We went to church today.

It wasn’t fun by any means. While my brother was visiting my grandparents, he got a bite of the bible and, apparently, wasn’t put off by the taste. They went to church regularly (something my brother and I have notoriously avoided for years-) and he apparently liked it. So he was talking to my dad about it and they got the idea that we, as a family, should go to church this evening.

My views on religion are kind of sketchy. I can’t explain why I’m not interested or what, exactly, I believe but I know what I know. I know that churches make me feel uncomfortable. They don’t feel like home, or a place to worship, or a sanctuary. To me, they feel like a prison. A cage in which I am forced to experience how the other half lives and I can’t stand it. Stand up. Sit down. Sing. Kneel. Pray. Stand up. Sit down. Kneel. Pray. Say this. Say that. Make the sign of the cross. Swear your love to god. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. He was crucified for our sins. Peace be with you. Take this bread. Take this cup.

I don’t think families should go to church. I don’t like seeing them there. I feel like religion should be an entirely personal experience. You can’t make someone else believe what you do, especially when it comes to God and his son or lack-there-of. If you teach your children to believe it, they don’t believe it because they have a genuine love of Jesus or God or what have you in their hearts. They will believe because you told them to. And Mother is the word of God on the lips of all children.

My mother was raised in a household void of religion. They wanted her to formulate her own views and find her own way in the world. She struggled with it for some time but when she found something she liked, she sank her teeth in. She loved it. She savored it. She goes to church because she feels at home there and she feels genuinely that there is something or someone who created us that watches over us no matter who we are, where we live, or what our income is.

And while I may not have inherited her love of church and what it represents, I greatly respect that she was able to find something that suited her. She may have felt lost while searching for it, but at the end of the day it gives her hope. She doesn’t believe because someone told her to. She feels, deep down inside, that it is right.

I want that.

I want to find something that I believe in and I want to know, deep down inside, that it is right. Until I do, though, despite two Catholic parents, I check myself off as being Agnostic.

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