My Whole God Story

After reading this post, please see “A Mountainous Journey.” It is an essay about where I currently stand on all of this!

My Whole God Story – with thoughts, current beliefs, etc – by me, David Wingerson. Sorry if some of this seems cynical or mean, but these are my honest thoughts about everything. This is going to be a long post…if you care, read it (be sure to click “read more”), if you don’t care, don’t bother.

Born

I was born into the Episcopal church – Grace Episcopal Cathedral to be exact – and baptized within my first year of life. I don’t think this mattered at all. As you will see later in my story, in no way has this influence my feelings about God and church.

All through my early years, like ages 3 to 11 I attended Sunday school each Sunday, and of course went to all the Sunday church services as well. We learned things like main bible stories, the books of the bible, and the overall God concept in a dumbed down way. Today I look back and see only a couple of things from all this schooling that has stuck with me: morals and people. From the bible stories I learned things that were right and wrong and from being in class I generally learned about humans and relationships.

I started singing in the choir at about age 7 and loved it. However, I never looked at is as singing for God or to God, even if all the text of music explicitly said “Praise His holy name” or something…I just really enjoyed singing. Singing has recently become one of my favorite things, and I think my “choir-boy” roots have really helped me.

More Recent Happenings

At around age 12 I graduated into the youth program, instead of Sunday school. This is the middle/high school class every Sunday morning that definitely encourages you to take a more individually active approach to your own beliefs and faith. Coming into this class I thought I believed in a lot of things. We would talk about all sorts of things, school-life, church commitments, movies that could relate to God, etc. I would always argue on the “God-side” and be the “Jesus-advocate” but I guess thats what everyone did in Sunday school, so I don’t think I was really making my own decisions yet. I specifically remember learning about how some people think Christians are weird, but how if you rearrange the letters in “weird” you get “wired”…as in wired for Jesus. I think this was one of the first times I felt embarrassed and thinking to myself “Does everyone else here actually feel ‘WIRED FOR JESUS?’. Does this mean I have to live for and only for some guy that lived 2000 years ago? Do I want to do that or am I selfish or something?” There began to be more of these moments in class where I would start to question things I had heard, while on the outside I was talking less and less on the Jesus-side and just listening. I’m left wondering if my youth ministers ever noticed this movement to subtlety and recognized it as insecurity and questioning…or maybe they just thought I was becoming a quiet teenager. I could tell many stories about this class…times when I have agreed or disagreed, things I began to believe or not believe, but long story short I was definitely starting to realize myself and my beliefs or rather my disbeliefs.

At about the same time I started youth group I started doing acolyte duties. Now let me tell you, acolytes at my church, Grace Cathedral, don’t consist of one or two acolytes per service just doing one or two lousy jobs. It’s more like we have 30 mostly teenage acolytes, about 10 per Sunday, with 10-20 jobs to cover per service. What really sets the acolytes apart from my other experiences at church is that my dad is the person who trains and leads the acolytes…so my dad might get a little flustered at this part of my narration. Anyway – about acolytes – I really enjoy doing acolyte stuff. I enjoy being part of a team (and more recently leading a team) and managing different jobs and taking care of things in a solemn and reverent way, even if I’m not sure about who the solemnity and reverence is being payed to. Interestingly right before each service the acolytes say a little prayer…and I found myself becoming the best person about figuring out how to NOT have to say the prayer, because I don’t really like public prayer that much (which totally goes against a very large part of religion) or even prayer itself. Currently I see acolyte duties as a Sunday morning obligation to my dad, people around me at church, and as a last connection to the possibility of church and faith.

Some time around age 13 I was convinced by a friend at school to come visit her evangelical nondenominational “super church” as I now call them. I remember going to her youth group on a Sunday night. Right before the youth service started, all the youth (like 50) got together and went into a room aside from the big worship area. The youth pastor started a prayer, and asked others to add their own prayers as he went along. Of course I just stood there quietly and bowed my head. In a short minute or two, all the sudden, the youth pastor stopped speaking English, and began speaking in tongues (more like jibberish to me). Youth all around started doing the same thing, and pretty soon the room was completely filled of jibberish mumblings and me stealing glances at my friend who was doing the same thing. You would think with all this spirit in the air, I would feel a tingle down my back or something that would be like “Hey Jesus is here”…but nope, nothing. I just stood there. Later along, at the time of Pentecost I thought back to this incident of tongue-speaking. Pentecost is the day in the church during Easter when the Holy Spirit comes down upon Jesus’s disciples and allows them to speak all tongues of the Earth, so that each person in the crowd could hear in their own language. Each person in the crowd could hear in their own language. So why did I hear jibberish in that room at my friends church? I should have been hearing clear English coming from everyones lips. This realization really turned me off to the whole evangelical nondenominational “super church” thing…and was another step towards banishing my honesty in the words “I believe in God the Father.”

The Episcopal church is very community oriented. My church is in the Diocese of Kansas, which is like 50 Episcopal churches in eastern Kansas. There are diocese wide youth events that happen throughout the year. These include summer camp, Missionpalooza (a big youth mission event), Miqra (a sort of bible weekend), New Beginnings (middle school age only event), Fall Fun Fest, and Happening (about God’s love). I’ve done the majority of these events over the past 4 or 5 years, and they are some of the most fun times I’ve ever had. They’re an excellent chance to meet a lot of new friends. Sometimes these events have taught me more about God, but I’ve never felt a connection. Some of these events I’ve sat and had fun with my “fellow” Christian friends and then turned around and not believed the scripture of the day or felt any particular healing at a prayer service. Just like youth group classes, I could go into deeeeeep detail, but I will spare you the pages upon pages it would take, when I could just say: I have fun at these events, but I don’t care about any more about God in response to them.

Interestingly not long after I began writing this post this morning I got a call from a friend and aspiring youth minister, checking to see if I might want to become a peer minister. Peer ministers are youth who lead other youth to God and say lots of prayers and stuff. A peer minister is one of the last things I want to pursue considering all my thoughts against God, Jesus and the church. Anyway, I got this call from my friend – “Hey, I’m calling to see if you might want to be a youth minister” and I was kind of caught off guard. In a lame way I said something like “Ehh….uhhh…I don’t think I want to do that.” I told her she had hit my vulnerable spot. This is one thing I worry about cutting away my ties to belief. How do I tell all the friends I’ve made at youth events, “Hey I don’t believe in God anymore, but I still want to be friends”?

Personal Efforts

So far everything I’ve written about in this little history has been group and community related. You may ask if I have had any personal initiative with God…and you may or may not be surprised to hear the answer: yes. There have been brief bouts of effort over the past 3 or so years, where I have tried regular bible reading and study, prayers, etc. Every time I’ve tried these things I feel no closer connection to God. Bible reading to me is just a lot of good parables and lessons to be learned, and I don’t see it as God inspiring people to write. I’m not sure how the Bible fully came to be, I know there are a lot of uncertainties related to it. If God wants us to learn his word, why is it made so difficult through translation and language barriers?

Regular prayers for me have been a joke. Not once, in all my many tries have I felt comfort from some deity dwelling above. Never.

Another personal initiative by me was at Happening (one of those youth events). We were given a chance to talk one on one with a priest who had introduced himself and talked some earlier. He had said he grew up in church and liked it from age 0 to 25…but he never believed any of it. I said to myself “Aha, if anyone can help me figure out what I believe its this guy.” So I took the opportunity to talk to him some. I told him my situation and how similar it was to his. He basically told me “Keep looking and trying and I’m sure you’ll find something more.” I can’t comprehend how some loving understanding God would make me sit around trying for 17 years of my life, and never somehow relate “Hey David, here I am.” It’s the most discouraging feeling to think that I’ve attended 1000 church services in my life, and today don’t find God or church anymore inviting and believable than an atheist.

Conclusions

I am currently quite sure, through my own experience, that the existence of God is improbable. I’ve never once felt any hint of true indications that there is some God figure somewhere that knows and loves me. Just that idea alone I can’t stand…that there is something somewhere in this universe or maybe “outside of our discernment of existence” that knows all my thoughts and feelings. I am human, and I am me. My thoughts are mine and stay with me unless I relate them to someone else. I see NO possibility that there is somehow a way that something can penetrate and know my own electrical brain impulses. It’s absurd.

I don’t see myself withdrawing from church activities anytime soon. I really like singing in the choir and being an acolyte…though I run into a problem there. Acolytes and choir members are worship leaders. How am I supposed to stand up there and be hypocritical in my leading of worshiping something I don’t even believe in?

I enjoy the people around me at church, regardless of what they believe (I actually don’t care what anyone anywhere around believes). At church I have a few good friends and plenty of other people I wish I was better friends with. I don’t want anyone to care or be affected by my changing of blind belief to absolute disbelief. My church is a wonderful place of community and I love that. What kind of community do atheists have?

I’ve taken up the “belief in proof” stance, and I don’t see any proof. Why deal with unknowns when I can glance over and see things proven by people and science every day? I don’t know how this world came into existence, but I believe in evolution rather than creationism (since that has stemmed out of one chapter of one book that we don’t even know the origins of). I don’t know why I exist, except that I simply exist. Obviously I am here living, and have received the opportunity to be a part of the enormous spectrum of history and existence. I don’t know what will happen when I die, but I wouldn’t mind my brain impulses just stopping and everything ending…I would of had a heck of a good life on planet Earth. I don’t know or care if there is an afterlife, but I know all we can do when someone dies is remember and honor them. I’m not going to go honoring a God that doesn’t exist and thanking Him for a person’s life, when I should be spreading the good memories of that person. I don’t want to be buried in a columbarium (place for peoples ashes) at my church (even though my parents bought my brother and I our niche spots when we were very young). I want my ashes scattered in the wind on the prairies of Kansas. All I want from the end of life is a little bit of remembrance.

I think through all these words I’ve made it pretty clear that I find it damn near impossible to believe in a God. You can try to convince me with evidence…but I’ll tell you right off: I don’t believe the Bible is word from any God any where. You can try to convince me otherwise with stories of yourself being saved or whatever but that won’t work. I’ve already read plenty of stories, coming away from them feeling great about God, but soon realizing the hollow promise the stories have offered: connection, understanding, guidance, love, comfort and refuge from God…things I’ve never experienced.

Please see “A Mountainous Journey” for where I currently stand on these issues!