For eleven years
I was a priest in the Romanian Orthodox Church
Serving in many churches, in Buzau and Vrancea
When I became a priest I was just a child.
After my first few confessions I started to mature
After my first few funerals I became numb and hardened
I had a stable, secure job. I was well respected.
But I was in the middle of a tremendous contradiction
And one day. I decided to stop.
I cannot prove to anybody that...
That there isn't something greater than us out there, a God.
But for myself I can always...
I can always prove to myself, that the God I was supposed to serve...
He doesn't exist.
And after so many years in which...
I took an important part in this entire religious phenomenon
And I maintained it.
But I was left with a simple conclusion.
The first sermon of an atheist priest
When I first started on this path of theology.
Over 2 decades ago
I was very faithful
I didn't really know what my religion contained, only vaguely
But I truly believed in it, it was how I was raised up.
Soon though...
After starting to grasp what it was that I believed in
I started to be much more restrained in my beliefs
Starting from my second year of schooling
It stopped seeming reasonable that the reason why people are dying
Because someone once bit on an apple
A few thousands years ago
Or any such things
I think it was then, during my second year of my religious studies, that I first started to be met up with a lack of belief
Although, as time went on, I was still left with a certainty that I carried with me into my priesthood.
And that certainty was Jesus.
Maybe that the stories of the Old Testament contradict each other, or are childish, or...
They ended up in there from other religious beliefs
But there's no way for Jesus to not have existed or meant anything
I now realize that I was already contradicting myself
Because religion is part of a whole
If a piece of this whole falls, so does the whole thing
There no was for it to remain truthful, or godly
If you cant believe that...
Noah gathered together all the animals
And put them in a boat
We can stop here, the rest stops being relevant
I kept clinging on somehow to Jesus
Keeping my yes shut, ignoring the whole. That is how I started my priesthood.
I remember even now..
At the start of my seminar
My hands were trembling on the bible, every time I opened it.
How I ended up resigning, after over a decade
And to my book, The confessions of an atheist priest
I kept asking myself, and i think there were many factors that contributed
Of which two were the decisive ones
The first of which was my in depth studies into old Greek
Language I ended up teaching at the same seminar I graduated from
It was exactly my studies into ancient texts
Which made me look at the bible with new eyes
Different from the way I was taught
In theology school
And that's how I arrived to the fundamental conclusion that lead to my current views.
Ancient literature stores between the lines, the level of mental development of the people writing it.
And the bible does the same
Being a collection of texts written across a big time period
From it's start to it's end
Similar themes and ideas ended up completely contradicting each other, as human society evolved.
What I'm trying to say is
The Bible's message
Is not coherent or consistent from start to finish
Sometimes...
It is actually far from being human or humane
Not to even mention it being godly.
There are things that anybody can easily check for themselves. It's enough to open a Bible
They would have to read it with their own eyes
Not with preconceived notions.
The decisive factor however, was a moment in my own life.
I had already been a priest for many years.
I was in America attending some courses
In the New York Library
I was looking specifically into the early years of Christianity
It was only then. After so many years of orthodox education
That Jesus didn't even invent the Eucharist.
The ritual of the sharing of the bread
It was simply...
It was an usual practice in the Judaism traditions of the time
Jesus was just taking part in it, the same as any other Jew
I had been a priest for so many years
And taken so many courses and I still had no idea of this fact.
I had studied just that which had been assigned to me as part of my religion studies
And I have only read Orthodox literature.
That's when it finally clicked for me
How can I return to the many people of my congregation
And tell them of Jesus inventing the Eucharist, the sharing of the bread, when it wasn't true.
How could I go and tell grieving parents
That the reason why their child died is because of a bite of an apple thousands of years ago
And how could I keep lying to myself, for the rest of my life.
Maybe some will blame me
That I even accepted to share such thoughts
But it's not my fault that Jesus wasn't the one that founded the Eucharist
The fact that I tell people such things
Which anyone can check and prove wrong. Means that I am the one that's wrong.
Wouldn't I have been more wrong to have kept believing, and kept preaching?
Things I could no longer believe in.
What comes hardest to me
Now that I resigned from priesthood.
Is the links I had lost with people I held dear
People which had respected me
Much more than I would've deserved.
People which myself I had respected, maybe more than I was able to show.
And people I was very close to, even beyond my priesthood.
And some of them were intellectuals
People which admitted after the fact that they would've accepted me even as an atheist.
To openly lack faith, as long as I kept being their priest.
What can we replace religions with?
How do we know in which direction things would go in a world without God
Without the existence of and almighty being that would force us into being good
We can see however that the answer has already been provided by our 21st century world
From the western world
The people which had already achieved a high level of living
Although they no longer find themselves following any religion
And the churces are being bought and rented
Those people still live so peacefully and prosperously
And they become involved and volunteer with so many great causes
Of course, I'm just offering a simple generalisation
And that they don't all live like that
But these Westerners, no matter what you call them, agnostics, atheists, gay or whatever else.
They offer us a great lession
They do good for no reason
They become involved in humanitarian causes
Without expecting any divine reward or recognition
Whilst our so called Christians do nothing
Or just very few
And though this they end up contradicting
The very goodness and humanity that they claim to be theirs
I cannot prove to anybody that there isn't something greater than us out there, a God.
But for me, it is easy to prove that the God I have served does not exist.
And after so many years
In which I took part in, continuing and maintaining this religious phenomenon
I am left with a simple conclusion
I don't know and neither do I want to know
Another cult or religion, or any other stake to motivate humanity but this:
Which is also the creed on which my book is based.
A bet with your own person
That you will always strive to and keep evolving and getting better
To become more intelligent
To improve your understanding of the world, of why you're alive and so on
But not through mythology
But through science and technology
By deciphering this world we live in
All the answers and solutions to our illnesses and struggles are right here
In us and in the world around us
This is where you find both cancer and ebola
To not go and look for answers and solutions in other worlds
Help me Brahma... or Allah to save my child
When the answers have been here all along. Why?
Because we belong to this world
You might only truly come to grasp that which I'm telling you now
Only when life will put you against insurmountable odds
Only when you'll be desperately racing with your sick child in your arms to find a cure
And he would be digging his weak fingers into your flesh, wanting to keep on living
What if you won't be able to do anything to help.
Only in that moment of unimaginable powerlessness
That which as a priest I have come to know from so many souls
Only then, maybe, will you realize I was right
The reason why I arrived to my conclusion
Of honesty and sincerity
To let go of my priesthood and of my cozy life
And why I got to what I believe now
Only then, maybe, you would've wished for hospitals and research institutes
In the place of the hundreds of Churches
Built up, refurbished, rebuilt in the last few years
Only from the selfish ambition of some priests that competed against each other
Churches which now lay empty as there are not enough people to use them.
If in the future.
The Church won't assume responsibility
For it's tremendous social impact
No matter how much cement they might pour into it, it would still collapse
When you
Leader of such a big institution
Because it wasn't the decision of use lowly priests
You start such grandiose and costly projects
Knowing that in this world there are millions of people
Which live and die in poverty. Even in our own country, there are children that crawl into a ball at night from cold and hunger
When you make such a decision
You are morally adrift
I have only done a simple act of self honesty
I ask
If tomorrow, all people which know inside themsleves
That they are serving false interests
And this puts them in a conflict against their own being
If they were to be just as honest with themselves as I was with myself
By tomorrow, this whole world would be completely different
The would we know now, would no longer exist
But I could never have forgiven myself for having not done what I did
I saw way too many people
Be lost and wasted in meaninglessness
And way to many defeated and lost humans
To have accepted
So much meaninglessness and wasted potential in my own life and coming to peace with it
If we were to free our minds
Where would we be now
This thought intrigues me tremendously
If we were to sit down and think
And be put face to face with our own limits
I wonder what great heights could we reach
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