SubscribeThere are a bunch of billboards cropping up around town, usually showing one or two people in some sort of world-weary attitude, with the caption UNFULFILLED.ORG blazoned across. Before I even went to the website (which I did just now) I knew it had to be for some sort of religious group. I haven’t read through the site, I simply wanted to verify the URL, but as soon as you see a bible passage in the upper right-hand corner, there isn’t much else the page could be.
I think it’s effective advertising. Everyone feels dissatisfied with their life at some point, and those who never do are in denial about it. I can relate to the images. But my dissatisfaction is partly caused by the very thing they’re pushing.
Some might say I’m in the midst of a religious crisis. I was raised Roman Catholic, went to a private Catholic grade school and a private Catholic high school. I was married in the Catholic church and promised to raise any hypothetical children in that faith. And then the world got bigger, and high-level clergy made unacceptable (to me) decisions, and I became more educated, and loved ones died, and the representatives of the Church got more and more out of touch with the world, and going to Mass started causing me infinitely more pain and doubt than comfort. And that was when I decided I was done.
I currently have no religion. It’s not that I don’t have faith, because I do still cling to many of the teachings of my childhood, but that faith has nothing to do with the organized Catholic religion. It likely resembles no organized religion on Earth. But I do believe in morality and justice and love and yes, a Higher Power.
All the same, I am unfulfilled. I fail to see how any kind of ministry could possibly change that. A new church can’t convince a new company that I’d be a perfect fit for their team. A new religion won’t take away the agony of relationship decisions. A new spirituality isn’t going to make me at peace with a flawed and sometimes painful reality.
All the same, those damn billboards bring me down.
I saw the billboards also and was hoping for some kind of answer to my life which seems to have not a lot of fulfillment…. duh…….. well, i am not religious so i guess i will keep stumbling along. apparently life can t be solved as easily as we d hoped.