So You Say

So, if God has existed forever…you know, what did he do in his spare time, like, before he made the Earth and everything? - Father Dougal

People shuffled in quietly to the Church finding a free pew to sit on. Light pours in from the stained glass windows. Everybody is serene as the wait for the bell to ring and the priest to appear. I sit staring at the Apostles’ Creed and thinking is it really a profession of faith or a way of indoctrination?

The problem with being a teenager is that you start to question everything that you were raised to believe is true. I believed that if I stole sweets from my sister then God would be watching me and he wouldn’t be happy. I believed that when somebody died then they looked down on you from heaven.  Now I’ve become philosophical and I ask myself whether or not God really exists.

On the one hand religion has been a part of everyday life for at least 4000 years. Maybe people had the same ideas at the same time but there is some kind of collective experience there. There are miracles every day that can’t be explained by science. I don’t want to believe we’re alone in the universe and when you die that’s it, you fade into nothing. For me it doesn’t make any sense that one moment someone could be alive and experience the world and then just disappear.

On the other hand, it’s very easy to see how as a race we would have begun by attributing the unexplainable to a more powerful force. Before science if a volcano erupted it was because a god was angry, but now we know better. It’s easy to see how we would give this force attributes and make it look like us because we don’t have the imagination to think of anything else. Logically, even if the world was created by intelligent design what are the chances that there is a God that cares about each one of us and cares about whether we sin or not? In reality we’re a speck in a great expanse.

The thing is, I really want to believe. I was talking to a friend about this and he told me a heartbreaking story about his friend’s family and the different sorts of illnesses and accidents that have been thrown at them. It made me think, isn’t it easier to be angry at God for neglecting us rather than face being alone in the middle of nothing? I want to have the conviction that some of the people I know have because they are honestly content. I used to have it. My mum described faith and just knowing deep down that there is something more. There’s no logic to explain it, it’s just there.

Does God exist? He may, or he may not. If he/she/it does we have no idea what form God will take or whether it is loving, vengeful or indifferent. In all honesty we know nothing. Yet some people know that something exists beyond our understanding and I wish I was one of them.

Everybody in the Church stands and there is a rustle of paper. The priest clears his throat and the silence is broke with a chorus of “We believe in one God, father the almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen…”

Breaking news: Ireland is apparently out of recession. I say apparently because, sure, according to the definition we are. A recession is defined as  a period when GDP falls for at least two quarters. Ireland’s GDP grew by 2.7 percent in the first three months of 2010 meaning that we are technically out of recession. But forgive me if I don’t start jumping for joy just yet. Brian Cowen has warned of a “hard road” to full recovery. I guess he isn’t jumping for joy either. There are a couple of reasons for my pessimism.

According to the Central Statistics Office our unemployment levels are around 13.7%. This is extraordinary when compared to the 4.3% of 2007. Jobs that were once thought to be secure are no longer hiring, law and architecture being good examples.  People are slipping from high earning careers into dole queues. Unfortunately the national contraction  in employment as a whole means that it you are unlikely to get another job even if you retrain in a different area. The problems are only being exacerbated by the number of people who took out loans and mortgages when times were good and are now facing the possibility of losing their family homes. And it’s not as if our exorbitant costs have fallen either as just yesterday it was announced that our food and drink prices are the second highest in Europe.

The question on everybody’s lips for the last two years has been ‘who’s fault is it?’ After reading the summary of the Regling-Watson bank report (http://thestory.ie/2010/06/09/summary-regling-watson-report/) it is clear that the over-dependency on the property market and construction sector was a major issue. This in turn lead to excessive lending. The report strongly indicates that the government encouraged this to happen and did not implement any of the necessary procedures to ensure a soft landing.

Of course, it is easy to blame the government. The report says that we should have been saving up for a rainy day when we had growth from the mid 1990s to 2006. However if that had happened then I imagine every agency and charity would have been outraged that the government had not done more to improve the lone parent allowance/investment in the health system/transport etc. The problem with being in government is that once you’re in power you don’t want to lose it. Fianna Fail have endeavored to become a catch-all party over the last couple of years and many of their decisions were made in an effort to remain popular. They had become short-sighted.

I am normally against the government, supporting a different party, but I actually do not think that Fianna Fail are that bad. It is very easy to overlook their achievements while in power when you’re trying to pick them apart. However it is clear to me that the party is a very different entity to what it once was. To put it simply I’ll quote a line from Eamon Gilmore’s speech in 2007 – “Eamon De Valera would never have taken fistfuls of cash in a suitcase.” Even if it wasn’t illegal, the handouts Bertie Ahern took were not right and it signalled the new path that his party had taken.

Even if the economy and the health system and the banking system were to improve I still believe there is no way Fianna Fail would be able to remain in government. There always comes a stage where government needs to change. I don’t support the Conservatives in Britain but I believed in the necessity of change so that the country didn’t stagnate. Brian Cowen is right: there is a long hard road still to be travelled and I’ll bet he won’t be at the helm by the end of it.