Signed, A Former Roman Catholic

I’ve always had a strange relationship with God, but I think that’s what happens when you send your kid to bible study once a week (coupled with church on Sundays, of course). My disbelief in God started as something of a rebellion against my mother. At thirteen, I decided that every choice that my mom made was the wrong one. I despised her clothes and her music, and I no longer believed in her God. Maybe it’s one of those things where, if you repeat a phrase so many times, you start to believe it-- or rather, not. To put it simply, my pragmatic atheism was a direct result of the woman who introduced me to religion. As they say, the surest way to divert your child from God is to make them actively practice their faith.

I can’t say that my mom was the reason I left the church, though. I liked the stained glass and pretty, white dresses. I liked the Psalms. I liked the way communion tasted-- like cardboard, but good. Like Chuck E. Cheese pizza. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I liked the comfort of a community. It wasn’t the people inside the church that made me leave, either, but the way they acted out of it. I was twelve when, at my brother’s basketball game, one of the boy’s mothers told me that she’d never let her daughter dress like me. What a silly girl I was, to wear floral leggings. At sixteen, the swim team sat around a bonfire at a grad party I had attended, talking about how much of a whore I was. I had offended the sensibilities of a predominant member-- a Catholic who turned her nose up to queer people. I was so sure I was in the right. I mean, when has anyone defending a marginalized group ever really been wrong? But they sat there, giggling, going through my Instagram and talking about my ass. And just how very Godly of them was that number?

Identity and mean girls aside, here’s my quarrel with God. I can best explain it through the lens of a Stephen Fry video: if a singular, all-powerful God exists, what a vengeful creature they are. As a former Roman Catholic, we’re taught that injustice is the devil’s will. I can get on board with that, my feelings about religion being weaponized for the purpose of injustice aside. What I’ve never understood are the tests. To use Mr. Fry’s example, children die of bone cancer. And for what? As a Catholic, we learned that these were trials of our faith, something to test our devotion to God, our strength. My question: how sick do you have to be to give children cancer as a means of teaching their parents a lesson? And the rebuttal is always something along the lines of, “do you expect us to live in a perfect, happy world?” Quite frankly, yes. This is under the assumption that God exists, but yes. The God I was raised on, the God I’ve strayed from, was supposed to love and care for everybody. You can call disease a means of punishing sinners-- which is an awful sentiment within itself-- but what do you call innocent children on their deathbeds? A test of their parents’ faith? If nothing else, that is a direct abuse of power-- Godly or not. I am disgusted with a being that would kill off children to strengthen the devotion of those who worship them. If there is some all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God, I expect better.

In the words of Stephen Fry, “how dare you create such misery that is not our fault?” As if God can’t answer everyone’s prayers because the lines are too busy. As if an all-powerful being can create a universe, but not manage or soothe its pain. I’m not denying the existence of a God. I cannot prove there isn’t one as much as anyone cannot prove there is (though I don’t think the burden of proof lies on me). I can, however, deny the existence of a singular, moral God. Nothing so perfect and saintly could kill children as a test of faith, could say “worship me” or suffer eternally, could allow injustice to prevail because an evil, secondary creature said so. If there is a God, they’re so revoltingly human, and so completely amoral. Live by my rules, or burn in a Hell I created. Is that kind of afterlife I’d want to get into?

My frustration with the Catholic God is that I believed them to be fair. Basic reasoning coupled with my religious teachings proves otherwise. This cannot be the God that sends a son to heal the sick and aid the poor, the God who commanded we love thy neighbor-- and yet it is. So here I am, angry. Angry at this is the hypothetical being who people discriminate and kill in the name of. And lost, a little, because I would like to think that an afterlife wouldn’t have the disparities of this one. If there is an afterlife that’s so blatantly unfair, I want no part of it.