Replacing God

DISCLAIMER: I have succumbed to an existential crisis in my fifties much like Leo Tolstoy, but unlike him this did NOT lead me back to god.

In the beginning, there was God. I wholeheartedly believed in him. I worshipped him and he became the center, the anchor of my universe. God became all-in-all, or at least that’s what I told myself. Then came existential crisis number one in my thirties.

I was majorly depressed and struggling mightily with feelings of abject failure. God was nowhere to be found. I decided to end my life. I wanted to replace God in the center, on the throne of my life. I pulled up anchor and set sail for the afterlife, only I didn’t succeed. The ultimate failure was my inability to die 24 years ago today.

I felt like God showed up in a big way that next year. My whole life turned around. I purchased my first home, a brand new custom-built one with four bedrooms and two full baths. I believed God arranged a miraculous adoption two months later and I became a dad. Life had done a one-eighty in a matter of eight months!

A year or so after my second adoption (another miracle), I was no longer flying high. I began deconstructing my faith and my marriage at the same time. Existential crisis number two, still in my thirties. I realized that part of my depression and feelings of failure were due to my marriage and career path, if you could even call it that.

I didn’t have grasp of the wheel of my life. I “let go and let God,” as the popular Christian slogan goes. I was not living intentionally. I had no grasp of that concept. I fully believed that whatever happened to me, good or bad, was God ordained. It was easier to blame him for my lazy complacency. I think I began to realize this in my late thirties. My religion was no longer making me happy. I began to wonder if it ever had. I soon realized, after leaving the church, that ritualistic, religious abuse was a major part of my depressive episode in 2000. It contributed to my awful self image. It always had.

My spiritual journey led me away from church and traditional Christianity. I later found replacements for God, including The Universe, Consciousness and The Higher (or Divine) Self. I turned to modern philosophers who embrace Christianity AND New Age Spirituality, like Eckhart Tolle. I embraced his “Power of Now,” present reality focus. I realize that our control is limited to our thinking, unconscious mind and our ability to control it with “presence.”

That gave me some peace, some of the time.

It hasn’t been lasting. And where I found myself meditating or praying out loud, sometimes to the cosmos, I began to wonder what was so different. Did I look or feel any less insane, whether wrestling with God verbally or shouting my displeasure to the stars??? Wasn’t I just replacing one spiritual practice for another? Replacing God?

So now that I’m facing existential crisis number three in my mid-fifties, I’m left wondering what does any of it matter? The sun rises over the good and the evil just the same. Likewise, the rain falls on both without discretion. I’m paraphrasing Christian scripture here. There is no greater purpose.

This landing squarely in nihilism makes the most sense to me. How arrogant is our species to believe that we are so much more highly evolved? How arrogant is humankind to believe that we are created beings, special and important to our creator, be that a Demiurge or the Almighty? It’s pretty damn arrogant, if you ask me. Our species just evolved on this planet like every other living organism. We aren’t special. We weren’t placed here for some divine purpose.

Life is basically meaningless. This is what Leo Tolstoy realized in his fifties. It’s what I’ve come to realize. I’m done replacing God. He is not the center of anything, not the Universe, not my life, and concepts like Source, Consciousness or Divinity are just as imaginary as “he” is. I won’t be returning, like Tolstoy, to the religion of my youth. I’ll just live out my days on this planet until I am no more.

This is the 24th anniversary of my suicidal episode. If you are struggling, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, just dial 988.