"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5."
"So how did you become an Atheist?" Oliver asks when they sit down for lunch at a nearby restaurant after the service.
Blake looks up over his glass of water. "What...do you mean?"
"Sorry. I'm just – I'm curious. Like I said, I've never met one before so I don't really, um, understand how you came to lose faith in God."
"Well," Blake begins slowly, "I'm not sure if I ever had any faith in God to begin with."
"But how?"
"I don't know," Blake says with a shrug. "My mom and dad never really raised me to be religious one way or another. I went to Sunday school a few times but that just didn't work out. I kept asking questions that they couldn't answer and I guess they didn't take very kindly to that. Then when – when my mom died, my dad stopped going to church too and that was that."
"Your mom died?" Oliver gasps. "Oh gosh, I didn't know. I'm so sorry, Blake."
To be honest, Blake hates it when people say 'I'm sorry' after hearing about his mother's death. He never knew how to respond to the phrase just after she died and he still doesn't know exactly what to say even though she's been dead for half his life.
"It's fine," Blake says, brushing the subject under the rug. "Anyway, religion was just never an issue in our house."
"But, I mean, how did you learn what was right and what was wrong? How did you learn about like, how bad it was to kill people or lie or steal and stuff? We always learn through the Bible and through God's teachings and his commandments."
"From my dad, I guess. It's not like I was raised in a zoo," Blake explains pointedly. "I had rules and boundaries just like any other kid. And there are things you learn about as you get older, about morality and things like that. You just...you know, you learn through life and experience. You read books and you watch movies and you just – you learn."
"I'm not sure if learning about not killing someone through experience is the best tactic," Oliver says.
"Things like that, though, you learn when you're young. You get a fish or a cat or something and you're taught to take care of it and feed it and not let it die. So you know that killing something or someone is bad. And you learn not to steal when your mom slaps your hand away from the cookie jar. There are other ways to learn about stuff like that besides through the Bible or God."
"I guess," Oliver says, deep in thought. "It's just weird to me. I mean, God is all I know. Faith in God is all I know. It's hard to think that you don't believe in something greater."
"I can see how difficult it might be to wrap your head around," Blake says. "I mean, I don't really understand why you believe in an invisible guy that sits on a cloud in the sky."
"God's not really like that," Oliver says, biting his lip to keep from smiling.
"Isn't it strange, though? That, to you, there's one man, one being who supposedly watches over all of us? Seems like God's a busy guy. I don't know if I believe that God has enough time in a day to worry about everyone on the planet, not to mention the rest of the solar system and other galaxies. He did create all those stars in the sky, if your Bible is to be believed."
"I don't think time works for God the same way it does on this plane," Oliver says to him. "And I think you're too caught up in the intricacies."
"So you're saying I'm just supposed to go on blind faith?"
YOU ARE READING
Sins of the Flesh
RomanceI'm sorry I am not made perfectly in your image. But maybe I wasn't supposed to be. --- He still prays every night. He still attends church every Sunday. He still believes. But he still cannot tell himself that he's gay. He can't write it. He ca...
