God Concept, Shattered Faith, and Alice

God can’t be perfect.

If God had made it impossible for humans to be less than kind and loving to one another, we would indeed have peace on Earth.

If God can foresee the future as part of being omnipotent, then he knows what we will do to each other through Free Will. I view free will as a huge mistake by God.

I began thinking of how people are indoctrinated into faith and how we humans can be so easily fooled. Things that come to mind are the many religions where people are convinced that their religion is the only religion because that was how they were raised.

This is much like being loyal to your sports team because of where you live. A person’s religious beliefs are far more a function of geography than choice. People are raised in the religion of their families.

If you live in Italy you are likely to be born Catholic. Very few Buddhists are raised by Catholics. Occasionally, people will be influenced to choose a religion different from family but it is still due to peer pressure or sheer salesmanship.

Some people claim that they “just know” their religion is the right one because they get filled with the holy spirit or some other variation on the theme and that is how they know it is true.

Others claim they “just know” when they meet their “soul mate” because they have that same type of feeling that convinces them that this is “the one”.

I had that experience once. I met Alice and we fell in love almost instantly. She was everything I had always wanted in a soul mate: She was funny and bright and full of energy. She was vivacious and beautiful and had goals.

She had a confidence that she was going to be great and make this life all that it could be. She told me that she loved me and would marry me. I told her I loved her and I was confident that we would live the proverbial happily ever after. She brought the best out in me. I was the best 'me' I had ever been.

In short, I would have claimed that it was a match made in heaven if I had that as part of my belief system. We were planning to get married and build a magnificent life together.

Alice and her mother met with my father. When she returned, she was upset. She tried to justify herself to me without telling me what the meeting was about or what had taken place. She blamed my father for being “A piece of work” and would say no more. My father would say nothing about this either, for many years.

Within a week, she insisted that I move out from her home where we had lived for 8 months. She was going off on a cruise with her high school flame she rekindled at her high school reunion. He had just returned from Desert Storm.

I was crushed.

How could someone who loved me and whom I had absolutely known we’d be married and committed to each other forever suddenly dump me for someone else? I absolutely knew that the woman I loved wouldn’t do this to me and that it was completely unfathomable that it was happening.

The reality of course is that it was happening. I had no information as to why. My faith in my own judgment was shattered. Like a religious zealot who absolutely knows that his God is real, I absolutely knew we were truly in love. I had no doubt that we were in love, totally committed to each other and destined to be together. I felt it in every fiber of my being that we were meant to be together.

It took quite awhile before I realized that the “completely-in-love” part was my own creation. I had projected the perfect love for me onto this woman and she played along in what could only be described as an Oscar level performance. Hands down, Alice was the best actress I have ever met.

I would have loved the woman I thought she was for all eternity but she wasn’t really that person.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, I am still scarred by that experience and the faith in my personal judgment has never returned. How could I believe anything so completely and yet be so completely wrong? I see people who are totally convinced of something because they “just know” it to be true as fools -- as once was I.

My painful experience is that feelings – no matter how certainly felt -- can be wrong.

Around 23 years later, just before my father’s death, he told me what had gone on at the meeting with Alice and her mother.

He said he played along for awhile because he was amused and curious in just how far they would go. As it turns out, they were trying to get a financial commitment from him in trade for marriage to me. Since she was of Mexican heritage, I think that there may be a cultural explanation for what we, in America, would consider pimping.

I met and liked her mother. That she would pimp out her own daughter may have a cultural foundation in her family’s country and be considered an acceptable practice in her home country.

Women have been culturally chattel (property) for centuries and so traditions reflect the second class status of women in many cultures. Modern cultures have just begun embracing equality between the sexes and a modern marriage was my expectation.

My father, being a very moral man, refused to make any such assurances. He knew how I felt about her. Dad wanted to protect me. He would not allow his son to marry, in his estimation, a prostitute, so he told them I would receive no financial benefits from him as his son. He was certain that, if he was right, they would move on to another more financially attractive man. Sadly, he was right.

This information finally helped me reconcile what she said to me after the meeting with my father. Almost whining she asked, “Why shouldn’t I marry wealthy when I choose to marry? “

Confused because I wasn’t privy to the context of her question, I told her that I thought marrying for love was all that mattered and that I thought marrying for money was inferior and distasteful because it made love more of a transaction than a relationship. I explained that I thought marrying for money to be demeaning to both marriage partners.

In the song, “Desperado” a line goes something like, ‘a queen of diamonds will beat you if she’s able but a queen of hearts is always your best bet’. She was my only queen of diamonds and I’m grateful that I’ve been fortunate to have two marriages with good women who were my queens of hearts.

Alice and I didn’t have the same purpose. I wanted a relationship and Alice wanted a transaction.

I am convinced that religious belief falls into that same kind of self-delusion. We can have total conviction on an idea and still be totally wrong and there is no infallible way to trust that what we feel has any basis in truth.

There are those who are sincere and those who are predatory in religion and the latter is more common in my experience. It is possible that neither type knows the Truth.

-------------------------------- Possibly......

A close friend familiar with my love lost story suggested a possible alternative viewpoint. I don't buy it but I'm intrigued by the possibility. It could be that Alice did love me. That we were soulmates but because my father had threatened to disinherit me, she felt she could not continue to our marriage because causing a rift between my father and me would be a wound I'd eventually blame her for. She loved me and because of that, couldn't cause that pain for me.

It's a sweet notion. It could change my perspective of my ability to trust my feelings once again. Sadly, had she told me the truth, I'd have opted for the separation and stayed with her. My success or failure is my own responsibility and no one, not even my father, can change that. I had shut her down when she called years later, after my marriage to Kathy. I told her I couldn't risk having her in my life -- I couldn't survive losing her again. I asked her not to contact me again.

Wouldn't that be rich? I may have stopped my soulmate from reconnecting with me. No. It's too late for these thoughts. If she told me my close friend was right, could I forgive her? Could I forgive myself? Would I reconnect knowing the truth? This is a futile exercise.

There is only now. The past can't be changed. The perception of it can, though. Would that be a healing? Hell is not knowing the truth.

There is today and possibly tomorrow. That must be my focus.

Forward time strides, and looking backwards can result in tripping over the present sweet moments.

Still...