I've decided to broach a topic rather close to my heart today, a topic that a part of me is tellin not to broach....today i open the floodgates on the topic of religion, but first of, let me state my stand on the issue...I believe in a God, but i also acknowledge that my believe has no logical basis for existing...
I started believing in the Christian God since i was 13, and was converted from atheism by my parents, who themselves had recently converted...as i tend to do with so many things, i plunged headfirst into my then new found faith and quest for salvation....
at the tender age of 13, it was easy to believe without questioning, but as i grew older, i felt all wasnt right with my faith, and though i didnt quite know what it was about christianity that bugged me, the rose tinted glasses did come off...
This post isn't about the fallacies of christianity as i saw it, or as anyone sees it, for that matter...this post is about religion in general, and some of the problems that stem from it..This post is not about any one religion specifically, but the unquestionable faith that some of us ascribe to....
My concern with religion lies not in mankind's inclination to believe in a god, or in gods, that have never been proven to exist...as i have said earlier, i myself do still believe in a God...my concern here is in the absolute certainty with which so many on our sacred planet practice their religions...
When i was younger, i was so convinced that christianity was the only true religion, and that the jews had got it wrong for rejecting our Christ...i had not a shadow of doubt in my mind that i was right, and that anyone believing in anything other than my truth was just plain wrong...
It was easy to feel that way, with the good book itself calling for such absolute faith, the kind abraham showed when he almost sacrificed his only son to his God..these days, ten years after i last went to a church with a complete believe in the christian faith, i've realised something that shoulda occurred to me much earlier, had i only stopped to think about it...
I wasnt the only one absolutely convinced...practitioners of every religion believe themselves to be the chosen / enlightened ones, and while we christians prayed for the salvation of these pagans, in their eyes, they were just as convinced that we were the true heathens....
Its something sooooo incredibly obvious, but i never really saw things that way, because contemplating religion was something i was actually a little wary of doing until recently... subconsciously, i knew that if i thought about it too much, i'd find reasons to not believe as much...
within the christian faith itself, there are hundreds of different takes on how God should be worshipped...within the realm of religion as a whole, there are thousands or maybe even millions of believes, each with their own paths to salvation...mankind has never agreed on God, and the reason is plain and simple...
We just dont know. There is absolutely no way of knowing which way is right and which is wrong, or if in fact there even is such a thing as a right way...i could shout as much as i wanted to about my way being right, but that wouldnt lend any weight to my argument...there's just no way of knowing for sure....
i think it is important at this juncture to stress that i am not admonishing the practice of religion...i am also NOT accusing all religious practitioners of being unreasonably judgemental know-it-alls..there is nothing wrong believing in something greater than ourselves...it is an innate feature of man...we thirst for meaning in this world that passes us by...
My problem with religion is when we allow it to blind us to the fact that we really don't know any better than anyone else out there...we claim to believe in something bigger than the parameters of our own human minds, and we believe in it so strongly, to the point that we feel that we've got it figured out...the irony...
we then take our believes and enforce the ideologies encompassed in those believes upon the whole world...we let these believes tell us who to love and who to hate...we allow these believes to tell us that some wars are justified...we allow these believes to tell us who to ostracize and who to embrace...
It sickens me when human beings discard their humanity and neglect each other in the name of a God...it sickens me when complex social issues become 2-dimensional moral issues when seen thru the 'eyes of faith'..
What im trying to say is this...feel free to believe in whatever you want, but while you're here on earth, the one thing we all have in common is our complete ignorance in matters of religion, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not...
there is no reason, logic, or morality in allowing things we do not know or understand divide us..any religion that does divide or discriminate is one that should be fundamentally questioned..
On a personal note, i feel that any God worth believing in would not create a race of confused people, and then condemn the vast majority of these confused people for not choosing the right religion, when the choice itself all along was so damn confusing..
i think judgement operates on a whole different system, one thats less enforced, and more intrinsic....we all have a conscience, and we all have brains...maybe God would like it if we started using these God-given compasses just a little bit more...?
This is Dreamer, signing out.
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