What couldn't fit on my headstone if I died today

Belief exists in the absence of consensual truth and therefore is an indispensable byproduct of subjectivity. Once I came to this realization, I loathed my need to believe. While others revel in the opportunity that such ambiguity provides them, I am overwhelmed, paralyzed by the absurdity of creating something that will in turn create me.

My quest for a credible personal credo has been relentless, and at times, fanatical, first as an undergrad in an Evangelical Bible college with aspirations of full-time ministry, then as a graduate student in philosophy exploring the depths of atheistic existentialism and finally as a corporate whore feeding a brick and mortar addiction. In the final semesters of Bible College, after my devotion had given way to doubt, the challenge was to support my beliefs about the world by arranging a cogent conglomeration of individual positions on everything from creation to the afterlife. Each time that I attempted to ensure the stability of my belief, I would find some flaw in the construction that I had overlooked in my enthusiasm, a tiny crack in the foundation that condemned the entire structure.

Unable to reconcile these anomalies, I would painstakingly dismantle what I had created and start over again until I realized that all the pieces did not fit, or perhaps, could not fit together seamlessly. Once outside the Christian framework, I explored rationalism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, existentialism and nihilism in rapid succession in an attempt to transfer the responsibility of choice to something less fallible than myself.

Even as mine collapsed under the weight of my own arguments, I retained a genuine admiration for other religious systems, but from afar, like a recovering addict. Each time I was taken to the precipice of faith, I relented from uttering those fateful words of resignation—‘Lord, help my unbelief.’ I could not bear to be caught up once again into that euphoric fanaticism that comes with the possession of absolute truth. Now as a Polo and Docker ensemble in a corporate training department, determinedly clinging to some intermediate rung of the company ladder between peon and president, my elaborate edifices of truth and right action have been reduced to the flimsy cardboard façade of business ethics—summed up simply as an allegiance to the bottom line while maintaining the guise of regulatory compliance and professionalism.

Despite this, I do not cherish this apparent freedom, but rather I share in Camus’ desire for there to be a god who is able to give meaning over the prospect of personal choice with impunity; for I believe that all people are equal and that the naked should be clothed, the hungry fed and the sick healed but I have no deeper conviction than my own perception. I am indignant but without righteousness. I once remarked to a close friend from Bible College that when he makes a decision, no matter what happens, he can confidently interpret it within his religious framework, whereas as I have no such guarantee of success or redemption in failure. Perhaps all this is a banal excuse for my lethargy, couched in eloquent reasoning.

Nonetheless, at this point in my life, the question is not what I believe but to what extent I believe it. For me, belief is as much the expression of a desire for things to be a certain way as it is the proclamation that they are, in fact, that way. Unfortunately, I lack both the desire and conviction to progress more than a few steps in any one ideological direction. However, I believe it was my mother’s faith that carried her for two years beyond her prognosis though her body was cancerous. I believe that it was my father’s hope in an afterlife that sustained him at her graveside. Moreover, I believe that a group united by a belief may overcome seemingly insurmountable odds—for good or ill. All I can muster with all my own strength is a belief in my own being, a Cartesian cry and nothing more. I know that am occupying this place, at this time in such a way as only I can. However, I also trust that what has led me to this place in my life will also be the very same thing that leads me further into…