My Perspective on Religion

By Carson Denney

I was raised baptist. I went to a baptist church with my very religious parents from 1st
grade to 10th grade, when my dad stopped making me go. My dad never liked church, but he
wanted me to learn all the bible studies and he was not confident as a teacher. I ended up
working at a church in early high school and attending that churches’ youth group regularly. It
was around this time that I started to figure out I was queer, and I remember being really
conflicted about my identity in relation to religion. I remember one particular day in freshman
year, right after gay marraige was legalized. I sat in the back pew with the first girl I had ever
kissed, who was also figuring out her queer identity, and watched the preacher sigh in frustration
at the pulpit. He had said that due to recent events, he felt the need to express his stance on
whether or not being gay was a sin. As I sat and listened to the man I had known my entire life
describe me as an abomination who would never see the gates of heaven, I decided that a god
who would see me that way was not worth my time to believe in. For a long time after that, I
stopped thinking about god altogether.

Only recently have I started to consider what I believe religiously. I think there is
definitely a higher power, but what that higher power is I have no idea. I like the concept of
multiple deities that together form one higher power, and I like the concepts of nirvana and
enlightenment. I think that reincarnation makes sense to me, or at least the concept of coming
back and living again has a nice ring to it. Thinking about religion too much can be frustrating at
times. It is difficult trying to find answers and solutions that are not guaranteed to ever be
revealed to me.

What happens when we die? Although my dad is a Christian, he often tells me how he
hopes that reincarnation is real. The idea that when we die our consciousness moves on to other
things is an interesting thought to me. I feel like so many people believe the same things that it
does not make sense to say that any one religion is more correct than the others. This concept of
going somewhere good when we die is a hopeful one to me, but it makes me wonder if people
are only using that idea as an excuse to justify the way that we live now. The whole idea of
religion feels rooted in a desire to control the masses by giving them rules and parables.

I do not know that I believe in the concept of hell. At least, I do not know that I believe in
hell as it has been depicted by many churches and religious groups. Typically the image of a hell
that comes to mind is some awful, painful place that exists to punish people who have been
“bad” in their lives- murderers, liars, cheaters, and the like. In many religions, hell (or the
underworld, Tartarus, what have you) is a place full of eternal suffering and torture with no
escape. I have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that a higher power sees humans as
significant enough to punish for an eternity. The concept of “eternity” seems like a very mortal
way to look at things; in an immortal world I don’t think the idea of consequences is incredibly
pertinent.

It is important to me that I acknowledge and talk about my relationship with religion.
Even though I’ve struggled with it in the past, I know that if I can figure out what I believe in, I
can set a standard for the way I choose to live my life.