Ramblings: Faith vs Doubt

I believe I said - wrote, actually - at one point that things like legends, stories, fiction echo truth in ways that nothing else can.  I've always believed that - heck, stories have taught me more about morals than most other sources.  But tonight, the meaning of that statement hit home for me right where it hurts - again.

I blame Supernatural - Season 4, Episode 16, entitled "On The Head Of A Pin".  Thanks for throwing me out of my comfort zone, Castiel.  This character, a character most likely based off of the Enochian angel Castael (an angelic soldier), is also an Angel of the Lord, and also part of a garrison of angelic warriors stationed on Earth.  He has never met God, his Father, and yet follows orders from his superiors without question, assuming they were channelled down the line directly from Heaven.  This episode is where his doubt in his orders' morality finally reaches its breaking point and is revealed out loud - doubt, the ultimate act of disobedience for an angel.

What if something is wrong in Heaven? I could see him wonder, simply from looking into his face.  What if these orders are coming from someone...else?  What if God really IS ordering these terrible things?  Is...is my Father even there?

Oh, I could go out on a tangent about how much I can relate.  In fact, I think I will.

Bible Literacy class effectively destroyed what was left of my faith in the Judeo-Christian concept of God.  Ironic, isn't it?  It was the only time I ever read the Bible and THOUGHT about it, actually.  And what I found disgusted me.  (Seriously, guys, read Leviticus.  Read it beginning to end and tell me that you don't want to throw up.)  A God who loves everyone, commanding that parents stone their children for petty offenses, killing priests daughters because she went a round with a man, forcing rape victims to marry their rapists, condoning - no, ordering - genocide.  Among other things, but I'll stop there.  I already feel kind of sick.

I can see why Castiel was having doubts - "God" ordering that Dean Winchester torture a demon, its innocent vessel and all, doesn't seem to deviate too much from the Old Testament God's history.  (It was later revealed that God did not order this act, but the same God is also not interested in stopping the Apocalypse, a.k.a. destruction of his own creation and billions of his "beloved children", so...)

The sad thing is that I'd been blissfully oblivious to the dark history of my faith for sixteen years.  I'd go to church every Sunday and youth group every Wednesday, lifting my hands and singing about my freedom in Jesus when I was actually a slave to blind faith.  Let me repeat that - a slave to blind faith.  When I first discovered this in the second semester of my Junior year, I nearly had a nervous breakdown, collapsing and crying and begging for God to show me what He was really like because He couldn't be like what I had just read in the book I had believed for so long, he just couldn't be!

My image of the Divine is so different now, and thank whatever Power That May Be for that.

Learning to doubt, to question, was scary.  Choosing my own path was terrifying.  And yet...

"For the first time in a long time...I am unafraid."

Just like Cas, I am no longer afraid to doubt.  I believe that the Divine wants what most of us believe ourselves to be:  children, not slaves.  Students, not soldiers.  If the Divine can sustain the universe, it can certainly handle humanity's doubt.

If there is a God, and he is just, He will not care how devout I have been, but rather welcome me by the virtues I have lived by in life, what He Is - Love.

If there is a God, and he is unjust, then I don't want to worship him.  If blind faith and obedience gets me to Heaven, while reasonable doubt and thinking for myself sends me in the other direction...

I'd rather face the flames.