, since people tend to not be willing to die for proclaiming the reality of events that they know did not occur. Further, he defends the historical reliability of the Bible, and even addresses various other Bible criticisms that I had not even been introduced to up to that time. And to his credit, he regularly encourages the reader throughout his books to further research the various subjects he tackles on their own, and not just rely on his findings. I also read C.S. Lewis' autobiography, and several of his philosophical works. I read two books by people claiming to have originally set out to disprove the Resurrection, but ended up being convinced it happened (Who Moved the Stone? By Frank Morison, and The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel). Oh yeah, and the Bible (How could I have forgotten???). Well, I read the New Testament several times, and the Torah and a few other books of the Old Testament. This is just a handful of the reading that I did. I went on a couple retreats, met with my pastor, had discussions with fellow believers, and went to a large convention or two. On top of all of this, I prayed. I prayed so much. And it was sometimes very helpful, in that it allowed me to relax and refocus as I searched.
But to no avail. I was getting increasingly frustrated during church services and distant with my friends. I knew by then that my conversion, like most people's, had been a very subjective one, and I wanted it to be based on more objective premises. And I wasn't finding what I was looking for. On top of that, I had some personal issues and God didn't seem to be helping. I was feeling very burnt out, disillusioned, cynical, and even a little depressed. So, I stopped going to church.
Over the next several years, I got a girlfriend, got into some serious credit card debt (not directly related to the girlfriend), lost the girlfriend, worked my ass off to pay off the debt, took up boxing for stress-relief, paid off the debt after two years, went part-time at work and just relaxed for a while. The whole time, the subject of God remained in the back of my head, and I knew that at some time I would have to readdress it.
Well, that time came when my dad started having strange neurological symptoms. He was 61 years old, and we had all noticed his memory, never particularly good to begin with, getting markedly worse. When driving in Arizona, we normally look at the speed limit and add 10 mph. My dad was no exception. But now, he was taking the speed limit and SUBTRACTING 10 mph. He would leave for work and not be able to find his way home. He was losing weight rapidly, though he was eating normally. My step-mom was getting very worried, so she took him to the doctor, who said that it may be depression. However, according to the doctor, the weight loss was of significant concern. Over a period of a few months, he wasn't getting any better. He was referred to the Mayo Clinic for further examination. There, my dad and step-mom were warned that it could be a rare but fatal and incurable disease called Sporadic Crutchfield Jakob Disease, a human form of mad cow disease. It turns up in 1 per 1,000,000 people in America between the ages of 60 and 65, and though its cause is unknown, it is not believed to be caused by contaminated meat. They took a few brain scans, and from then on it was a waiting game. Around that time, he began to become incontinent, to walk awkwardly, and it was getting hard for him to find the words he wanted to say. There were other symptoms as well. The results of the brain scans came in shortly before Christmas of 2003, and my siblings and I were there with my dad and step-mom when we got the results, which confirmed that he did in fact have CJD. I have never felt like the ground had dropped out beneath me before, but I did then. My dad just bowed his head and started to cry. Then the rest of us did. From that time on, it was a matter of keeping him comfortable until his passing, which occurred just 5 months after the diagnosis. I spent as much time as I could with him, helping my step-mom as best I could. I took him to the mall, the zoo, on walks around the neighborhood--wherever he wanted.
One day when I was taking care of him while my step-mom was working, my mom came by to pick me up, since my car was in the shop. Up to the point of his illness, there was still bitterness between them, though they had been divorced almost twenty years. I was nervous about them seeing each other, because I didn't know how my dad would react. Fortunately, I don't think it could have gone better. My dad was very warm towards her when she came in, and she started to tear up, but kept it in. They talked for just a little bit, and then my dad asked my mom if she was ok. She told him she was, and then asked him how he was. He said he was fine, and then he said, "So you're ok?" and then he fell into her lap crying. She started crying too, and I had to get the hell out of there! I couldn't believe what had just happened, so I just walked to the back of the house and paced up and down the hallway. They talked for a little bit, and then I came back in. Around that time, my step-mom came home, and I think she was a little uncomfortable walking in with her husband and his ex-wife both with red puffy eyes, but she hid it well. And I stood there in amazement at what I had just saw. It was something I never thought would happen.
Afterwards, Dad's health continued to deteriorate, he kept getting skinnier and was eventually bed-ridden. My step-brother, Terry, and his wife, Tracie, had an office in Phoenix so they flew out for about four weeks to help my step-mom care for my dad.
Eventually, he stopped eating, and a week later he passed away. The last days of his life, his body was contorted in the most unnatural, disturbing position, with his back arched back leaning slightly to his right, his head back and his mouth stuck wide open. He was all bones, and his skin looked and felt like wax. We were giving him oral doses of morphine by the hour to relieve any suffering he might be experiencing. At around 9:00pm on a Sunday night, everyone was there and we thought he was ready to go. He began breathing very heavily and loudly, almost grunting. But it was a false alarm. It was getting late, so everyone left but I stayed to help my step-mom give him his hourly morphine doses--I was to stay up a few hours, and then she would get up and continue the work. However, at around 2:30am I heard his breathing get weaker. I walked into the room and watched him for a few minutes before he moved his head back a little, moved his hand up a little and lightly clenched it, and breathed his last breath. He died on Memorial Day morning, 31 May 2004. I got everybody in the house up, called my sister and got her over, and we tied up the loose ends. He was cremated and buried shortly afterwards, and a memorial was held. It was an awesome memorial, held at my dad and step-mom's church, the first one that I started to go to after my conversion. There were tons of people there; people that I hadn't seen in ages. And afterwards, we each began the difficult process of moving on with our lives.
Almost eight months later, I enlisted in the Air Force. My dad's sudden fatal illness helped to resurrect my previous crisis of faith, and that coupled with my drastic change in lifestyle by joining the military and other personal issues I was dealing with brought me to an all-time stress high. I was alright during basic training, but afterwards I started having the weirdest physical symptoms. I have never been accused of being a hypochondriac, but I definitely became one. I never went to the doctor about it and I didn't talk much about it to others, but I was feeling a weird and intense tightness in my forearms, numbness in my limbs, and I could not walk straight. It was like dizziness, but not quite. I didn't tell anybody, but I was more scared than I have ever been in my life. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I knew in my head that it wasn't possible, but I started to wonder if I had developed the same condition my dad had died from (there are other forms of the disease that someone my age could develop). This went on for at least two months, and it was torture. I was psyching myself out, and I started to prepare mentally for the possibility that I was dying of something, but I refused to go to the doctor or talk to anyone about it. Looking back it scares me because I never thought I could ever become so out of touch with reality. But it happened. And all the sudden, I found God again. Of course it was just another short-lived, emotion-based experience. I didn't care about reason or logic or my previous doubts, I needed God and I didn't care what I had to believe to get to Him. I reached for the only thing I knew, and I started reading the Bible from Genesis on. I continued reading it even after my 'agnosticity' returned.
That experience, as psychotic as it was, gave me some valuable insight. I got a glimpse into what it must feel like to know you're dying soon. To look around and realize that everyone and everything in your life is no longer yours to keep, and never really was. It was an intensely lonely and dark place to be. I realized that it's very easy for me to get caught up in nit-picking things like beliefs and religious faith, but when confronted with my mortality, even by means of an illusion, all I wanted was to be comforted by the only being I thought could do it--God. I don't believe that this provides any proof of God's existence, but I do think it is a common response to a perceived life-threatening situation, which is suggestive. It may be instinct, or it may be conditioned. Who knows?
It's clear to me now that my previous attempts to convince myself of the historical reality of Biblical events were pointless. They CAN'T be proven beyond a doubt, nor can they be dis-proven. Searching for a divine being in records of events that are said to have happened over 2000 years ago is ridiculous. If God exists, I need to see what he is doing now.
So, that is how I got where I am today, and I continue to search. However, I am no longer searching solely by reading books like I used to. I still read--a lot--but it's not the only means by which I learn, about God or anything else anymore. I pray--sometimes I don't know why, but I do. I write, I discuss, I argue, I experience things, I look, I listen, I risk. If God exists, and I am to know Him, He can't just exist in the pages of some book, He (She/It--whatever)'s gotta be in my life somewhere, and He's gotta be willing for me to find Him. And if He(She/It) doesn't exist, or if He's not willing for me to find Him, I can still enjoy the search.
***If you made it all the way through this blog, then...
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