Faith—Shaken and Stirred
by Angela Bilog
After a semester filled with meeting people of various religions besides Catholicism for the first time as well as listening to an outspoken and enthusiastic Atheist professor for four months, I came to a point in my life where my faith was in intense question.
This was most obvious to me during a dinner for my friend Jeff’s birthday. Preoccupied with my shrimp tempura which I had been craving for months, I wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation around me until Gibson, my Atheist friend, said to me across the table, “Angela, do you still go to church?” I replied, “Yeah, but I don’t really pay attention anymore. I feel pretty hypocritical. I mean, how do you know there really is a God?”
My friend Edwin actually gasped and everyone else around me was quite shocked. How could Angela, the devout Catholic, the Campus Minister, retreat leader and Eucharistic Minister in high school, say such a thing? And for the past few months, I asked the very same question to myself over and over again every night.
Though shocked, my friends received my reply very acceptingly. My friend Alice joined me in the questioning. “If there is a God, why is there suffering? Why are some born poor and some born rich? Does prayer really work?”
I was ashamed that I couldn’t answer those questions. But when I called my friends back in high school, they couldn’t answer them either. The closest conclusion I got was in response to the debate on the existence of God. “There isn’t proof whether God exists or not. There’s no proof either way,” Gibson said. “So it all comes down to faith,” I thought.
After that night I began to reflect. Before college I had always perceived God as a being who encompassed all that was good. He was the only person who I didn’t have to impress or be intimidated by. He was the center of all my actions and hopes. I loved Him. Now, I was puzzled by God. Who, or what, is God? Is he a concept? Idea? Feeling? Force? What troubled me even more was that some of my fellow Catholic high school friends that I had mentioned this dilemma to were offended by my questioning. “Why are you even bringing this up? Just accept it.” my friend Christina, who was pretty irritated, said to me. I didn’t feel bad about offending her, however. I came to realize that questioning is a part of having a religion and most importantly, part of strengthening, not weakening, faith.
It wasn’t until I spoke to my boyfriend Michael that my four-month struggle with Catholicism was put to some rest. His response to all my inquiries was quite simple. “Just look at the intricacies of nature and of the human being. How could you not believe that it didn’t come from somewhere great?” I found much truth in his answer. Science gives much explanation for the evolution of creation and the complexities of human behavior and emotion. But the feelings of love, excitement, and happiness, seem to have more profound sources than just the neural system being put to work. The concept of the existence of God still boggles my mind and I am not quite ready yet to resume practicing Catholicism so avidly like I used to. However, I have made a choice to believe. I have come to realize that faith not only involves having strong convictions, but making the bold choice to believe them in the first place and being able to defend those choices with strong points.
I believe that there must be something greater out there. That’s my choice, and I do not stand alone in making it.
