Keeping the faith...

I wish I could say that I have faith that God will pull us through this cancer, but I can't.  For the last few years, my faith has been drifting more and more away from believing in God.  I don't think I'm completely atheist, but I'm definitely falling into the agnostic category.  If there is a God out there somewhere, I just don't think He has all that much to do with those of us on Earth.  This has been a long transformation.  When I was a child, I always went to Sunday School, and I went to church every week well into adulthood.  I prayed for my father when he had a brain aneurysm, and I think that was the last time that I felt like there was anyone listening, but now I believe it only felt that way because I desperately wanted to feel that way.  I say that because some really miserable circumstances through the last 7 or 8 years have led me to believe that God is not there, or, possibly, if He is there, He's just not paying all that much attention to us.  I'm really thinking lately that He's just a way for humans to be less fearful of the unknown. 


My friend here at work has a little boy who was born with half a heart.  The friend and his wife are some of the most faith filled people I have ever known.  They have gone through so much over the last five years as their little boy has had several surgeries, and then finally last summer, the doctors said he would need a heart transplant, and they were so happy when in the fall, he received a healthy, new, whole heart.  People all over have been praying for him, and there was great joy when he finally was able to leave the hospital at Christmas time and come home.  Last week, his mom posted on Facebook that he needed to have a PET (cancer) scan because some of his numbers were elevated.  Last night, she updated and said the PET scan showed "areas of concern."  Really??  Can this family not catch a break?  If there is a God, why put this little boy through even more?

So while others pray to a God that is appearing to me to be not much more than a figment, I am left not knowing what to do.  If God is all powerful and could heal this little boy, but he doesn't, what chance does Wayne have for a miracle?  And if Wayne gets a miracle, but my friend's son doesn't, how does that make any sense?  I know, I know.  There are people that will say that God's ways can not be known to us, but what kind of Supreme Being would choose a 60 year-old man with his fair share of "sins" over an innocent 5 year-old boy?  I was telling my mother the other day that I am actually more comforted by thinking there is not a God than by the thought that there is one who would allow these things to happen.  Like I said earlier, I am just not sure where I am with this whole faith thing anymore.

I found this quote from the television series Babylon 5: " I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life *were* fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." 

I think they may have been on to something.