In the name of whose father?

The simplest questions are the hardest to answer. There is one that pops up now and then: where does my faith lie? It is more complex than which god(s) I pray to or which service I attend. Does my faith even lie in a god?

Let me backtrack to 1990, when my mom decided to place my brother and I in a Catholic school rather than a public one. At the time, the board was not financially desperate enough to admit non-Catholics into their schools. This meant my brother and I had to be baptized [which we were right after my parents were remarried in front of God for the first time]. Being brought up by a non-Catholic mother and a non-practising-Catholic father did not exactly foster my spirituality. Looking back, I would only consider myself Catholic by certificate. Sure we had religion classes and I completed the sacraments introduced to us in elementary school. But then again, who didn’t [i.e. I can't remember anyone refusing First Communion]?

Religion as a whole is a great thing. It teaches its believers morality and instills in them good wholesome values. Whether God, heaven, hell, and reincarnation exist or not does not concern me very much. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, all I try to do is to live out my life motto: Live for happiness. Live in love. Live with integrity. I plan to live as well as I can and whatever happens to me in the afterlife [something that I can’t control anyway] will take care of itself.

[Now that I’ve taken a short detour...let’s go back to reality, oops there goes gravity...]

So where then lies my faith? It may sound like a very simple, perhaps even unsatisfactory, answer [to a very simple question nonetheless] but my faith lies in the belief that if you lead a good life, you will be duly rewarded. [Here comes the circular logic] The reward is the good life that you will lead. By a good life, I mean one where you take the high road, make moral decisions, be a good citizen, help those in need, etc. Religion is a great tool to help you achieve that life. To this day, I still enjoy learning about the many parables scattered within the Bible. But my faith goes beyond religion. I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around the idea that our short time on earth destines us a place in either heaven or hell for eternity. And I say again: there’s no point in worrying about something out of my control. If that exists, I’m sure I will be taken care of one way or another if I lead a good life on earth. It’ll just be the cherry on top of an already delicious sundae [I hope I am not overly optimistic in hoping that I will either be cured of my lactose intolerance or that there exists lactose free sundaes in heaven].

Even though I didn’t sit down and give the question serious thought until today, I haven’t felt empty or lost in this sphere of my life [as I thought I would] because of two reasons. First, it isn’t a separate part of my life [it's right smack in the middle of my 3D Venn Diagram of spheres]. Second, even though where my faith lies was not articulated until now [done poorly and without a smudge of earth-shaterring insight if I may say so myself], it is the underlying principal by which I already try to live.