The Pledge of an Unbeliever

The Pledge of an Unbeliever

Every day in school began with a moral dilemma.  At the moment of truth, I stood with my classmates and joined in on the sing-song cadence—“I pledge allegiance to the flag…”  Most often I left out the “under God” part, hoping no one would notice. 

I wasn’t brave enough to go beyond that feeble gesture.  Besides, my mother hadn’t asked me to.  Nevertheless, I always came to the end feeling as if I’d done something wrong.  Neither home nor school would win this war of ideas, fought on the inside where no one could see, at least not in terms of the “under God” part that caught in my throat, like a morsel too large. 

My mother and her fellow Christadelphians hold that Jesus’ true purpose is to establish a world-wide kingdom, under his rule, that will replace all earthly governments.  The new order could come about at any time, so participation in man-made governments is not an option for a follower of the “truth.”  He reserves his allegiance for the coming kingdom of God. 

The contrast between the beliefs of my mother and those that I encountered elsewhere was jarring, as were the differences in expected behavior. A Christadelphian must be self-denying.  Jesus’ injunction to turn the other cheek is taken literally.  One must stay on the strait and narrow path, avoiding the appearance as well as the essence of sin.

My mother strove to infuse my younger brother and me with these doctrines, but she was isolated geographically from her Christadelphian brothers and sisters; she stood alone against the forces of the world.  My father, unable to commit to any religion but fearing the consequences of non-belief, sat on the sidelines.  Meanwhile, I struggled to reconcile the incompatible visions of meaning and purpose that I encountered at home and in the community.  Christadelphians are diligent students of the Bible, and I found their criticisms of mainline Christianity to be convincing.  But as I matured, I also found what I felt to be flaws in their interpretation of scriptures, and then in the scriptures themselves, and finally in the very concept of faith.

The story of my childhood, acted out in an intense and confusing clash of creeds, can be written as a recipe for making an atheist, a simple and clear formula for what was to come.  The more appealing explanation, from my point of view, is that I made a rational and intelligent examination of the issues.  But I suspect that some people are simply born believers and some are born unbelievers, and that I fall into the latter category.

Although the doctrines of my mother’s religion failed to take hold, its precepts did in many ways.  Humbly seek the truth.  Refrain from judging people.  Practice the golden rule.  As a child, I diligently applied these maxims and others, and they soaked into the core of my being.

My friends think that I’m more of a Christian than many believers that they know.  They have a hard time accepting my professions of non-belief.  Given the widely held notion that everyone has to believe in something, maybe they’re right.  After all, you can’t go through life proving every idea, and belief confers many benefits on the faithful.  But I’ve observed that it’s possible to justify many contradictory things through faith in the absence of any means of testing them empirically, leaving no way to reliably separate truth from falsehood.  I’ve seen how simple faith, so often a positive force, can be replaced by the rigid and intolerant certainty that too often accompanies complex belief systems.

My youthful struggle taught me to distrust certainty, and to try to keep things simple and reliable.  That’s why I refuse to accept as truth any idea that I can’t prove through my senses coupled with sound logic.  I may act on other kinds of ideas, but I try not to treat them as the “Truth,” with a capital T.  I try to stay open to other possibilities.

So for me there’s only one true belief, the rock upon which I build my house.  I believe in not believing.  I believe in it as a basis for determining the truth, as best as I can.  I believe in it as a source of decency and goodwill among people.  I’ve made a pledge of sorts, one that, unlike the conflicted one that I made each day in the classroom, is confident and wholehearted.  It’s a commitment to stay on the narrow path of non-belief.  It keeps me from straying too far from the “truth” with a small t.  It steers me away from ideologies and religious systems that divide us, and points me toward the simple things that bring us all, Christadelphians and patriotic citizens, atheists and believers of every kind, together.