Plucked from my mother’s womb, I was thrust into a world of religious ceremony and true belief. From an early age, I witnessed the solemnity of Sunday services, rosary beads on bedroom dressers, and wooden crosses on barren walls. I believed in God because the Bible said he had created the heavens and the earth. I believed in God because my parents told me he was watching down on me from the heavens. I believed in God because I didn’t want to get a movie-of-the week disease and die at the age of seven. I believed in God’s higher power because men who stood behind wooden pulpits told me in stern voices that indifference would be followed by an eternity in a fiery hell.
My God lived in the fluffy cumulus clouds that filled the atmosphere on humid July days. My God had a Disneyland in the sky for deceased children and a floating park filled with flowers and hungry ducks for the elderly. My God had the resonant voice of James Earl Jones and the handsome, bearded face of Charlton Heston. My God hated the Viet Cong because they were blood-thirsty Communists and loved America because it was a Christian democracy. My God cured me when I was sick and made me suffer when I misbehaved. My God granted me small miracles from time to time (like not letting my parents divorce when I was eleven) and punished me with sleepless nights of remorseful fear for the salvation of my mortal soul.
When I entered my teens, my belief in God forced me to lie about who I was and what was ruminating in my adolescent mind. This was the Catholic phase of my life and I believed that priests were walking, talking, human versions of the Holy Creator. My limited understanding of the Bible led me to believe that nearly everything short of breathing and prayer was a sin. God had more rules and bylaws than the Boy Scouts and the United States Senate, combined. Sitting in the darkened confessional box, palms sweating, as I tried so very hard to remember the exact script, I felt lost because I just couldn’t bring myself to tell the priest all of my true sins. Instead of feeling relieved after reciting my contrition, my young mind was often filled with agony over the eternal ramifications of not being honest with God’s chosen proxy.
After high school and into my college years, organized religion and God ceased to be a reflective part of my every day life. I stopped going to church, primarily because I realized that I had quit listening to the priests and ministers years ago, and also because my Sundays had devolved into a day for sleeping in, watching football, and thinking about how much I hated Mondays. But despite my slippery decline from daily devotions and sometime’s worship, I had still not shaken my fear of eternal damnation. It was too hard, too ingrained in my DNA. I had been packaged out of the womb as a God-loving, jaundiced newborn, because this was America. Believing in God was like taking your medicine. You either faithfully took the pill three times a day or your body withered and died. Because of my indoctrination, I still prayed every night without fail, rationalizing that a quick rendition of Our Father and the 23rd Psalm would somehow save me when and if I reached the pearly gates of heaven.
God was out there, wasn’t he?
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