Re: thinking about faith

[Guest guest]

my mom has pissed me off recently regarding religion. she and my dad

raised us three girls in a completely agnostic environment, but my dad

has always been searching for meaning and faith. he was raised

catholic and has always been interested in the origins of christian

beliefs. so...my dad and i totally bonded over investigating religion

and belief systems and that kind of stuff. i was a religious studies

minor in college and it was a lot of fun finding new sources and

information that made little pieces fall into place to form new

understandings.

now, i'm an atheist, but a reverent atheist. i think i really do

understand faith and would never ever ever try to undermine someone's

faith in a religion or deity. i think this is because i am so

strikingly aware of my inability to believe in anything. it sucks.

IT SUCKS!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

but anyway, even though mom was raised agnostic and has ridiculed her

mom's involvement in religion for ages, she's been interjecting

strange pseudo-religious-sounding retorts in conversation. if i say

something she doesn't like to hear, she'll say, " you should count your

blessings! " or she'll ask me why i don't have any faith in anything

(um...mom...i think i'm talking to the reason right now...). the

thing is, though, that if i start talking about religion around her,

she'll act like she's got the heebeejeebees, like i'm suddenly a

right-wing christian fanatic. i don't freaking get it.

mom says she's a buddhist, but i can't even talk to her about it

anymore. she is definitely not an example of someone trying to

extinguish all desire. plus, i've got real issues with the origins of

the ideas of buddhism in the first place. it seems like a whole

system built upon blaming the victim. " oh, so you're a pariah? well,

it's because of something you did in another life (which you have no

control over now) so don't even think about social mobility. " " oh,

something bad happened to you? well, that's karma. " wtf? does not

make sense to me.

yes, there are good things about buddhism, but in the hands of a bpd

who is already willing to define me as the " bad kid, " it just sucks.

bink

>

> Seeing the inconsistency between what your parents profess and how they

> act can be a real faith tester. I always credited my parents with

> raising me to have the faith I do, but now the more I figure things out

> about them the more I feel a separation from them in the faith

> department, too. I think the bottom line is that my faith is

between me

> and God and not me and my parents. But, it does fascinate me to see

how

> the BP mind has such a disconnect between belief and practice. The

> religious lingo almost masks the illness in some ways. The whole

> concept of faith in a mentally ill person is very difficult to get my

> brain around. You can't really judge what is in someone's heart, so

> what is real and what isn't real to them is difficult to know. In my

> BPmom's case, her theology seems sound, yet the BP behaviors are very

> inconsistent with her beliefs. In fact, the extreme inconsistency

was a

> key factor in spurring me to get online and google what was going on

> with her. Yet another level of issues that a KO has to work out

somehow.

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