On theism and spiritualism
I was born into a Roman Catholic country. During my youth, my family would be observing religious customs, such as going to church every Sunday, remembering the essence of Lent and Christmas, and following practices whenever a life event happens to our relatives such as marriage, passing away, or even celebrations of birth and christendom. Because I was still a youngling, I thought these were all unnecessary traditions etched into our history, but as I started to mature I've begun having my own thoughts about the point of following all these...why we go and pray, why we do this and that, and reflecting on myself and the changing world it brought me a kind of melancholy that all of these qualities will soon whimper and die along with their essence.
As of the time of writing, I remained a Roman Catholic, albeit my beliefs were different from the ordinary Roman Catholic practitioner. In here, the concept of God, or rather the Trinity, is a triple of exalted entities taken human forms and sensibilities. In the book of Genesis, it was said that Man was created by God "in his own image". Jesus, the Son of God, was brought into the world in a human way, birthed by Mary from her womb. Then He began His existence to the world in relatable human ways.
When I was in college, I started having questions about the portrayal of God in the religious Christian texts. "Why did God seemingly had a human form? Why was Jesus the same? Why do They think and feel and sense the world like us humans? Why relate specifically to us, when the universe could be thriving with all sorts of life? Even so, why humans, and not a cat, or a plant, or even an amoeba?" I thought that for most of what was depicted in the Bible, it appeared too anthropocentric, when other religions could afford having deities take on other forms, even shifting from one form to another (Zeus, for example).
It's why I've adopted a different perception of God, that it is transcendental to the universe of humans--that it lives on another plane of existence and yet it encompasses ours. A God I chose to believe does not have human sensibilities or thoughts; it doesn't exhibit any human or animal emotion when something happens and it doesn't attempt to act on the universe like what a human would do--it just is. We could not talk or interact with God in our ways, because God is simply beyond reach. Think of the Flatlanders existing on their own plane when they come across a being of the third dimension...it would be a startling, possibly frightening experience to have seen a creature. But when Flatlanders see the extra dimension from theirs, they experience epiphany that cannot be easily explained to their fellows. In a way, I see myself and everyone as Flatlanders, but God does not only live with an extra dimension, but possibly more dimensions that you and I could comprehend.