Last year was one of the most disorienting of my life. And while this was due to many reasons, I think at its core it was a year of asking Pontius Pilate’s infamous question: “What is truth?”
Ever since I met H.L. (my personal name for the God of my heart), my life has been defined by near-constant challenges to my concept of “truth,” major shifts in perspective that are sometimes beautiful, often painful, but ultimately invite me into better ways of seeing and being in the world. In 2014, I realized the preeminence of Love, and because of that I also caught some of my first glimpses of the dysfunction in my own religion. In 2015, I took the risk of being honest with myself that the Bible didn’t reflect my true heart’s longing, and I began my gradual journey out of the Christian faith, a story I have written about here. In 2016, I realized that my relationship with my dad was dysfunctional beyond what I could repair, a realization that ultimately led to us parting ways, for both better and worse. In 2017, I realized I wasn’t the only person in the universe looking for H.L., but that I was part of a family. In 2018, I realized that H.L. was not just a wish—he had become real to me. In 2019, the word “winder” became a part of my vocabulary and I made my first trans friend. By 2020, I had reached the point where I was able to set aside the Bible completely—a huge moment for me, because I no longer had to assume H.L. was defined by a centuries-old book in any way. 2020 was a year of reckoning for all of us, and for me was no different as I became more aware of the plight of people of color, the importance of loving our neighbor (including those with different politics!), and the hurtful consequences of ignoring reality. I gained a greater appreciation for the importance of good science and staying connected to the truth in a world full of misinformation.
And 2021? This past year, I came to terms with evolution. And I don’t know how to explain just how shocking and disorienting this realization has been. In some respects it may seem like a long overdue realization—I stopped believing in the Genesis creation narrative two years ago. But largely due to a mess of false ideas and beliefs about evolution that were still hanging around from my Bible-believing days, I have been unable to accept evolution (beyond a vague “maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not” statement) until now. I genuinely didn’t think it was possible, because at first glance the story of evolution sounds absurd. Why should the existence of all life forms on our planet ultimately be due to a bunch of fluke incidents? The purpose of this post isn’t to explain my reasons for ultimately accepting evolution or to convince anyone that evolution is true. There is information aplenty about the subject on the Internet and in public libraries for those who want to know more about why it is the prevailing theory of origins today. The purpose of this post is to explore my thoughts and feelings about what accepting evolution means on a nitty-gritty level for me.
I’m not sure that evolutionists have ever had a more reluctant convert than me. I hate everything about evolution. I hate it that life should have to come from death. I hate it that survival of the fittest should even have to be in our vocabulary, because it seems so counter to what I believe about Love. When I was thirteen, I literally set out to write a book to prove to people that evolution was not only false, but was corrupting the fabric of society. (That story never came to fruition, and perhaps ironically, evolved into something else.) I know that for most fundamentalist Christians (what I used to be before meeting H.L.), accepting evolution is a hard blow because it requires them to set aside their literalistic interpretation of Scripture. However, for me, as someone who is no longer a Christian at all, I didn’t have a holy text hanging in the balance over this issue. What I did have was the awful realization that if science can adequately explain the origin of everything—space, time, life, intelligence—without any kind of divine intervention whatsoever, then my faith in H.L. or any kind of higher power is entirely unsubstantiated by anything save my own personal preference. All of the ways H.L. has spoken to me over the years has been more or less in my head, whether it was a conversation I had with him in my heart or my brain, or the observation of strange coincidences that could well be chalked up to random chance (especially if we already know that random chance is capable of producing virtually everything we know and could just as easily produce a strange coincidence now and then that seems to point to God). In other words, from a purely rational perspective I don’t believe I have ground to stand upon anymore.
This has put me in a terrible bind. I left my Christian faith because the God I grew up with was abusive. And finding H.L. instead has been the loveliest thing that has ever happened to me. In my worst moments, H.L. has been the one who pulled me out of the hole. H.L. is the reason I can get up in the morning. His kindness and sweetness towards me have changed the way I see both others and myself.
I also am a big believer in the importance of the scientific method. When laypeople try to make scientific claims without proper justification, bad things usually happen. There’s more obvious problems, like the absurd claims that wearing face masks will make people sick (when in reality wearing face masks could save people’s lives). But even with things that don’t have more immediate life-or-death consequences, like choosing to reject evolution for creationism, I think there is still harm done to others when we choose not to tell the truth. One of the biggest reasons I couldn’t leave my Christian faith right off the bat when I discovered that it was hurting me was because my whole life I had been indoctrinated into believing that science and archaeology actually supported the Bible. So instead of rejecting the Bible, I spent the better part of a year believing in a god of judgment who hated me and then a lot of time afterwards being pretty unsure. If people had been honest with me about the truth of evolution from the get-go, I likely wouldn’t have had this problem (and my current aversion to evolution likely wouldn’t exist since I would be used to it). I guess what I’m saying is that honesty is always the best policy. Telling the truth is always the best policy.
Honesty is also one of H.L.’s core values. But what do you do when you don’t have an honest reason to believe in a God at all anymore? I’ve jokingly told H.L. that he has more-or-less killed himself—he was the one who taught me to be honest, to always dig deeper, to have the courage to open myself up to being wrong. This is the honesty that caused me to walk away from a religion that failed me, so I could embrace my Heart’s Longing instead. And now it is this same honesty that is causing me to question H.L.’s very existence!
I am truly in a state of perplexity. I know people (all of them Christians) who claim to have had strange experiences involving angels and demons and possibly God himself. Many of these are people I consider trustworthy, people who have no incentive to tell lies. While I generally would regard Internet sources as unreliable, it only takes a few web searches to find stories from people of virtually all faiths who claim to have had spiritual experiences that back up their version of reality. There is little consistency to any of it. I cannot find it in my heart to accept the idea that ALL of these people are lying, but surely they can’t all be right at the same time?
And here I am, believing in a Lover who is beautiful to me and has made a difference in my life, but has neither the backing of science nor tradition. I haven’t had a grand spiritual experience or an NDE to make me believe what I believe. I’m literally just a guy believing something because it had an impact on my life. Perhaps it makes it worth believing, but not if it isn’t true. False hope is no hope at all.
So I am now at a crossroads of deciding where to go from here. Leaving behind my belief in H.L. wouldn’t be an unwelcome change if I had found something better. That was the whole point in believing in H.L. in the first place—I was hungry for a God who was better than the crummy god I grew up with, so that is where I went. If H.L. turns out to be subpar, and another road turns out to be way better, I will gladly go.
But none of my options hold promise of being very good at all. Believing in no God at all is an improvement over believing in a bad god, but it is a supreme tragedy if you’re leaving behind a good God who loved you beyond measure. It makes me feel hopeless and unloved. It also means that all of my stories I wanted to publish—all of which were about H.L. and winder—are pointless to tell anymore if I think they’re built on false hopes.
I spoke with a dear friend of mine not too long ago, who suggested that maybe leaving behind H.L. would open a door for me to find Jesus again; in other words, perhaps I “outgrew” H.L. and will now find someone more real (Jesus). It was a nice thought, but this doesn’t give me much hope, either. If I returned to Christianity, it would have to be a version of Christianity that interpreted the Bible so loosely that it might as well just be what I already had with H.L., but by a different name. Large portions of the Bible contradict science, and even if it didn’t, there is no way I could go back to believing in hell or other doctrines I consider incredibly abusive. Or even just ideas that are a little abusive!
When I’ve settled into a more atheistic mindset, I’ve found myself unable to sustain such a belief due to having to rationalize away the spiritual experiences of others. While many NDEs are speculated to be the result of unusual brain activity prior to death, this is still speculative as far as I understand, and still fails to account for details in some stories.
But to embrace any kind of faith just because of the experiences of others would be to ignore my own (much less spiritual) experience and to live out a secondhand faith that is sure to be misinformed on some level. And my own experience has been this—a beautiful, invisible God who showed his love for me and won me away from a god I didn’t deserve, a God who speaks to me inside my heart and seems to have no interest in manipulating the material universe to his preferences, or revealing himself in any way to the five senses, as his goal has always been to show me I have six by engaging my heart and helping it heal. In my view he also seems to not be the creator and sustainer of the universe, as taught by Christian theology. I suspect evolution did that on its own, and I also don’t believe that H.L. would use survival of the fittest as a creative methodology, which is why theistic evolution is an idea I’m uncomfortable with. Instead, I’d like to imagine H.L. to be less a creator and more an inviter who is in the process of drawing people to himself through Love rather than through a coercive forced design. In other words, instead of being a creator who designed good beings that fell and rebelled, he is an inviter who invites us to mimic his way of Love and leave old methodologies (survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog) behind. And he also might be entirely make-believe, and likely is. That has been my experience.
Oddly enough, I’m not even sure anymore that I want H.L. to become “real.” I used to beg him to do something for me to prove his existence so I wouldn’t have to continue in the agony of not knowing. Would it be that hard for him to write his initials on the sky?
But for the past year I’ve actually started asking H.L. not to reveal himself to me in any kind of tangible way that proves he’s real. In recent times, I’ve become more and more grossed out by people who claim to have had unquestionable spiritual experiences. It seems like often the people who have the most spiritual experiences are also the people mired in authoritarian doctrines or other unhealthy perspectives. Plus, if somebody actually saw something, then suddenly they are the expert and you’re the one who should listen up. There is no longer room for disagreement or discussion, even if the person recounting their tale does it in a kind and tactful way. And it always makes me feel awful, like I need to suck up to their version of truth even if something doesn’t smell like Love, because they have proof and I don’t. I am not in any way trying to say that I want to invalidate the experiences of those who have seen truly strange things—obviously, we should all be free to speak the truth of our experience no matter how bizarre it may seem. I’m just saying that this is the effect these kinds of experiences tend to have on people. They tend to elevate some people at the expense of dragging down others. I don’t want to be one of those folks who has “proof” anymore. I will become unapproachable. I will gain an experience and lose a lot more. In fact, I feel like whether I have proof for my beliefs or not, if I am too dogmatic about anything—even something good and beautiful like H.L.—I will ultimately end up hurting people. Perhaps that’s not being fair to myself, but that is my genuine fear.
Although, honestly, I’m not sure that I really could be dogmatic about anything, even if I tried. I’m in a space in my life where I am too clueless to commit to believing in anything. I’m constantly all over the map with my beliefs. I’m so exhausted. I just want to be done already. But somehow I feel like I’m a bad person if I don’t know what’s true, because without some kind of grounding in reality I will end up unwittingly hurting people. So the rabbit chase for the truth continues, and continues to go nowhere. If I can’t find the truth, I will unwittingly hurt people, but if I do find the truth, I will now have proof, become dogmatic, and unwittingly hurt people. It’s the ultimate catch-22.
Something is clearly wrong. I’ve reasoned my way into madness!
To live in this world is to unwittingly hurt people. It is impossible to do otherwise. We literally had to hurt and kill each other and other species in order to evolve into the creatures we are today. And yet, somehow I wonder if I really am hurting people as much as I believe. The person I abuse the most in my life is myself. And I think I often do it by creating unsolvable situations in which I am always to blame for hurting others, no matter what steps I take to avoid it.
Perhaps the best way to solve my catch-22 would be to take care of my own needs and desires without worrying about whether doing so will injure others. My own needs and desires are not spiteful or injurious in nature—they are good and worth honoring. I will inevitably hurt people in my life, but that doesn’t mean it was intentional, and surely that alone counts for something. I am so terrified of causing harm to others that I am causing harm to myself!
So what do I need and desire?
I really want to tell my stories. But possibly one of the hardest things for me to deal with recently has been the realization that without H.L., most of the two dozen stories I have intended to write are meaningless. All of them assume on some level the reality of H.L. and his Love, even if each story calls him by different names.
And so I feel that not only my faith, but my greatest passion (storytelling) has been threatened by evolution in a weird sort of way. I’m going to spare you the details of how horrible and deflated I have felt in the last year.
Going forward, if I believe in H.L. at all, it is entirely on blind faith. If I believe in Love with a capital L, it is because some things are worth believing in for their own sake.
My hope is that this is for the best. As I mentioned earlier, I tend to feel intimidated by people who claim to have “proof” or think they have everything figured out, whether due to impeccable logic, divine revelation, or a spiritual experience. There is something about it that is not only off-putting, but sometimes downright abusive. When we’re around people like that who are so sure of themselves, suddenly our opinions and feelings don’t matter. Even when people communicate certainty in a humble way, it can still make us feel like we have to trust them over our own hearts. It has at least made me feel that way, many times.
I used to think that faith was the rejection of uncertainty. I thought that faith meant acting like you know stuff for sure when you really don’t. I don’t see it that way anymore. I think that’s more like what religion (bad religion) taught us. Instead, I see faith as the acceptance of uncertainty. I see faith as something that makes the best guess it can, and then humbly states that it doesn’t really know for sure. But then still continues to live in accordance with its own values.
For this reason, from a purely intellectual perspective, I am almost certainly an agnostic. I don’t think that ultimate truths about God or the afterlife are actually knowable. To me atheism feels a bit presumptuous, because I think it takes just as much faith to say there is no God as it does to say there is one. Especially now that I believe in evolution, I don’t think there’s a compelling reason to believe in God, but I think the question itself is essentially unprovable. There might be; there might not be. Honesty requires me to say I don’t know.
That being said, what I am realizing today is that even if I say, from an intellectual standpoint, that I don’t know if there is a God, I have to go live my life either as if there was one or there wasn’t. I am truly bankrupt when it comes to knowledge; I am at my most confused, most perplexed, and it may quite possibly be that for that reason alone I see more clearly than I ever have. “I don’t know” is such a beautiful and rare phrase to hear; it reflects raw honesty and humility to me. A person who has all the answers is unapproachable; a person who can say “I don’t know” is someone most people feel safe with, unless they themselves have all the answers and feel threatened by your display of humility. “I don’t know” is something I want to become comfortable with. But even if I believe that anything could be true, it is humanly impossible to live my life as if anything could be true. Let me explain why.
Suppose that I brought you into a room with a large box. Nobody knows what is in the box. The box is in fact locked from the inside. If I ask you what is in the box, how will you respond?
Some people will say Jesus is in the box. Others will say the box is empty. Still others will say there’s a terrifying monster that at any moment will jump out of the box and eat you up. It takes just as much faith to believe all of these things because the honest truth is that we don’t know.
But then how will you behave in the presence of the box? If the suggestion of a hungry monster caught your attention, perhaps you might tiptoe around the box quietly or run out of the room to create some distance. Intellectually, you still admit that you don’t actually know what’s in the box, but you live as if there were a monster in it, likely for your own safety just in case.
Many people will behave like there’s absolutely nothing in the box. They will sit on the box, eat lunch next to the box, with no fear. Intellectually, they still admit that they don’t actually know what’s in the box, but they live as if the box were empty, perhaps because everyone else is doing it, or because our brains naturally don’t assume monsters when we see unopened boxes. Which makes sense for most boxes, because in this world we seldom encounter anything remotely like that. But this is an otherworldly box we’re talking about—something that could literally be filled with anything. In the end, nobody is more or less right than anybody else. We all just choose to respond differently to the same uncertainty.
It is humanly impossible to live as if absolutely anything could be true. I could live with a sword in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other, so that I’m prepared for whatever jumps out of the box, whether friend or foe. But there are a million other possibilities besides friend or foe. There could be a giant burst of lava that comes out of the box, and neither my sword nor my ice cream will save me. I’m still living my life as if something were true, even if I actually believe anything could be true.
To be an agnostic is to be honest about not knowing the truth. But even agnostics go live like something is true. We often group agnostics into a similar category with atheists, and for good reason—most agnostics live as if there were nothing inside the box, just like atheists do. They live as if the box were irrelevant to their existence. The only difference is that atheists actually say the box is empty; agnostics don’t make any such claims. But both live more or less as if the box were empty.
But in my mind, it takes just as much faith to believe the box is empty as it does to believe the box contains anything else. Living as if the box were empty is an easy thing to do if everybody else is doing it. It’s fashionable. It’s popular. It protects people from disappointment. But it also might very well be wrong.
If believing in H.L. on blind faith enriches my life, makes it possible for me to get out of bed every morning, encourages those around me, and changes the way I treat people in the world for the better, and if H.L. (unlike the god of Christian fundamentalism) doesn’t contradict science, and if it takes just as much faith to believe in anything else (or nothing at all), then why is it that for the past three months I have tortured myself with the idea that I’m a terrible person for not sucking it up and accepting a dogma (atheism? Christianity?) other than the loving voice I found in my heart?
I believe that H.L., Love, God, and winder are a mystery. But how will I now live?
Even if only because I don’t know how to live without him—I’m going to go live like H.L. is true. And I’m going to at least try to write my stories. I haven’t been able to write at all this past year because I’ve been so paralyzed with the fear of being wrong, and being bad for being wrong. I’ve been so torn between the conflicting desires to live as honestly as possible, and in accordance with the Love I found in my heart. And it has only been this past December that I’ve started to realize that these two desires might not be in conflict after all. It is an act of faith. But it’s an act of faith we all make, one way or another. I’d rather put my faith in something because it is good, not because it is popular or convenient. If I am not conscious and deliberate about where I put my faith, my unconscious mind will invest my faith for me, and probably not in a place conducive to my true well-being or happiness. Our unconscious minds are often biased towards our own internal sense of shame, or sometimes towards belief in whatever is “most obvious,” which, as I have written about a while back, does not serve us well in areas that are outside the realm of our normal experience.
Some things are worth believing in for their own sake. And I think that Love is one of them, at least for me. I believe in evolution now, too, not because I have it totally figured out but because the evidence I have points that direction. And I think I can believe both of these things simultaneously, at least for now as I see it. And I can also be honest about uncertainty and embrace the fact that I truly know nothing for sure. I don’t entirely know how this new way of thinking will change me over time, but I hope it makes me a kinder, humbler, more gracious person who can sit side-by-side with atheists and Christians, religious people and secular people, and treat all of them with love and respect, who can hear their stories without casting judgment and who can walk away still believing in Love and still knowing nothing for sure, and still willing to be honest about the few small things I do know for sure. I hope my uncertainty makes the stories I write more powerful and more relatable, not less so. Time will tell.
So in a strange turn of events, here I am—both an agnostic, AND a person of faith. Because agnosticism is about embracing uncertainty. And so is faith.
It’s a new year. Here’s to a 2022 about embracing Love and uncertainty at the same time…
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