question(ing) answers

1. Julie Pittman. I’m a second year student at the United World College of the American West which is an international boarding school located in a tiny town in northern New Mexico. I don’t really know what I am doing with myself anymore. I’m swamped with homework and college applications (UWC is a high school by the way- I’m doing my 13th year to be here) and at the same time I’m trying so hard to care about life and live with some semblance of meaning.

2. Everyone’s a VIP to Someone by The Go! Team

3. I believe that I have an inherent responsibility to the world. I must live a life of integrity that will be defined by my commitment to the world.

4. I guiltily question the existence of God and the purpose of religion and spirituality. I qualify my questioning with guilt because there is a small part of me that wants so much to believe in God, to a conception of a god, to a sense of divinity at all. And, too, I don’t want to negate the purpose that spirituality serves in other peoples lives. (I should probably emphasize this one especially. I have such respect and admiration for people who have an active, meaningful, beautiful spirituality.) Having experienced it myself, it is more problematic for me to question and occasionally deny God’s existence and to question and discredit the importance of resultant religions and spirituality. But I do. Guiltily.

Perhaps better questions that I should ask in this forum are “Will I ever believe in God again? What role can reverence play in my life now? Is it wrong for me to participate in this group? How should I be affected by the studies we embark upon together? Can I even justifiably integrate what we discuss into my life if I claim to disbelieve its basic tenets?”

5. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

This verse was scrawled on a bathroom stall door in my sixth grade hall and I would read it almost every day. I remember it to this day. It was always a sort of enigma to me. Who would graffiti the walls of a bathroom stall with bible verses? Of course, in reality, the whole school knew which girl had done it. And we all looked at her a little bit weirdly. But alone, contemplating those words in a darkened stall, I would wonder briefly about the type of faith that was so deep, so strong (as I liked to characterize it) that it could erupt out of sometime in the most banal situations. Of course, it could as easily be characterized as proselytizing. I don’t actually know what to make of it to this day. So in fact, it’s rather a bad example I guess. But somehow, somewhere it holds some meaning outside of its actual words to me.

6. Generally, I would like to learn more about what it means to have faith in something now. To me, having faith in something seems to be to release it from scrutiny and questioning. And I know that in this group in particular, faith is augmented by that process of questioning but I don’t understand if those questions are allowed to lead to rejections of doctrines. Is having faith supposed to lead to a molding of self in which all things are eventually accepted in religious doctrines and the horrors of life are transformed to a part of God’s will? How can people have faith as Christians when it seems that Christianity is flawed? How can it be okay to have faith in something so essential and important that is shaky with flaws?

7. I expect this to be an amazing forum for discussion and I’m really happy to be a part of it. I want to learn from all of you and I want to emphasize again that while I might seem critical or dismissive of things which are essential to you, I really really really don’t intend any disrespect or offense. I’m just a bit lost and I don’t know what to make of a subject matter that seems so essential to humankind. And also- the ways you have each talked about faith so far are incredibly beautiful.