omg

Great title huh? Well, this is about religion. I have had religion in my life since well before I was born. Being raised the son of a preacher was interesting, but not as bad as some might think. The church was a good place to grow up. People were generally nice and accepting. There is certainly a sense of family which is derived from the mutual belief in God among the congregation. I find myself thinking how nice the church community is when it is that I visit. That has become rare in and of itself. When I'm there I get all these good feelings and think of what a nice place it is, and then I realize what it actually is. A church is a place where people go to talk about ghosts and a man who may or may not have existed over 2000 years ago. There is also a big man who lives in the sky or wherever heaven happens to be. This man sees and knows everything about everyone, no matter what. From him there is no hiding. Sounds like a scary movie or the portrayal of communism by the West during the Cold War. But God is your friend, you must do what Jesus teaches because he loves you and you don't want to let down someone who loves you, right? I was sitting in church recently (weird I know) and this topic really struck me, the idea that Jesus loves you (this I know for the bible tells me so...). That song certainly has much wisdom and insight in it. "Jesus Loves Me" is a christian standard. It is probably one of the first songs I ever learned. It's equivalent to songs like 'Let it Be" or "Johnny B Good", really famous and easy to recognize. So how do we know Jesus loves us? Because a book tells us...so. Well ok, great. Usually when I read a book concerned with the "truth" or at least something close to it I expect at least some research or some cited references to convince me that it isn't a total waste of time reading it. The only thing the Bible, and subsequently Christianity, have is this thing called "faith". Huh? Exactly. What is faith? Faith is belief. Belief is faith, and so on forever. Faith is the idea of trusting the intangible. But wait, to Christians God (and Jesus) are tangible. God is in everything, you can even fell the "presence" of God at times. Ok, sure. I'm not sure what I am getting at. What I feel when I go to church or hear about religious fanatics saying or doing something crazy I am amazed. I'm amazed at how narrow their lives are. Gosh, to me life is huge and should be explored from many different angles. To me that is the definition of life. For religious people they need no proof at all to justify their beliefs. They simply believe what is in a book or has been passed down for thousands of years. On that alone I question religion. I have a hard time accepting things that are considered common knowledge that came into being in my lifetime nonetheless several thousand years ago. In short, religion is slavery. religion is a crutch. I am always amazed at how people credit their success to God to whoever. That frustrates me because they invalidate themselves. to me the individual and their mind is probably the most important thing to a person. To give credit to a ghost or someone who died or never lived is absurd. For them they are nothing without God. I will use myself as an example as someone who lives without religion. I "lost" religion, or rather came to my senses, when I was 11 or so. Why? Well to be honest, it was the devil's music. I discovered rock n' roll. Music became my religion. I had never been so enamoured with anything in my life. From the homosexual Elton John, to the sex themes of Led Zeppelin, to the screams, fast beats, and social defiance of punk and hardcore I had found my faith. Maybe not "faith", but something I could hold on to and have as my own. As a young music fan i drifted towards the most screwed us musicians and bands. I found dark and deep lyrics and melodies intriguing and I always wanted more. The Smashing Pumpkins and The Doors ruled my life for several years. Listening to those bands changed me, for good and bad. I began to read poetry at that time too. Jim Morrison because a huge figure in my life. I wondered how he could do so many drugs, drink so much, be around for such a short amount of time, but be one of the most influential individuals in music history. It was because of him that I started drinking. I was never a big drinker but I did like to get hammered a couple times a month to try and reach the plain that he was on. I did write a lot and make music, but I just wasn't that kind of a person. Throughout this transitional period of listening to new music and discovering mind altering (expanding?) substances, I was involved in the church. Why? well, it was what I knew. I did it because if I didn't my parents wouldn't be happy and would make my life worse. They saw the change and they knew what I did. They never really stopped me or told me to change though. I always felt weird going to church on Sunday when only a few hours before I had been "high as fuck" from smoking pot for hours or still a little buzzed from a bunch of beer, or unkempt from a night of sex and pillow talk. It was crazy. Not really though. I always felt a little guilty when I was at church. Not because I was afraid of a God I had quit believing in but because I felt the people at church who had known me since I was a kid would be disappointed in me if they had known what I did. Few of them ever knew or suspected to much of an extent I'm sure. Throughout my teenage years I always felt weird about sex, drugs, alcohol and music and where it placed me socially. I did all of those things and was told that by doing them I was a bad person. But why? To me a bad person beat their kids, raped women, killed people, not people who played songs about sex or played Atari stoned out of their minds. For years I lived with this guilt. I got over it. I always considered myself a follower of what Christ taught, for the most part. The bible is a great book, and just because I ceased to believe in an omniscient being didn't mean that I had strayed from a path of goodness and respect. I am still trying to be a better person in every way I can. I owe a lot of that to the bible and my upbringing. I have not believed in God for over half of my life. It's weird to think about that. It's just as long as I've been smoking pot. Neither of those things is something to brag about. They just are. The question arise: when does a person become their own person? We have personality from the moment we're born, more or less. Up to the age of 11 or 12 I was my parents kid. I wasn't perfect. I had a habit of being made fun of constantly up to that point and had another habit of reacting in a bad way to that torment. Up to that point I was a kid. One who never fit in (or was never given the chance to) but a kid the same. I think I became myself when I discovered rock music and drugs. Why? because they were my decisions completely. No one told me to listen to Pink Floyd or to get high on the beach with people I didn't know. I learned how to make decisions. Then I started to look at my life. Man, was it boring. We never did anything too cool or exciting. Middle of the road was the norm and was expected. Still to his day I am the most controversial person in my whole extended family. I'll always be weird to my midwestern, country bumpkin relatives. Fine with me. One of the aspects of my life I looked at was the role of the church. To this day is the the single most influential component of my life and has directly molded the person I have become. I remember listening to Billy Corgan sing about god in a way that wasn't flattering. "Wait a minute!" that's my savior, he loves me. Then came, "Wait a minute!" who's savior, he loves me? I have a few weird memories that I look back and am amazed at. I have always been one to talk to myself when alone. Midwestern summers are full of torrential thunderstorms which always flooded the streets and turned them into torrents. There was nothing more fun than going out and running around in the street getting soaked with the rain pouring from the sky and lightning flashing while thunder cracked. Amazing. There is one time I remember vividly. I was testing God. I stood out there, in the middle of the day, in the rain, yelling at God to kill me, hit me with lightning (...you motherfucker!, I may have said). Needless to say I have yet to get struck by lightning. That was when God became god. That's when I became me, for real. I was finally a person. We're all slaves to something, but I was sure glad to not be a slave to my parent's beliefs anymore. I felt free. I believe that freedom manifested itself by making me into a more vocal person and gave me the ability to be heard. It wasn't long after that that people more or less stopped making fun of me. I like to think they saw that I was over the small town where we lived and had defied my parents concerning a major issue. It must have been obvious that I didn't care about the shit that everyone else I knew cared about. So, now for what I have been trying to get at. Who was I before I was an adolescent? A dorky kid who got made fun of. I believe that when I was an adolescent I gave myself a chance. I let myself explore what world a little more. I started developing my own perspective and ideas. They were certainly skewed and may not have any basis in truth and may be absurd now, but then they were what was defining me. That's why it frustrates me that people either contribute their successes to god or feel they have to use their talents to tell other people to be like them. For me, I see myself as a kid in them. Someone who for some reason had an overbearing obligation to a mystical being I really never knew and only claimed to believe in because that's how I was raised. I'm glad I found myself through all of that. I'm sure it could have been predicted what kind of person I have grown into when I was quite young. It just took me a while to free myself. Since I left god and the idea of faith behind I have done some amazing things, met a ton of people, come to terms with issues in my life, and have continued to grow as a person without faith who admires the words of Christ, as well as Buddha, Daoism, anarchism, humanism.
I try to live everyday following my beliefs as closely as possible and questioning everything I do, so as not to fall into the trap of the first 11 years of my life. Just because I don't believe in god and feel very strongly about religion does not mean I am a bad person. I have always figured if there was a god he would think I was an alright guy, not perfect, but alright.
Goddamn it feels good to write again.