A Short Story From Belief, Atheism To Faith.
So I fall in the trap, the entitlement trap that weak believer falls into.
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
F inding the Faith, or God way was and still the hardest thing in the journey of being a believer because pretending that you are a believer is easy, it doesn’t take any try or looking or searching you could just follow what believer do when they try to say/do their prayers and officially you are a believer in eyes of your family, your friends and you neighbor.
Because what happened to me was. I was a 16 years old teenager doing his prayers, just because the environment and my family forced me to go to the mosque five times a day as a Muslim or doing my prayers five times every day at Home, I don’t know even how to describe what I was doing should I call it Fake Belief is it even the appropriate sentence !!! or lying to myself and to people.
Doing prays for me was just a kind of moving my body plus whispering or reading the Quran(Books of Muslims like the Bible for Christian )out loud, and in the same year exactly in 2016 I went through a lot of hard things including losing my grandma and engaging with Atheists on social media plus a lot of things were factors that changed that weak or Fake Believe into Atheism.
Engaging with atheists on social media for me what just a kind of spending my useless time, reading what they saying, what they publish how they criticize religion and religious people, plus that weird hobby of following every account and page that share and post thoughts about Atheism, So all these things been the small grain that will grow to be a big tree.
So I fall in the trap, the entitlement trap that weak believer falls into, and within a month I started acquiring knowledge about Atheism, information about the greatest Atheists alive, and those who died too, then reading books about Atheism, watching conference and debates about atheism practically I spent three years of my life doing things, I won’t lie to you by saying “I waste “ instead of “I spent”.
Those years have been truly good years but you know a story always has two sides let’s talk about the bad side then Good bad one.
The bad part:
Being an Athiest in a non-western culture especially an Arabic one is daunting, you bill criticized a lot, because in case you are an active person like me (full of energy) screaming that you are an atheist while everyone is talking about God will be a side job for you, to be honest, that was disrespectful.
The hard thing in this was I lost some a lot of my friends, I lost the relationship with my family(not really), people will stop talking too will even say things that you didn’t do, because when it comes to places like Arabic countries, there’s nothing like the freedom of speech or the freedom of doing what you want with disrespectful way in Holy things like religion.
Furthermore, I’ve wasted a lot of time arguing with people sometimes I went through conversations from 3 to 6 hours that’s a lot of time that you could use in something that will pay you back.
The good part:
the good thing is, I spent every day in those years discovering new ideas, new people, new philosophies, I changed my mentality, and by arguing with people about the existence of God I learned how to look up for thoughts, how to create good sentence while I’m talking.
How to look up for arguments, that will strengthen my words and thoughts that I said, I studied how people act, how people talk and how to use their words against them, I’ve even participated in a debate once, by reading books I become a new one, albeit that reading was just in a limited field.
You may notice in the title that I’ve mention words that looks similar “ Faith and Belief ” in case that seems to be new to you, or you get confused, I should remind you that there’s a difference between “Faith and belief’ will in simple terms and to not throw heavy terms on you let’s say they just classify your level of believing.
Being a believer means that you trust something, but at the same time, you don’t have that strong confidence in it in other words: belief is just confidence plus some doubt.
By contrast, faith is having that kind of strong belief and confidence in something, so we’ve got Faith =belief minus doubt.
In that spirit return to how did I find faith. coming back from atheism is not an easy thing, likewise, I was that kind of blind Atheists who do hold total confidence in his words and thoughts, but let me tell you the truth, I don’t even know how did I find Faith but I know things that helped me that :
Finding Faith:
One of the things that batched me to the path of faith was thinking about my life, and how I could find the discipline to do things that will change my life, the answer was religion, the discipline to do your prayers five times a day gave me that discipline I needed in life, plus that aid from my mother, she was always trying to convince me to pray.
Reflecting on the fact that I was wasting a lot of time in Atheism, thinking about the existence of God and never finding the answer, So I realized that finding the answer is just a matter of trying to follow God even though you’ve got a kind of doubt just do your prayers, try to be good with people, then by the time you’ll find the faith you are looking for
Final toughts
Admittedly finding the path of faith will take time from you, no matter what’s happening right now in your head, maybe you are an Atheist or you’ve got a kind of doubt or weakness, try to allocate 5 minutes or more in the morning to a appreciate what God gave you (even it was just being healthy) plus as I’ve mention try to do you prayers, try to act good, let God get to you, avoid things that separate you from God in other words just do some actions as long as you try with that deep intention one day you’ll find God way.
