I’ve recently joined a new church. For the longest time I refused to go to church. It wasn’t that I lost my belief in God or anything of that nature. As the saying goes, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” It was a lot of that for me. I experienced being bullied in church as well as witnessing racism in the church. After that, I swore I’d never attend another Baptist church. And with the exception of funerals and the occasional Christmas, I haven’t.
I was asked by a dear friend why I believe in God in the first place. I’ve thought about this a lot and I hope I can answer this here and now. You see, people expect belief in God to come with sunshine, hymns, and an emotional montage about “finding peace.” That’s never been my story. I don’t believe because life is beautiful. I don’t believe because everything makes sense. I believe because the world often feels like a meat grinder, and I refuse to accept that this is all there is.
For me, belief isn’t about evidence. It’s not about some philosophical proof that wraps the universe in a neat bow. It’s not about doctrine, denomination, or the kind of theological gymnastics that some people use to win arguments. My belief is simpler and much more stubborn: I reject the idea that this life, with all its cruelty, absurdity, and chaos, gets the final word.
When you’ve seen enough of the world’s ugliness, you reach a fork in the road. One direction says: “This is it. Meaning is an illusion. Suffering is the point. Eventually we all vanish and nothing matters.” Plenty of thinkers I admire lean into that: Cioran, Schopenhauer, Ligotti. They saw the darkness clearly. But even they never managed to convince me that the darkness is absolute.
The other direction says “Maybe the absurdity isn’t the whole picture. Maybe the pain isn’t the whole story. Maybe something exists beyond the mess.” That “maybe” is where my belief lives.
I don’t need a heaven with golden streets or a God with a perfect PR team. I just need the possibility — the hint — that existence isn’t limited to this bleak stretch of highway we’re traveling. That there’s depth behind the veil. That suffering isn’t the only language the universe speaks.
Call it faith. Call it refusal. Call it philosophical stubbornness. I believe in God because the alternative feels too small for the scale of human experience … too empty, too bleak, too final. If this life is just pain, noise, and entropy on repeat, then the whole thing collapses under its own weight. I believe because I need there to be something more, something better, something that outlasts the cruelty.
And that’s enough for me.
Sisyphus Shrugged 
Its interesting, K, that you write prose like a poet when you’ve only written two poems in your life. I think that you are much more of a poet, in a truly positive sense, than you think you are. A true poet sculpts words with great finesse. And you do tend to do that a lot these days. Its not all about rhyming. Its all about feeling. And the placing of words. Surely? Dylan Thomas made words fall like a waterfall in the way he wrote. I defy anyone to find a better user of English.
There’s a carcass outside my home. A poor mammal, burst in two by a speedy car wheel. Normally I’d eat potato cakes or crumpets over my sink as I looked outside my kitchen window because those things run butter all over you if you don’t pin their location down.
But seeing how the ravens, magpies and jackdaws pull at the parts of the obliterated dead body of the innocent hedgehog, lending a nature sponsored violation to the poor thing in such a violent and barbaric way, puts me right off my fucking breakfast.
Nature is cruel. Get over it.
Humanity is cruel. Get over it.
I’ll never get over it.
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Writing has always been the one thing I’m good at doing. It just sucks I don’t have the confidence to try to get anything published.
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Non-fiction is probably a no go area because so many people can do it well. But fiction might be better for you because you’d be your own unique selling point. You lay things out very well, in my opinion. Your thinking is well ordered. I hope you do pluck up the courage to try and send something off at some point.
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Peter Wessel Zapffe published an essay in 1933 concerning anti-natalism and consciousness. I have something similar on WattPad I’d like to try to get published.
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