I used to teach scripture; nothing too fancy, I wasn’t a theologian or a scholar (just like I’m not a writer.) One of my favorite methods of teaching was to take a verse and break it down to its bare essence so it could be thoroughly understood. I’m borrowing from that method here although I’m turning the verse’s meaning on its head.
1st Corinthians 13:11-12 says “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
As a child, I said what my mother said. I had no other frame of reference, so I remembered and repeated. Her words were sacrosanct. She said there were men (primarily men) who proved the existence of God because they spoke to and for Him. These men led people by example and were to be highly regarded as men of God. I believed her, of course, I did.
She told me there was a book authored or inspired by God that proved his existence because it said so. This book was perfect in every way and served as a blueprint for how people should live their lives; it was true because she said it was and I believed her.
She explained that there was proof of God’s existence in the way he made you feel; How he inhabits your heart. If you could feel Him, you would never doubt Him. That was proof enough.
She told me so many other things about Him. He was a being of the purest love who knew absolutely everything, especially everything about you. He could do anything you could imagine, and He listened to you. Sometimes He did the things you asked of Him if it followed a plan He had devised. And He was mysterious.
And so, she said, there was ample proof that God was real and only we were privy to this knowledge. Everyone else thought they were but they were all wrong.
I thought everything she said was true because she was my mother and no one else could know the truth that she knew as well as she knew it. There were others who believed all of the same things, but she was the one I listened to because I was a child, and she was my mother.
And then I grew up.
To protect me from misinformation and lies, my mother taught me to think and question for myself. She taught me to observe and learn from what I saw. Sometimes my questions led me in different directions, but she was confident that the answers would lead me back to the truth as she knew it and as she had explained it to me. She was right, but not in the way she expected, I’m sorry, Mom.
Men, especially men who claimed to speak for God, were as flawed and deceitful as any men (or women). They were subject to all the failings that plagued all humankind. so, they could not be trusted as proof of God’s existence.
The Bible was not inerrant. There were discrepancies and errors such that no two men could reach the same conclusions. It belied the authorship of a supreme being. If it could not be trusted to lay out the ultimate truth, it could not be counted on as proof of God’s existence.
I saw for myself that feelings could not be trusted. They were easily influenced and manipulated. They changed from moment to moment and although each heartfelt feeling was powerful enough to claim the truth, they were rarely true.
If none of these claims could be considered evidence, then all of them could be rejected. While I could not with 100% certainty refute the existence of a god, I could absolutely dismiss claims made by men (or women) about God.
I realized that my mother was wrong. She was human and a slave to her beliefs, but beliefs are not truth. I decided to live my life as if there was no God. It only took me about forty-seven years to come to that conclusion.
I once looked in a mirror and saw myself clouded by superstition and speculation. Anything and everything that the wind blew my way could be true. But then the mirror cleared, and I saw things for what they really were. I saw that horrible things befell good people and bad people could be rewarded for wickedness. There was no rhyme or reason, no plan. There were only the pendulum’s swing, the ouroboros of everyday life. Moreso when you’re bipolar, I saw this reflected in my own face and in the faces of everyone around me, good or bad.
As a child at my mother’s knee, I saw only what she saw. It was a limited view of the world. Such was her knowledge of it, and she could only impart what she knew. But there was a bigger picture, one that I couldn’t see fully, but I see more of it now than I did then. In getting to know myself with all my flaws and foibles, I also saw ways to help others with my own experience, with a new sense of purpose and new meaning in my life.
That’s 1st Corinthians 13:11 and 12 for me right now although I have taken liberties and twisted its meaning. Thanks, in part, to my sacrilegious interpretation of the verse and the heretical thoughts they engender, I no longer walk in fear of Hell or anticipation of Heaven. I don’t fear God’s wrath or beg for His mercy. I live day to day and face what life brings me to the best of my ability. I follow no superstitions or doctrine except what I impose on myself in an effort to be a good man; a man of morals and ethics. A free man.