by Alex Porter ’13

One of my earliest memories of religion was coming back from a church service at the Naval Academy while my family was visiting my brother there. After the service I asked my mother, “How do we know that there’s a God?” She sent the reverend an e-mail shortly after, asking how to explain it to me. The answer I got back was that “He’s there, you just can’t see Him, but you feel Him like the wind.”

I never really felt His presence after that, but for the next decade this incident was dismissed, the innocent ramblings of an inquisitive child. After all, in the black community, church is the foundation of the social community. Reverends are our heroes and leaders.

For no particular reason that I can think of, I just stopped thinking of myself as a Christian while I was in middle school. After all, I never went to church, I never read the Bible, I never prayed at night. A little while after that is when I started identifying with Islam.  I knew little about the faith, although it was more than I did about Christianity, but I liked what I saw along with it more. I wanted to be something different, something extraordinary, not like the masses around me. My first real hero was Malcolm X, who prompted me to look more into the Muslim faith. Suddenly I was downloading the Quran onto my iPod and changing my favorite songs from Southern, God-fearing R&B singers to insightful Muslims, rapping from New York.

Later I developed my interest in current events and history, which included learning about the horrible ways Muslims were treated around the world and in the United States. Not surprisingly, I ended up with liberal commentators denouncing the hate against the community I imagined myself in. But these shows also pointed out the ridiculousness of the right wing Bible thumpers, which made me realize the whole concept of a deity controlling the world was silly as well. So while I had long stopped being a Christian, I also stopped being a Muslim or theist at all.

Just last winter my family found out about this. My mom has always enjoyed asking those around her random questions about their lives and the world, and so she asked me if I believed in a God. I looked at her as if she had just told a bad joke for a while, while she anxiously waited for me to say, “Of course I do!” I had assumed that she had caught on to my lack of religion, as I would mock most religious news I heard. My answer of “no” did not go over to well. She desperately whipped up alternative questions for me. “What about any higher power? An afterlife? Do you pray at night?” As I continued to say no, I was surprised to hear her say that she believed these things. I felt like the rest of the world must have kept up with my changes, and that these things would seem as ridiculous to anyone else.  She called down my father and e-mailed my brother to alert them, but thankfully not anyone else. I predicted that someone like my brother from his generation would understand, but I did not know what to expect from my father who grew up in a poor, black, religious family. Surprisingly, he agreed with most of my sentiments.

I don’t have any problems with religious people or their faiths, but it just isn’t for me. I don’t get it. If the magic man in the sky helps someone through their day, that’s great for them as long as they don’t do anything stupid over it. But now I feel justified in trying to understand the world around me instead of feeling guilty about doing so.