As a spiritual but non-religious person, I’d like to add my own two cents. (Two pence?) I think you’re looking at “God” in the old Western traditional dualistic way — God as an “other,” a separate being, as something outside of ourselves. But many people believe that God is something that’s part of us (and we are part of God) — not a separate being, not a paternal male authority figure, but something that runs through and connects all of us. So believing in this kind of God (or however you want to call it) IS believing in yourself, it IS having faith in yourself. God is not separate from any of us.

I also want to say that, although I grew up with some Western religion in my home, I lost my faith in God at a young age due to a death in the family, and I have suffered from that loss of faith ever since. I wish I HAD faith. As the daughter of a scientist, I perpetually question everything, especially myself. It has been impossible for me to join into any kind of spiritual community because I simply cannot buy into their belief system or spiritual rhetoric. This has, in many ways, kept me isolated, separate, and very lonely. I spend so much time questioning that in some ways it keeps me running in circles and unable to move on from bad things that happen. I wish I COULD give it over to God, rest in faith and hope, and move on. (Dealing with trauma, of course, is a whole different subject.)

I agree that religion and religious mythology has been used as a way of explaining what happens to us and either assigning control to a separate, all-powerful being or exclusively to ourselves, as in much of the current “new age” spiritual thinking. Before, we didn’t want to see ourselves as responsible, so we gave it over to God. Now, we want to see ourselves as solely responsible and all-powerful, so we say that there is no separate God, and we ourselves have the power to create our own reality. It’s all about power and how we want to relate to it. And that evolves over time.

I can see both sides. They both have value, and they both have problems. I’d like to be able to pick a side and stay on it, but with my questioning mind, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Well, you certainly haven’t offended me, and I applaud you for writing this. It takes courage to go against the grain like this.

I was raised Roman Catholic, and so, when I was young, I “believed” what I was taught.

Then, as I grew older, I started to see what seemed like discontinuities with the ideas I had been taught.

It just did not make sense to me, when someone would die suddenly or tragically, and the faithful would say, “God has a plan” or “it was meant to be”.

No.

Death sucks.

I have lost a child, and it was seriously difficult to hear someone say, “it was meant to be, God has a plan”.

I heard a lot of people say that.

No.

If that was God’s plan, then I don’t want any part of it.

No one will ever convince me that there was any sense to it, or that any “all-powerful and good being” would take children away like that, let people starve to death, allow genocide or whatever.

If I’m being tested, then you know what? To hell with it – I accept defeat, I don’t want to pass that test, ever. Let me fail, then leave me alone.

So you can probably see how much of that I “believe” these days.

I believe in good people, in the goodness of humanity. I believe that life just is. There is no fairness, it just is. Bad things happen randomly to good people, with some luck, it won’t happen to you.

But… by being positive, we seem to be able to create our own luck to some extent.

And to do that, we need to believe in ourselves.

I believe that we can do anything, if we put our minds to it.

@Brett: I’ve read about and commented on your loss over at your blog before, and, well, there are just no words buddy. I hear what you’re saying about “good”. I kinda believe that the guy who wrote the Bible was dyslexic, and missed out one of the o’s in “Good”, spelling it “God”. There is good in the world, and it’s by believing in ourselves and our own capacity for good that real miracles happen.

Steve,

I really like that – what a great thought (dyslexia -> Good = God).

That’s why I believe that, eventually, humanity will grow out of a lot of the bad things that some of us do.

If you can believe in youself, you can make anything happen. Believing in yourself is the first step toward making your dreams come true.

@Kristi: I see the distinction between an external God and an all-encompassing God or essence that is integral to everyone, but even in this belief system I get the sense that there’s an abstraction that happens somewhere. I’m spiritual in some ways, but I call that “me” and not “God”.

Sounds like you’ve had your fair share of tough times, and I wonder if it’s faith in God that you’ve lost or faith in yourself. Yes, I keep coming back to the separateness of it. You don’t have to buy into someone else’s community if it doesn’t make sense or fit with your values, but in no way does that diminish your values or what you hold dear. Far from it.

The power equation’s an interesting one, and is something I’ll need to mull on as it’s a new spin on this for me. There’s something there, because for me, believing in God has ramifications of giving away your power to an abstraction, an external something. Believing in me, in the core of me and all that that means, is the very definition of power. To me, at least.

Thanks for such a thoughtful comment.

Hi Steve – I lost faith for a long time. And like Kristi – I believe that we are part of God and he is part of us – I think. I’ve bought an easier to understand Bible and I’m still trying to make sense of the whole thing.

I do think God wants us to believe in ourselves and he wants us to learn – sometimes painfully. I guess if everything was mapped out for us, life would be boring.

I’m not keen on organized religion though. I can understand the comfort being part of a particular church must bring. But I like to try to work things out for myself.
.-= Check out Cath Lawson´s last blog…Be Smart Like An Animal =-.

@Cath: The comfort, sense of belonging and sense of being part of something that matters are compelling reasons indeed, but like you, I prefer working things out for myself and bringing those same qualities that church brings into my life in other ways. Thanks m’dear.

Yes I also think that if you have faith in yourself then you are trusting on god too.It is your instincts what leads you and make your dreams come true.

Nice post, as usual. My take is, you can believe in yourself and still believe in Gods. The Gods have been evolving throughout the ages. They are products of the collective imagination of a people. Just like the concept of nation, for instance. The example I can think of – Australia and New Zealand are asmuch alike for what you care to know, still they would like to think themselves as different from each other as North and South poles. So it’s a fact that these nation entities exist and you respect the belief. And in much the same way you respect the beliefs while still not letting them undermine your confidence or self belief.

@hari: Interesting point of view, I guess if you’re part of a nation that supports and empowers then you could go a lot further and perhaps be more self-actualised than if you’re in a nation that neither supports or empowers. Is there a difference in that you don’t place your faith in a nation to provide strength or guidance? Thanks so much for your input.

My friends I pray for you at this moment.  It is the arrogance of man’s belief in himself that has brought so much tragedy to this world and to himself.  It is not religion but a relationship with Jesus Christ that changed my life.  I too wanted to believe that I knew best and could figuire out things out myself.  Only when I was open to the Bible was a void filled in my life. I tried to fill this void with so many things in life but to no avail.  I finally told Jesus I couldn’t take all of the pain life had to offer. That if He was who He said was I needed Him.  Only then was my heart convicted like I had never felt before.  Jesus has feeled my heart with so much love that I thought not possible because of the pain of the world.  If you give Him a chance as you give yourself then He will make all the differenc. Read the Bible and see for yourself. I’m praying for you all.

@Justin: All I can say is that what works for one man doesn’t necessarily work for another. Each to their own Justin, but thanks for the prayer.

These are great posts and very much in my own area of interest, so thanks everyone.

OK, I have come to a similar conclusion that relying on a positive belief in ‘someone’ or ‘something’ else (I would ask you to note the word ‘positive’ as being crucial here), fills a terrifying alternative void for the human state – fear, loneliness, insecurity and purposelessness.

Letting go or challenging a deeply held belief can be traumatic, as we need something else of equal or ideally superior quality to replace it with. Letting go of God, little green men from Mars or whatever you believe, challenges our individual sense of ourselves and existence in the world.

Having no beliefs undermines the logic of our perceived reality and mental operational instructions. We turn our mental ‘always on’ processing, in on ourselves because there is no context, reference or parameters to live by. Hence, beliefs are fundamental in my view to switching on our ‘internal engines’ and living to our individual potential.

The quality of your beliefs seems directly proportional to whether you live a life of ‘existence’ or ‘flourish’. As in nature, some survive, some die off and some thrive. It seems to be a well organised self selecting proposition to encourage survival of the fittest.

Negative led beliefs create tightly defined states of existence and anxiety, whereas genuinely concluded positive beliefs create breadth of opportunity and perspective. In their purest form, genuinely held positive beliefs seem to release our inate human potential and limitless boundaries and opportunities. Our opportunity to survive and prosper.

Beliefs are our selves trying to make sense of our environment and experiences. However, our minds are not foolproof. They make the best choices they can at the time in interpretation of the information they are receiving and in subsequently coding and categorising the information in our memories. The issue is, we act as our own quality assurance department in relation to the conclusions and interpretations we reach. This is a fundamental issue! Hence, the potential for us to create distorted or unhelpful (there is no reality just perception) conclusions to extract and generalise into conclusions, rules and ultimately beliefs, is immense!

My advice is to challenge your views and beliefs for context and try to de-personalise and objectify them in a neutral way before making meaning of them. Most of us are creating ego centric meanings of our experiences in life (as is natural) but failing to challenge or ‘quality assure’ them for helpfulness, context or objectiveness.

My view is we absolutely need beliefs to exist. Without them we neurologically explode – ie. we just become paralysed without beliefs to guide and motivate us. Hence, choose your beliefs wisely. Choose those that you genuinely, robustly and objectively have evaluated as being right for you BUT always ensure they are helpful to you and the world in which we live in. It is not about whether they are ‘true’ as we can only perceive our realities, it is however more important for them to be ‘helpful and true to you’

The challenge to this level of thinking is, if your belief in the above makes sense, then it raises the following question: ‘If we choose our beliefs and interpretation of the world or reality (as I personally believe we can and do), then with such choice, what is the ‘purpose’ of our lives?’ Please note, there is a belief in this last statement that there has to be a purpose! Perhaps there does not? However, if we can self actualise and guide ourselves, then do we need a ‘destination’ for our lives that represents a ‘purpose’ for our lives, or, does this logic re-present the same ‘terrifying’ thought proposed earlier in this post, that there is no purpose to our lives?

It raises the question of how confident we are to genuinely believe in ‘nothing’ versus ‘something’ or ‘someone?’ I would love to hear others thoughts on this if my post makes sense?!!