Title- Wondering
Author- KeriM
Category- Angst
Character- Elizabeth Weir
Rating-T
Disclaimer- I own nothing. At all.
A/n: Personally I am a Christian, but it is hard sometimes not to have doubts about religion. This story is not meant to offend anyone. It is only meant to show what it would be like if Elizabeth struggled with her religion and sense of self. So please, don't take offense because none is meant. If you're sensitive about religion, don't read. And don't say I didn't warn you.
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Sometimes she wonders what she would be like now if she had kept her faith. She wonders where she would be.
Would she be in Peru working as a missionary...a school teacher who went to church every time the door was open, praying when it wasn't?
She doesn't know where she would be, but she knows where she wouldn't be.
She wouldn't be the leader of the Atlantis expedition if she hadn't abandoned her faith, her God, her family.
The Weir family had been devout Baptists for as long as anyone could remember. Elizabeth Weir, child number three of Michael and Caroline Weir, had been no exception. She went to church and listened like a good little girl; she tried to witness to her friends when she was in the 2nd grade; she was saved and baptized by the time she was 13. She was more secure in her faith as a child than most adults ever were.
But children grow up. Elizabeth had always been exceptionally smarter than those around her. Sometimes she saw it as a gift. Other times she saw it as a curse.
When she was 15 years old, Elizabeth began to doubt her faith. The spiritual part of her wanted to believe in everything the Bible said, in everything the pastor preached.
The rational side of her, however, wondered how something as big as the universe, the planets, the people on them, could be thrown together as perfectly as they had been in 6 days.
Her spiritual side reminded her that her God was omnipotent. He could do anything with the snap of his fingers.
Her rational side nagged at her that that was impossible. All things started out as one tiny elenent that grew and evolved over billions of years. The product of that evolution was human life and ingenuity.
She kept her doubts to herself. They plagued her mind day in and day out. She fought with what she had been brought up learning and what was more plausible.
She wished she could still be that child that believed blindly and whole-heartedly in the Bible and the God that inspired it.
She felt, however, that that being a rational, intelligent person like she was, she coulnd't ignore other religions that had once seemed so silly to her. But was Buddhism and Hinduism anymore silly than her own Christian faith?
Elizabeth struggled with this until one day when she was 18, she withdrew from her church. She told her family she didn't know what to believe in anymore. She wasn't sure she believed in anything other than humanity.
Her family told her goodbye.
Elizabeth chose to become a diplomat instead of a missionary. She felt that maybe she, a lone human, could prove that humanity wasn't so bad. They weren't pieces on a chess board to be manipulated and moved whenever a higher being felt like it. Everything happened because of human actions, because of choices people made.
That career path had led her here, to the balcony on Atlantis, where she looked at the stars and listened to the waves crashing against the city. To this day, Elizabeth wasn't sure what she believed in, or whether she believed in anything at all.
With everything around her that contradicted her original faith, could she really still believe in one perfect being that ruled over the universe, including the Ancients? Could she really afford not to believe in him?
If there really was one sovereign God, where was he now, when everything was so messed up?
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A/N: Like I said, this is not meant to offend anyone, least of all people of Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism. Remember this is a fictional story about a Christian woman doubting her faith. To her, maybe other religions do seem silly, as they usually do to people who don't practice them. Even though I am a Christian, I do not discount or look down down on other religions. We're all trying to get to the same place, right? Just keep that in mind, please.
I hope you enjoyed.
KeriM