Drafted: May 29, 2010. Published: July 03, 2010Note: Part II of my entry on religion. Again if you're going to be offended about what I have to say about my inner thoughts on religion I suggest you move along :D
As I learned more terms, I started to name myself an Atheist. I was tired of religion. I was tired of people throwing their religion at me. Mormons down the street would come
often. They came and knocked on our door early in the morning when we're all asleep (okay, to be fair, my family aren't early birds) and preached the bible to us. You don't understand English? Don't worry about it, they'll come prepared (if they haven't already) with books talking about passages of the bibles in your language, no sweat. They are missionaries out to get you. Great.. as if they haven't done enough of that in foreign countries for hundreds of years already. I get it. God is great, the bible is great, everything is great.
Not only were the people starting to annoy me, the actual celebration started to annoy me too. Every celebration I grew more weary of the fact that we were going to sit there listening to the Father blab on about the bible. I felt like the Fathers needed to go experience life a little more or something. Their stories were the same every year. "I met a boy named ____ he taught me a very good lesson." Yeah, I know. It's like when people talk about how their parents/grandparents reminisce about their past. "Back when I was you age..." Uh huh? I guess I should appreciate when
that Father came and told stories during celebration though. One of them reminded me of the videos I mentioned in the last entry. The monotone voice and all.
I'm not saying I totally ditched religion at that point. I'm not sure if I ever really gave up the belief. But by grade 11 I referred to myself as an Agnostic. There are many reasons for this. But one of the things that really made me riled up was what my religion teacher had said that year. "What are Agnostics? They're people that can't make up their mind. They don't want to commit to anything." That's not a very correct way to explain it. At least, I felt like it didn't apply to me. His explanation sounded more like nihilism. So what exactly does being an Agnostic mean to me exactly? For me, commitment wasn't the issue. I believe something
might be out there but I can't be sure what that something is, exactly.Just because I'm not jumping head first into a religion doesn't mean I closed the door on it. What if I said I'm committed in believing that "something" is out there. How do I 'make up my mind' on something that I don't know about? Why am I forced to just close my eyes and pick a random one just so I'm committed?
It's like calling a virgin who has never dated, not committed. Only someone who's happily married is committed. Can people who are married not cheat? Are they still referred to as committed? Do you see my point? Am I lower than my religion teacher, at least in his mind, just because I'm not labeled under a certain religion? Do I need to stick one on and suddenly I'm committed? I can declare myself Christian, yet never attend church, swear, and commit all sorts of sins.. yet will be deemed committed. Ridiculous.
And I mentioned earlier that lots of people got baptized young. There's a problem with that. All that was agreed upon during the ceremony is that the parents agreed to bring the children up in a Catholic/Christian setting. I didn't get accepted into the school because I was not baptized. At that point, I could say I was a way more committed Christian than some of the students that were baptized. Okay, so I may not go to church.. but I had placed my faith in God. I prayed and thanked him daily. I made a conscious effort. That isn't enough in religious communities. It's like saying 'You can pretend all you want, but you'll never be a part of us unless you have solid proof." However, belief isn't solid in the first place. My belief isn't a piece of paper stating so. But it is.. at least in our society, I feel it is.
It's weird because even the people in high positions, in the religion sense, have not shown us a good example of how much better it is to place their faith in God. They have a weird way of spreading God's words. I'm sure a lot of people have read the news about how the current pope's brother isn't exactly free of scandals regarding the German boys' choir. So.. what does this show us about being committed to a religion?
Religion is a very interesting thing. People put blind faith in it and hope for the best. But humans are very selfish and foolish beings. There aren't many people who pray wholeheartedly. Yet by doing so, they hope to receive something from God. Like karma, some believe if they pray enough it makes up for things and God will send some goodness their way. I hate that. I can't say I haven't done that, but what I'm saying is that it makes me realize what we're doing and makes me kind of disappointed in everyone. Instead of pushing ourselves off the ground and pushing forward we pray and hope some sort of miracle happens or somehow God granted a wish. I know not everyone is like this.. I also know that not every prayer sent God's way is to beg for something. You can't deny it isn't true either - that this doesn't happen.
Sometimes that blind faith pays off. I won't deny that religion has helped many people though. It has gotten some people out of bad times or critical times. But what if someone prayed for God to help them.. say.. out of a huge debt. Would they just owe it all to God? Why can't they give themselves a pat on the back and say 'I worked hard to get out of that!"? Why do we have to our life's fate, our achievements, or tribulations, into the hands of someone else? My friend had asked me if I prayed. I used to. I don't anymore. These are some of the reasons why I do not. I'm going through trouble in my life but I do not want to pray and hope God will guide me through. I'm happy it helps her and soothes her. But I feel the opposite. I cannot expect to not be committed to being a Christian and yet ask things of God. I feel like it's almost offensive. And also if something good happens do I thank God for it? Why should I give him the credit of something good happening? My friend didn't randomly bake cookies and gifted some to me just because God planted that in her head, right?
My friend had gifted me with the book "Soul Cravings: The Prequel". I haven't finished but what the author talks about so far seems fascinating. He talked about how people believes God has unconditional love for us yet we all believe we have to work for it. That's not called unconditional love. And it's true, right? If we were really loved unconditionally by God why does he punish us like this and people feel like they have to earn back his love? And this brings in a whole other thing I want to talk about.
Everything seems hypocritical. God created Adam and Eve and they lived in Eden. In Eden there was the tree which they were forbidden to eat from. Why did God put it there? Why did he put a tree there that they could not eat from? To taunt them? To test them? But why? So Eve ate it and got Adam to eat it too. It seems mighty sexist. Why did the woman have to eat it first and then persuade Adam to eat it too? We were created from Adam's rib.. we were the ones who helped with the original sin.. great.
We committed the original sin and we had to pay for it. We suddenly started wearing clothes because we were ashamed and we also had to do agriculture. Weird thing is.. how long ago was that? God is forgiving, everyone says. Hell, people think that as long as a murderer repents, they will be saved. Why is it that we are never forgiven for the original sin? It's like someone holding this lifelong grudge against you - holding a grudge against something you haven't even committed, but for what Adam and Eve did! You know how people think it's ridiculous how some families have this ongoing feud for generations? This is pretty much like that. Why does God make us suffer our whole life before we can finally be in paradise? Why do people that commit suicide have to suffer? God put us in this situation in the first place, right? He let us suffer and in turn, some people can't hold onto this thing we call life anymore sometimes.
Somehow, I cannot believe that the Bible hasn't been tampered with. I cannot bring myself to think that what's in the bible is exactly what God said or what he wanted us to do. It's like how the people who won the war, wrote history. The view is skewed and things aren't written from a neutral point of view. I feel like the Bible is used to keep people in line and tries to answer most of the questions that people might have about it, but it still has its shortcomings. Of course, whoever wrote it can't possibly think of every question a person might have about God or the religion and therefore have to stretch some general things to apply to a person's question or thoughts.
The Bible, like any book, gets its words deciphered differently by different people. And that is one of the major problems about religion. For example, back then, there were many crusades - wars started in the name of God. Is that
right? Well, it was to them. It's that way of thinking where it doesn't matter what happens along the way as long as the end result is
good then whatever was lost along the way is made up for. No, it isn't. Family members were lost, for what? For someone to say they won and have the right for their religion to rule since historically, religion and politics were one. How would you feel if I threw your family members into Iraq right now and they died because I thought our religion was the right one? (Yeah, I know the Iraq War was because of the weapons of mass destruction, but I'm just saying if I threw your family members into a crusade because I thought I was right, you would probably want to kill me for it, right? Not rejoice because you also have the same religion.)
Now our image of God has changed. Back then he was
the all powerful God you fear. Now he's this compassionate fellow that will give you a slap on the bum if you did something bad.. but in the end he's like any ol' loving Father? That's crazy. This is just another example of how views about God and religion changes. Why does God not stop it? Why does he let people also die to fight for Christianity? Or kill others because they are not believers?!
I've grown up a lot since my first encounter with religion. And as I grow older and go through many obstacles in life, I realized I cannot bring myself to fully believe in the God that Christians believe in. It kills me to think that there is some God up there watching us all go through so much pain and think it's okay. All this just because of some damn fruit?! It seems wrong. If he hadn't want them to eat the fruit he shouldn't have put it there, right? Why did he leave a serpent to tempt Eve? When you have to witness so much crap in your life or someone close to you or hold dear to you, you wonder why God can't give you a hand. That's when that thread of blind faith gets snipped. When someone is so close to suicide why doesn't he help them? I guess it all plays into free will. Another excuse that it's all our fault.
And I found this:
Which pretty much sums it up for me too.
I don't really judge people that follow a religion. I know plenty of people with different beliefs but I've never thought any less or more of them depending on what they believe in. All it is, is that it boggles my mind that some people can let it affect them so much that it starts constricting them and then they start to push it onto others.
-jiawen