Because He is God
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 9:51 AM PST
Seattle, WA
Today (yesterday) I had a conversation with a religious leader in my life. But first, before I talk about that, I want to talk about my own beliefs. We have time for it all, dear friends.
I grew up in a Hindu family that went to temples and celebrated the big holidays. I learned classical Indian singing (full of devotional songs) from ages 4 to 16 quite intensely, wore the deeply uncomfortable customary attire, and some values engrained in me remain. For instance, whenever receiving any sort of holy offering, or dropping paper on the ground, I briefly pass it before my face back and forth in a ritual that essentially translates to showing respect with your eyes. For the latter, paper = has knowledge = sacred. This doesn’t extend to just Hindu traditions—when I did take communion in school, I’d cross it over my eyes. Old habit.
Somehow, I ended up not religious at all. Maybe it’s because we went to temples maybe once or twice a year. Or all these big holidays were filled with Sanskrit I just didn’t understand, actions that felt meaningless. My parents largely raised me to think for myself; while I think they’d prefer that I was faithful, I reckon they’re fine with my lack thereof. Was it my dad, the atheist, who rubbed off? I don’t know, but as long as I could remember, I just don’t believe in God and I am just not a Hindu. Or a Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or anything really.
I’m not an atheist either, but I don’t believe I can adequately characterize why. That’s another thing about religion (or a lack of it) for me: I just don’t really get it? Theology has always had this fuzzy cloud around it, where thinking too hard just confuses me more, so I tend to stop once my brain starts hurting. So rather than labeling myself, I’ll talk about what I think about God (or gods) and you can decide.
I don’t care whether God exists or not, and I don’t know that my belief leans in one particular direction. In my moments of true fear, I must confess I pray to God. Or gods. I’ve prayed to Allah, to the Holy Trinity, to Krishna and Rama and Shiva, the destroyer of everything, my hope and despair alike. Please, get me through this and onto the next day. And then, when I wake up in the morning, I realize all that led to that terror did not come to fruition. And maybe God doesn’t exist after all. In my moments of sound logic, God is never real; in the moments of true humanity, they are all I turn to.
I think no religion can adequately demonstrate the true nature of God, because it’s a human concept based on the social order that we found ourselves in. (Some could argue that God appears to them in a comprehendible shape, that its true form would be too much for us, and I guess I’d agree with that.) I don’t believe that any religion is any more right or wrong than the other, because if God is real, we are all powerless before Him. And I’m just talking about faith here, I’ll get to customs soon. I really don’t believe that the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer are any more real than the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) because both frameworks are equally valid characterizations of who may have control over us all. If I go to hell, I don’t really care which one.
I’d go as far as to say that all religion does for me is compel an adherence to certain arbitrary traditions that have no meaning for me. For instance, communion. I don’t accept communion now that I’m out of school (where it was more or less mandatory), since I’m not baptized and have no intention to be. Everyone is welcome, but technically not, and to me, it’s always just been bread. I understand theologically that it represents the body of Jesus, so it unsettles me to eat him then! I’ve been asked a couple times to consider being baptized, and it’s usually been an immediate no: it’s just water being poured over my head in a ritualistic manner. I could do it just to appease the asker, because it has no significance to me, but if God was really real, I don’t think he’d like that too much. :-)
I also don’t believe that knowing whether God exists is necessarily unknowable, like an agnostic would. People claim to see and even speak to the divine all the time, and I do believe them, that they encountered something they thought otherworldly. And I am definitely not nihilist because I believe this question matters, that being alive matters even if we are just a bunch of atoms floating around.
So, I’m in quite a pickle that’s resolved by claiming to not belong to any faith at all. It’s an active area of research, if you will, in that my faith is constantly adapting and evolving as I do. Yes, I still have faith—the faith that all of us are here to love and to be loved—as does everyone. We’ll talk about that when I discuss that conversation mentioned way up yonder.
I think the best way to sum up what I think is with a quote from one of my favorite books, John Green’s Looking for Alaska. It’s a YA novel, but one that I often turn back to in times of questioning or big life moments. This is a real story, but he rewords it a little.
“Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.”
That’s how I feel about God. I will respect him not because I kneel to confess my sins in front of him, or leave money at his feet before traveling, or wear a head covering so he is pleased with me. I respect him because He is God.
You know what, the conversation will be a part 2… this is a really long blog post already, and I like to keep them short and readable! Happy holidays, and keep your eye out for more yap.