Beneath belief, there is unbelief.
We hold beliefs, which means we put in an effort to bear the weight of them. Beliefs, unlike instincts or underlying assumptions, must be held with some measure of will. They burden us, because they feel unnatural, they are against our nature, and thus need to be laboriously lugged along.
Christianity is this weight to me. The glory of an unseen God, the gaping of an unseen hell, the living of an unseen code, and the unseen victory of a crucified man (OK… just not seen by me). I carry these massive spiritual weights in a world light with materialism, naturalism, and relativism. They burden my speech with caution, as I strain to speak communicable truth, words that honor man’s mind and God’s heart. They burden my thoughts, which range from spiritual meditations to carnal fixations to philosophical musings. They burden my art and actions, both undergoing a constant identity crisis (are we serving the hopeless, mortal ego, or the erternal, all-encompassing God?)
So sometimes, I stop believing. I unload the weight of the terrible unseen, and embrace the all-encompassing grime.
Beneath unbelief, there is belief.
When I lighten my load, when I relieve myself of belief, the lightness is not relieving. Certainly, the ache of maintaining idealogy is temporarily soothed, but it is replaced by a feeling of foolishness, as if I’ve oversimplified the whole scheme of things. I look in the mirror and at trees, at my baby and at writing and politics, and I give my insensitive little brain a good smack. You are an idiot, I say to myself, for seeing grime only. God and hell and Christ rise from beneath the foundation of things, not unnaturally, but pre-naturally, meta-naturally. The weight of atheism becomes unbearable in light of all that is seen and felt, all the complications and beauties that arise from within and beyond.
