Enough of Heaven

By Emily Ruskovich

Emily Ruskovich

I was possibly the most prayed-for girl in my school. They prayed for me more than for the children who lead hard lives, or the students with learning disorders, or the girls who were picked on because of the way they dressed, or the bullies who felt they had to hurt other people because their own lives were so painful. They prayed for me not because my life was hard, or because I was hateful or unkind. They prayed for me because I had committed the unforgivable sin of being an atheist.

In class debates about morality, when I would be the only one to speak from a nonreligious point of view, they would glance sideways at each other sadly. Poor misguided girl, they thought, poor little heathen. She's read the bible all the way through, and she still can't see the light.

I grew up in Northern Idaho, in one of only a few nonreligious families in the area. All my life, my friends and teachers and their families had pitied me, had tried to save me from my atheism, as though it were some sort of dark, malignant growth they wanted to cut out of me. What they never knew was that my soul didn't need any saving. I was happy with who I was. My atheism taught me to be strong and to be grateful. I knew that one lifetime was all I had, but even that is enough if you know how to live it.

As I was growing up, the people around me always referred to my atheism as a lack of belief in anything. But it isn't that at all. My disbelief in God only strengthens my passion about what I do believe in. I believe in myself, and in the power of the individual. I believe in loving this Earth and the things in it for their own sake, and not simply because they are a product of God. I believe that my life is very short, and that I must do everything I can to lead it well, because this is all I'll ever have.

When I first started going to school, and I saw that other people did not see the world as I did, I couldn't understand them. I experienced everything differently from my Christian friends. I was constantly baffled by the natural world--the spirals of snail shells, the geometry of spider silk, the lines the grass made on my hand when I leaned on it too hard. But my awe was different from my Christian friends' awe. Once, lying on my stomach cutting out pictures from a National Geographic to paste onto a collage for school, I came upon a picture of the Earth, taken from the moon through the clouds, bright with blues and greens. I stared at it, and gasped to my friend, "Look!" She glanced up from her scissors and scraps of paper to look upon the world from the surface of the moon. "Yeah," she said. "Cool." And went back to her cutting.

I was stunned at her indifference. Didn't she see what I did? The chance of it all! Millions upon millions of years of spinning and growing and changing and learning from itself--that blue and green sphere that started as nothing more than little atoms bumping into each other in some other universe, that someday became Earth, an Earth that kept growing, kept changing, until one day, it held a creature whose intelligence was so incredible that it could travel to the moon and back! Didn't she see how long it took? How much chance? How much instinct? How much evolution? I tried to tell all this to her, to help her see, and she nodded with her "yeahs" and "cools," and pasted the pictures on the poster board without really looking at them.

"But--but don't you see how amazing it is?" I said. And her response has stayed with me all these years and helped me better understand my own atheism: "Sure," she had said. "It ought to be amazing. God created it, didn't He?"

For all her preaching and praying for my mortal soul, I don't think even she understood how different the two of us really were. She loved the world because it was a miracle, a work of God, and all the things in it were His doing, so of course they were all equally amazing. The Earth, in her eyes, got no credit on its own. It ought to be spectacular because it was the work of something so powerful our meek little human minds could never understand it. That's why she loved this world.

But I loved the Earth for its own sake, not because it was just another miracle of God, but for its own will to live, for the ant lion setting traps for its prey in the dust, for the muscular, golden lion ripping at antelope flesh. I saw every little thing as its own separate wonder: insects devouring the rot of a fallen tree, eating life out of death. A cow nursing its week-old calf. Honeybees crawling in and out of snapdragon jaws to steal bits of fire for their queen. A flicker learning how to fly. A child learning how to read. A moth so camouflaged to look like a leaf that you have to stare at it for a long time to even see it.

And the colors! The salamander red of wild poppies, the seedy purple of serviceberry juice, the iridescent green-black-green of beetle wings and silver-green-white of aspens. And a human child curling its little fingers around the stem of a rose, and staring at the brilliant pricks of red on the soft palm of her hand, learning pain for the first time, red pain borne of a desire for an even redder beauty. All of these are separate, living marvels, each deserving awe, each still working toward perfection, still evolving, still surviving because of a sheer desire to live, to reproduce, to go on living.

My atheism has greatly affected my own will to go on living, as well. It has influenced the way I view myself and my own potential, and the way I view humankind. I live my life knowing that I am alone. There is no God looking over me, who will take me into His loving arms when I die. It is a terrifying responsibility to know that you're alone. But with this loneliness comes incredible strength in knowing that someday I will die and that will be the end, so I've got to do everything I can to live well.

I have known people who have used their unconditional belief in God as an excuse not to live. They always look forward to heaven, some white light in the distance that is beautiful but blinding. They hunger for it, as though it was their sustenance, the only thing that mattered. And so they spend their lives believing that there is something greater, and they look at the white light so long that they don't notice anything else around them--the blades of new grass, their children growing up, their own faces changing in their reflections. But what they don't know is that they can find what they are looking for in this life, if only they open their eyes. As Clarence Darrow put it many years ago during the Scopes Monkey Trial of the 1920s, "[They] were looking for God too high up, and too far away."

An atheist doesn't have that white light to live for. I am grateful that I do not. I have nothing to believe in but myself--no Heaven, no Hell, no God. I live every day knowing that if I don't accomplish something great in this brief lifetime, then I'll never get the chance to do it again. I refuse to believe that my existence is nothing more than an admission of my humility to a greater being. I resent the clichŽd excuse of "we're only human." To me, the human spirit is the only spirit, the greatest spirit that has ever existed, so if we make mistakes, it is our responsibility and no one else's, because we have the potential to do great things.

And if this world stopped loving "God" so much, and started loving this Earth more, and each other more, then perhaps we as the human race could accomplish even greater things than we have. I put all of my love in individual human beings, not in grand abstractions and ideals. I love my mother with the same ferocity that others love their gods, because it was she who carried me inside of her--not some all-knowing perfect being--and it was she who gave me life and Earth and a reason to live: because I am a human being, and that, alone, is sacred. I see man and woman as strong, able creatures, standing tall, heads held high in pride and vision, hands held out, creating something new, writing books, building cities, changing worlds. Their eyes are open, wide and searching, trying to take in as much of the world as they can before they die. That is my vision of the ideal man and woman.

But a religious person might see it differently. A religious person might think of the ideal man as kneeling on the ground instead of standing tall; head bowed in humility, instead of held high in pride; hands pressed tight together in prayer instead of outstretched in motion; and eyes closed instead of open, blinded by a light they'll never touch. Which of them--religionist or atheist--has more goodness inside?

When I think of a good-hearted atheist, standing beside a good-hearted Christian, I think of how much more raw goodness it takes to be a kind atheist. A good atheist goes through life doing what is right for the simple reason that it is right, not out of fear of divine punishment or hope of divine reward. A good atheist who risks her life to save another human being is more godly than a good Christian who does the same. The Christian does it with the belief that if she perishes, she will still go on to a better place, and be rewarded for her sacrifice. The atheist does it with the knowledge that if she dies, then that's the end. Which requires more bravery, more love of this world?

I have tried to be a kind person all my life. But I never needed a book to tell me what was right and what was sacred and what was good. I know what's right because of the simple fact that I am a human being.

Being human, I never needed to create a Creator, like so many people have. I am proud to be what I am. Just looking at the image of the Earth from the moon is enough of a heaven for me.

"I grew up in Northern Idaho, living on a mountain with my family, loving the outdoors. I am 19 years old, and I will be a junior at the University of Montana Davidson Honors College. I am studying creative writing and literature, and hope someday to be a novelist, or a writer for the National Geographic Magazine. I am interested in writing, public speaking, hiking, beekeeping, and music. I have been a strong, devoted atheist all my life."