Playing God

As a kid, I used to read the children’s Bible in bed. I read about how in seven days, God created everything a person could ever need. First, there was light in the darkness, followed by the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, life and the sun, moon and stars. And on the sixth day, He created Man – almost divine, the book said.

After school, I sometimes read in the Quran, listened to sutras or philosophised about the Big Bang. My parents were non-religious, so everything was allowed. I had an empty canvas on which to colour in my faith according to my own insights.

Am I subservient?

Religion is generally understood to be one of the many forms in which people give meaning to life or look for significant connections. But I soon found out that the meaning of life is given by others and that it’s better not to look for anything: that this prevents you from finding significant connections, since one religion can’t coexist with the next – or with the absence of it. Just like when the love between two people becomes impossible if one person hasn’t coloured in his or her religious canvas in exactly the same way as the other.

Some people claim that the Bible says that divine love cannot exist between two people of the same sex. But I never read that anywhere. Just like I only found out that as a woman, I am subservient to men in God’s eyes after someone told me.

The human interpretation of a religion has made me an atheist. Not because I don’t believe at all, but because I don’t believe human beings. Because God, Man is not divine; mankind destroys everything that is divine through its words and deeds. But I still believe in the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, the sun and life until the sixth day.

And that’s why at Christmas, you can find me lying on some beach in the South. While other people kneel in front of the altar and listen to the service, I’ll be listening to God whispering softly in my ear and playing with my hair, while I sit on my knees in the sand and enjoy the sun warming the drops of salty water on my skin.