God is dead, we killed him! Those words have been with me for many years, throughout my path in search of God. I accepted and denied them again, I accepted them in my darkest hours, when I felt alone and abandoned by the world. I denied them when my heart was full and happiness was all I could see around me. Happiness and beauty in a simple child's smile, on a simple good deed by a stranger I would never see again. On a simple look, in a dog's eyes where I found the purest form of love and sincerity. I accepted them when all I could see and touch around me was cold and thick darkness. A darkness I could feel in my bones and on my skin wrapping around me like a cold snake squeezing the very essence of life out of me. I accepted them when I could no longer find beauty or innocence anywhere I looked because I myself was filled with so much rage and hate and I was not big enough of a person to look beyond that. Sometimes the pain we feel is just like that, it makes us small and blind to everything good there is. I spent so much time looking and searching for God, did I find him? That entirely depends on the point in time you would ask me and the reasons I had on the search for God.
I believe that even the strongest denier of the idea of God at a simple split moment, there will be a doubt in his mind, one that he will quiet so swiftly that he will barely realize that it was even there. He will turn to science, and all the knowledge he has gathered that disproves this existence. He has to because otherwise, everything he stood for till now means nothing. He has to because as all of us, he needs to make sense. We need to make sense of and about everything around us because if not, what even is existence itself. So he denies God and every possibility of its existence because it would not make sense. To him the question "What even is God" does not appeal in the slightest, because to him is just nothing. But what is it to the rest of us? To the ones, like myself who haven't decided yet, and the ones that have already accepted it and have unshaken faith? I think it is something that originated from our deepest fear, the one that we will try and deny with all our might, the fear of being and dying alone. If we believe that God exists we are certain that he is with us, walking beside us every path that we take, that he is holding our hand and protecting us. I came to this realization when I had to take a dark alley home a late winter night. Barely walking almost paralyzed by fear, I tried to keep my mind occupied with happy memories I had with my little nephew who was just four years old. I started thinking about the day before that we went together to the beach and how much I loved the little one. And then I realized that only that memory, the idea of him being there with me, in that dark alley, would make me feel secure. I know a four-year-old boy could never protect me from anything, quite the reverse; I should have been the one protecting him if anything would happen. But the idea calmed me, not because of the protection he would offer, but of the idea that I would not be alone in the face of any terror. The same I think goes for the idea of God. Even though it is just an idea, it makes us feel less alone in a scary world, facing a life that frightens us. By believing we do not have to face anything alone because God is right there next to us, holding our hand and by that keeping all fears at bay. But is this healthy? Is this how we are supposed to live our lives? Believing in something that is not even there, in something that will never be able to protect us from anything, quite the reverse, we will have to protect that idea from the non-believers. We will have to fight in order to keep our belief alive every time that we pray so hard for something and that just doesn't happen. Every time we believe with all our hearts and souls into something and that just disappears? And what for, a sense of security that is not even there? Are you prepared to fight against everyone in order to protect the illusion of not being alone? Are you strong enough for it because you will have to face it alone, all of it, and more? Why can't we grow beyond this, why can't we remove our own chains that make us slaves to the illusion and become what we are meant to be, a whole human being? I know you have heard it before, that God is within us, we are the good and the evil that roams the earth. Why can't you give this a deeper thought? What does this indicate? Were they right to say such a thing, because to you God is the omnipotent, the Devine and he cannot be within us? At least that is what religion says about him. Now could you tell me what is keeping you from forming your very own thoughts on it and create an idea that stands only for you? God can be whatever you want it to be, all you need to do is liberate yourself from fear and see beyond every single hit that you have taken, see beyond good and evil and realize that all we are doing, classified as good or evil, is just trying. We try to be free, happy, and good to each other and help whenever we can. Don't always achieve it, and that is alright because we tried and we will again. Why can't you for a moment liberate yourself from all the ideas that were passed down to you, fed to you by others, and form your own world, there You can be God, where you can be whatever you want. Well, my friend, that is because if you decide to do just this, it means looking reality in the eye and realizing that you are alone, and that would be obliterated, because you would have to admit to yourself "God is dead, for I killed him".