Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your loves sake. Amen.
-Book of Common Prayer
I haven’t been religious in a long while. I grew up as a United Methodist, and for the first thirteen years of my life, I really thought that someone was watching (over) me - waiting for me to sin. I said prayers before bed, and asked for a LOT of forgiveness, and truth be told, I slept much more easily as one of those lambs. In my early teen angst, I went through that thing that Christians sometimes go through: where they learn things, experience some life, experience some disappointments in their place of worship and realize that “wait, maybe my faith doesn’t make that much sense to me anymore.” I turned my back on church, and moved forward through life as a new agnostic.
It’s been hard for me to admit to myself, but I think I’ve moved from agnostic right on through to atheist in nary a heartbeat. But I no longer think that faith, specifically Christian faith, is a hypocrite’s cloak and dagger. I know that there are quite a few Christians out there who wield their faith blindly and rather blithely, not really PRAISING so much as JUDGING. But they reveal themselves early and often - those people who have selected some of the less pertinent passages of the Good Book to focus on, you know, in the Grand Scheme of things. They give true Christians a bad name.
On the flip side of the coin - the side that my point is addressing - is that faith can do powerful things, for good. Faith can heal a heart too broken by loss and suffering to see any logical way out of pain. Faith can bring communities together, friends and family together, for a common good. I don’t believe in the biblical God anymore, but I believe in his existence as part of the soul - the part that finds comfort in a simple prayer.
