Inconvenient Articles of Faith

We live in a time of great division, where the simplest of personal truths must be explained and justified.  This is particularly true regarding matters of faith.  Traditional faiths are out of fashion, and thus must be justified, explained, excused and forgiven, to avoid condemnation, and many dominant belief systems are not even recognized as belief systems at this point in time.

I recognize my adherence to specific traditional articles of faith to be completely without objective merit, if such a thing exists. Further, I recognize that my adherence to specific traditional articles of faith to be, and please take careful note of this, involuntary.  I consider my psyche to have been so deeply programmed at a very early age with very specific notions of faith that I could not remove these beliefs from my being with any effort I can imagine.  They are often inconvenient, frequently painful, and not something about which I like to speak or write.

Yet, for reasons mysterious to me, after all of my careful preamble, I feel compelled to share the following email exchange between myself and my Mother:

Mother:

Love you and think of you all the time.  I struggle with all this covid stuff...and find it helpful, even essential to read the 91st Psalm daily and to meditate on other scriptures.  I am doing well.

Me:

I hope you are well, but know that with age, my age and yours, comes many forms of unwell.  I just read the 91st Psalm and am unsure of its relevance to me or now.  Everything from the Old Testament, I believe, needs to be viewed through the lens of the New Testament, but I am not familiar enough with either to promote any specific opinions.  I have been thinking about this a lot, given all that is happening, and all of the history I have been reading lately.  I do not want to believe in a God who has a hand in this world, as that would truly be a cruel God, so those who have fortunate experiences and attribute all the good to God, should necessarily accept that all of the bad that surrounds us, and has for millennia, is also the hand of God either acting, or choosing not to act.  I do not wish to pass into, or now live within, an eternity ruled by such a cruel God.  I choose to believe that we are living in a time when we are on our own, that God has given us the opportunity to prove our worth through our actions and inaction.  I want to believe in a God who looks on this world and weeps.  But is leaving us, for any time, to our own devices, the act of a benevolent God?   I can't claim the wisdom to answer that, but the question remains.  When my own logic leads me into these dark corners of doubt, I remind myself of my smallness, my ignorance, the brevity of my existence on Earth.  I seek humility before God.  I don't always dwell in that place, but I know, with certainty, in the end, it is all I will have left.