I don’t know what my religion is.
I know I believe in God.
That part has never moved. But the label wanders.
My partner is a Zen Buddhist priest. We practice Ashtanga yoga together.
I was baptized Christian. I have a 20 year old AA in practical ministry from a Christian college. For real.
When I’m in a desperate position, on my knees in the real sense, the Christian words come back first. They were the door I walked through. Judaism is a close second. A lot of my clients are Jewish. Some of my clients are fundamentalist Christians. Others are atheists, agnostics, Hindus...
I have come to believe it does not much matter which door you walk through. Only that you walk through one that feels right to you.
That took me years to settle with. For a long time I thought supporting someone through a faith I didn’t share was a kind of lie. Maybe I was told that it was.
It isn’t.
I can hold someone’s belief system for them with both hands and not need it to be mine. If a client or a close friend can’t accept that, if they need me to share their exact lens or it’s a dealbreaker, that’s a hard spot for them to be in. I think it’s a very lonely spot. I think it’s a spot they won’t find much expansion inside of long term.
It is not hard for me. I can stand inside someone’s faith and help them use it. That’s really the key right - living your values.
Here is what I think God is.
God is the belief that you have support.
That there is something outside of you that wants good things for you.
And under that, the more important part: A belief in some from of God creates a knowing that you are not God. You do not have absolute control.
Isn’t that a relief?
Prayer in that scenario is an exhale.
A moment where you sit with a reality where you did the best you could with what you could see, and the rest is not yours to carry.
That is not a spiritual bypass.
It is the whole basis for being trustworthy. It is the basis for being ethical. A person who thinks they are running the entire machine is so dangerous.
A person who knows they aren’t can take their own responsibility and loosen their grip on the rest.
Voltaire spent his life taking a hammer to the Church, to organized religion, to superstition. He still wrote that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. At the end, refusing to sign a profession of Catholic faith, he wrote his own line instead.
“I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.”
A great skeptic kept God.
People with no framework where they can believe in something beyond themselves don’t get off easy. They take too much. It all lands on them. Every failure becomes a verdict on their character.
There is no God to hand the rest to, so they hold all of it, and it flattens them.
Finding hope and purpose beyond yourself sounds like this:
I did the best I could with what I could see at the time. I said the thing that needed saying even when it was crunchy and embarrassing to say it. I made the business move that made sense from where I was standing. Some of what came after was just God. Some of it was never mine.
It’s easy to believe in God when the news is good.
Getting pregnant with a child you deeply desired. The thing you wanted showing up at the door. It is harder when you went after something that looked like it was on your menu, you reached for it in good faith, and it simply was not for you. No lesson attached. No redemption arc. Just: not yours. When you can get there and mean it, you are free. You stop fighting the current of your own life.
This is all why I want a bigger frame and I want you to consider finding your own. I don’t mean guides and angels floating around you like ambient staff. That is not it. I mean an omniscient thing with intention. A purpose. A universal consciousness that is going somewhere. Tradition or not - it doesn’t matter.
The guides-and-vibes version has no power in it and nowhere to go. What holds a person up is the sense that there is a larger will, and that you live inside it instead of running it.
A religion, on top of that, hands you a framework, which is its own gift - assuming it’s one that you feel like you can move inside of. Structure. Language. Practices worn smooth by thousands of years of other people needing them. You don’t have to build the cathedral yourself in the dark.
Either route works though.
We have the whole record of human history on this. Every culture built a ladder to God. That is not proof of any single doctrine. It is a lot of evidence that the belief itself, in support, in meaning, in a will larger than your own, is standard equipment for being a person.
Consider believing in God. Consider picking a religion. Not because I can prove which one is true. Because you were not built to carry all of it alone.
I write primarily to support my small business, christinaelaine.com
I am a somatic coach, writer, and curriculum creator writing about the interior life of modern relating, weekly on Medium & Substack. I also host interviews on YouTube.
Ya theres a funny thing that's happened to me as well...all religions seem to have some piece of the truth and if you squint enough they all kinda look the same. At the esoteric level anyways. What I see you're writing about is the core of any of them, and of being human, as you said, there's something bigger and supportive of us. Full stop. Anything else is too many words and misses the point.
Thoughtful, enlightening piece. Your personal background gives your writing depth and credibility.
Personally, I know many people who believe in guides and vibes. I see nothing wrong with embracing their faith as well. Other than that, your words rang true. I love your open-minded point of view.
I want to suggest one more possibility- Unitarian Universalism. This faith accepts all beliefs, even atheism. Their basic tenet
- seeking the truth.