So at two different points last week I was asked about my religion. The problem is that I can’t answer the age-old question of “what do you believe in?” I was not raised religiously, though we always had a big family Bible. I was never introduced to any outside religions, mainstream or not. I became a Christian in a Lock-In in Pigeon Forge. I became a Christian at a couple of those Lock-Ins. As I got older, I tried to find a girl who would let me touch her tits in a darkened closet. Guess Jesus loses to hormones. I got into a Baptist Church on Asheville Hwy with my friend Phil. His parents and he had been going there for a while and I dug hanging out with the youth group. This was half from a desire to feel good about my own spiritual self and part because the church girls were hot and I had heard that the mission trips were fun (14 kids, 2-4 adults you do the math). So I joined, went through the baptism and I immediately felt like I didn’t belong. I wasn’t raised in the environment. I couldn’t answer the trivia. I got IMMENSELY bored when the service was going on. I felt that the person that was talking to us didn’t really give two shits about who understood their sermon, just that they got through it and got to the Golden Corral before the other churches got all of the smoked ham. Add on top of that the constant barrage of request for prayer, donations, and help. I think at this point I came to my first clarity. If God was infallible and this place was doing “His work” wouldn’t he front the money? I mean if he can blink all of life into existence, why can’t he magic up a couple of hundred thousand dollars for those churches that deserve it. So this thought led me to the next few, which I think is are the true reason that I can not believe that there is a divine being up in a metaphorical or physical city of the clouds. The questions that made me step back from the idea of Christian mythology are this.
If God/Jehovah/Yahweh/Allah/etc is all-powerful and all-knowing, why is there suffering in the world? Why would they make us be able to sin? The answer that I most commonly receive is “It’s all part of God’s plan.” What a bullshit cop-out answer that is. To me that says “I dunno the answer to that question, I myself have asked that and I have never gotten an answer either.” The idea that you are supposed to just take this idea that God is up there and he wants you to follow all of his rules but then turns his back on you when you need help is fuckin bullshit. If that is true, God is a selfish mother fucker. He has a “master plan” and knows where all of his little pawns go to make this plan happen? If the being is all powerful, why wouldn’t he just blink the bad parts out of existence? Why does he HAVE to play shit out to the end of the Bible? He knows he’s gonna win anyway, so why not save his “children” a fuck ton of suffering and make shit better NOW. Why should people have to suffer through Hell on Earth? I think it is sheer negligence. If a person had a child and then knowingly put the child in a situation where they have to “help themselves” or they suffer horrible pain. It’s like setting your child in a ring of fire and saying “I’ll get you out, but you have to thank me for it in advance and swear that you will be completely devoted to me and me alone.” What a horrible idea. If you have the power to keep your creations from suffering, it’s your responsibility to make sure that they don’t. It is shitty to think that this being could end hunger, cancer, war, poverty, disease, death and pain but instead, he’s sits back and says “Let it play out, I can’t wait for the ending, it’s gonna be fuckin AWESOME!” And please don’t try the “You have to have Faith” argument, George Micheal, because faith itself doesn’t apply here. Christian faith is defined by dictionary.com as the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved. Yes you have faith in the process, but there is NOTHING in the scripture that assures that you won’t have pain, suffering, loss, or need. But because God promises this big payoff, you’re just supposed to fuckin GRIN AND BEAR IT! Why? Why is it this way? If you look at it from an outside perspective, say God is an 8-year-old. He has an ant farm. He is very proud of this ant farm, because he worked very hard to get it to look the way it does. It’s full of ants going about their normal lives, trying to get by, trying to live. Inside a smaller ant farm are 2 red ants. They are his chosen, he really likes them. He wants all of the ants to be just like them. They get everything that their tiny ant hearts ( I dunno if ants have hearts, bear with me) desire. All they have to do is not eat this one little piece of candy in a tucked away corner. When the inquisitive side gets too much, one of them (or both of them) eat the candy. So in turn, the kid says “You all are on your own, because those two red ones over there fucked it up, and so EVERYONE SUFFERS!” What a bad attitude. If we are to accept the Christian Mythology, then all pain and suffering (including child-birth) are the sole responsibility of two people who didn’t want God looking at their naughty bits. That sucks for the rest of us.
The other religions, mainstream or not, have the same basic principles. They are all recycled and shared betwixt each other. Almost all religions have the big three rules that they want their followers to keep (for the most part). Worship of the Divine. Be it God, Goddess, Pan, Mars, Allah, etc, every God wants worship. I don’t deny that if they are real they deserve it. If you are a real divine being and you are able to react change in the world with nary a thought, you deserve worship. But to demand the sacrifice of people’s children, money, virginity, body, life, or anything else is too much. At that point it is not worship. It is barter. The God is telling you that if you do something he will bless you, keep you, reward you, or spare you. All of the mythologies have scenarios of these acts or requests. The Bible has hundreds. The second of the big three is to not worship other Gods. Now this can be kinda tricky in some parts, some religions have two, three, or many multiple Deities, but they also all have stories of jealous Gods punishing followers or people due to some slight or misappropriation of faith. Ah, there’s that word again. In this instance we are looking at faith as the belief itself, not specifically the belief in one sect or idea. All the way back to the Roman and Greek Pantheon, the Gods were jealous of other Gods. That’s one the Christian God’s biggest no, no’s. Remember Charlton Heston throwing the stone tablets down because he left these assholes who had just witnessed miracles, alone for a couple of hours and they’re already dancing to idols. Tisk, Tisk. You know what else this proves? Gods are petty. If a divine being gets his feathers ruffled, he is gonna fuck your day up BAD. The last and to me the most important rule is: Be kind to others / The Golden Rule / The Wiccan Rede, etc, etc. Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone. Treat someone like you would want to be treated. AKA, Don’t be a dick. Don’t do things to hurt people. Help people when you can. Make people’s day better, regardless of how shitty your’s has been. This rule I can get behind. I may not believe in any Gods, but I believe in the mental and emotional capacity of people to love, care, and treat people with respect. If I go through my entire life and I am a good person, I help people, I don’t make people suffer, I let people use me if they need me. If I do all of that and I still don’t go into whatever paradise is at the end, because I didn’t do the right action, say the right words, or hold my foot up long enough while I clucked like a chicken, then FUCK THAT PLACE. I don’t want any part of that.
Please know that I am not beating on anyone’s religion. I honestly wish that I could accept as readily as I did in the past. I want that feeling of “you are here for a reason” as opposed to “you are a genetic fuckin mistake”. Some fish shit in a puddle of water and over the actions of the next 80 Million Years, you evolved into a douchebag that drives 10 miles under the speed limit and listens to Limp Bizkit. I want to be special. I want a perfect body and a matching soul. I will settle for a mediocre existence punctuated by the random bits of real miracles, like a spring day in the mountains, a really great piece of music, or the first boob you grab. What can I say, hormones are still in the lead.
I love you all that read this. May whatever Gods/Goddesses/FSM/etc Bless you. If you don’t believe, but you are a good person and are generally not a dick, than I Bless you myself. I am off to bed. Who knows maybe Alan Rickman will appear in my room and take me out for tequila shots and question answering.
~Scofield~
I am very much with you on all of this. Sometimes I feel a little left out even. I wasn’t raised with religion at all either. So it just doesn’t seem plausible for me to even entertain the idea of ‘supreme beings’ in general. I keep trying, I do. It’s just not something that ever works out. I always feel like the kid not invited to the club house or something.
Whenever something bad happens and everyone has their religion to turn to for answers is when it really ‘hurts’. The “Oh it’s Gods plan”, “We all have a path” etc etc really does seem to give comfort to those that believe, but to me it feels like a sham. It would be so nice to have that scapegoat though. I say that all the time. It would be so nice to go through life with that belief that “God only gives us what we can handle” and “God will provide”… it would be nice to be some blinded that you can’t see the world for what it is… sigh.
I can’t do it. I try. I know where you are coming from on this completely.
Exactly. It would be so nice to have that figure to turn to, but I can only question. The problem is when you start questioning, less and less of it makes any sense. Thank you for your comment, you are definitely on the same brain wave as I.
I was raised in a Christian home. A very strictly ruled Christian home, matter of fact. And when I started rolling into puberty, I started raising the same sorts of questions myself. Questions like that come from the Devil though, and if we entertain such notions we are allowing the Devil into our minds, see? So, we shouldn’t ask questions. Be good little sheeple. ::sigh:: I have such a huge problem with Religion as a whole, but am fascinated by it at the same time. I’ve tried my hand at (what I thought) were two completely different religions, spent years devoted to them and their concepts of God(s) only to realize that they were very much the same thing with different names & creeds, that’s all. So, I’ve given up on following any sort of Religion at all. Yeah, I’m a member of a UUC Church. And yeah, I’m a member of a Wiccan coven too. But I am part of these things because they add value to my Life. They help me along my Spirit Path a little, both in their own way. But I can promise you this, the minute either one of them starts insisting I HAVE to follow their specific brand of Religion is the minute I bail. The thing that pisses me off about Religion is not their different ideas, concepts, names & faces for the Divine it is that the try to tell people that theirs is the “right” way. Which is bullshit. I think that our experience with God/Goddess/Spirit/whatthefuckever is PERSONAL. It’s like that story with the five blind men and the elephant. Each one experienced the elephant as a completely different entity than the other four because of their perspective AND THEY WERE ALL RIGHT. Life should not be about which Religion is RIGHT. Life is about the experience of Life. You’ve got a good plan, Brother. Enjoy your own Life. Be glad for AND ACTIVELY SEEK your own personal miracles.
Those are the only ones that matter in the sum of it all.
You are God, my Friend.
And you do bless my Life on a regular basis. And I thank you for it.
I seem to remember a t-shirt that says I am god too lol.
But in all honesty, I get what you are saying about the perspective. It would really suck ass to be, say Orthodox Jewish or Taoist and then find out when it’s all said and done that you don’t get salvation because you grew up in the wrong part of the world. Someone is gonna lose, they have to. I like the idea of taking teachings from many religions and using that to shape one’s own belief system, it A.) takes pressure off of you to conform to one set cookie cutter standard. And B.) it makes you more open to seeing and accepting others way of thinking. To believe in one unified being though, just seems to be beyond me. I honestly have met Christians that hate my mindset more so that a person who just doesn’t believe. If you just don’t believe, they write you off. If you ask the questions to make sense of it all, you are hated more-so. Alas, I think I have all of the gods I need.
You bless me as well, Friend.
“It would really suck ass to be, say Orthodox Jewish or Taoist and then find out when it’s all said and done that you don’t get salvation because you grew up in the wrong part of the world.”
And therein lies the reasoning Christians use for proselytizing, hands-down my BIGGEST pet peeve.
I think our (humanity as a whole) concept of “God” is flawed. When I say you are God, I mean you are God. I am God. The douchebag driving 10 miles under the speed limit while listening to Limp Bizkit is God. That bug I just squished with a newspaper is God. Sometimes I wanna hug God. Sometimes I wanna punch Him/Her in the face. Heh. Ain’t Life grand?
I grok, Scofield. and You grok.
I tend to think of most religions as … not even blueprints, because those are kind of tidy … but general guidelines. someone originally wrote up the guidelines, and he got all his ‘cool’ friends to join up, and then the ‘not so cool’ people saw them all groovin’ together in the cave with the Pict, and they wanted in, so the Grand Poobah said — “well, okay .. but this is what you gotta do …”
It comes down to something along the lines of don’t join our club and the other clubs as well, and treat the people in your club right, and if you want to treat the people in the other clubs right, that’s swell and all, but don’t feel that you *have* too …
after that, pretty much anything goes, depending on the club.
As for me, I do believe in a pantheon of greater beings. divine? not by dictionary definition, because some of them are definitely limited in scope. within their particular purview they hold a great deal of sway, but outside that … nope — hedged in on all sides.
I try to think of “divinity” with at capital “D” as more like a bunch of stained-glass windows … they break that awfully bright Atman down into something more easily seen/experienced by the masses … and some people don’t like the picture in ‘this’ particular window, so they go down the hall until they find one that they DO like … the Atman beyond is the same, and it may not notice (or indeed, even care) that it is receiving adulation … but the vast majority just can’t percieve it as it *is* unless it is filtered down to something they can bridge a connection to.
Where does that leave you? are you seeing the windows, but not finding one whose picture appeals to you? are you, in fact, beyond needing the windows at all, and able to experience the numinous directly? are you in a dark hallway, trying to find these windows that everyone is talking about? I don’t know. For what it’s worth, I don’t care. If you want to find peace and happiness, I’ll help you look. If you’ve already got peace and happiness, I’m glad for you there too. I like you, as you are, and I think that “as you are” is a pretty good way to be.
not very helpful, from a shepherd standpoint, or a guidepost, but I like to think that it is humanistic. we are all parts of a something greater, and everything we do touches on something, or many somethings, else. I believe my life is better for having known you, and I’d like to think that I’ve made some kind of impact on your life, picayune though it may have been.
Either way — Tioraidh!
Okay Ky, so I had to read this a couple times, because your mind operates at a couple levels above mine. I get the windows analogy, and that is a great way to put it. I want to believe that there is a higher power that I owe my life to, or at least a nod, handshake and thank you. But however I look at it, I think I am too inquisitive for any religion. The concept of just having faith that something is there looking over you is too foreign for me. I want the proof. (YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE PROOF) And so I think I am the kind that knows there’s windows there, and I may use them too let the light in all at once, but I am okay if any of them want to not shine on me. I don’t expect any God/Gods to give me anything, since I am not one of their followers. Nor do I think that their followers are foolish, I envy them in most ways, but it’s just not for me. To be honest, I have had more positive reactions from non-Christian religions to my way of thinking than by Christians. You, Ice, X, Cootie, Bethy, my old roomie Chris, have all been positive religious influences on me. I am a better and wiser person for that.