The more and more I grow as a person (if you can call it that), the more I am bothered by religion in society.
I was raised in a strict Christian household that never bothered to question things. God is God. His son is Jesus. The Bible is the perfect and only Holy Word. Case closed.
Then I came to college.
I want to believe in God. I want to just know that God is real, and that Jesus is real, and that the Bible is completely accurate. Can you blame me? For eighteen straight years I had this stuff fed to me constantly. Can you blame me for wanting to believe what I was taught is true?
Now I come to college, begin to think for myself, and realize that religion in drowning in bullshit. And, to be honest, it pisses me off a little bit. It makes me wonder why millions and millions of people believe in this stuff. Are they so much more ahead-of-the-game than I am that they simply grasp something I cannot?
Do Christians in this society of ours ever pause to think of others? America is such a haughty holier-than-though society, and this attitude spawns off into Christianity. To a typical Christian in America, they are going to heaven, members of all other religions are going to hell, and I'm going to hell as well if I don't stop this blabbering and just admit that Jesus is the only one who can save me. Doesn't that bother anyone? What makes these people think they're so special? 'Cause they were born in America? I refuse to label myself as a member of a group that doesn't think.
A Christian will tell me that a faithful Shintuist from Japan will be burning in hell someday for not being Christian. If you're God, does that really seem fair? Condemming people to enternal burning and torture all because they were born in a different culture than your chosen people? I would think not, which is exactly why I am questioning things.
It's important to realize that I'm not questioning "God" nearly as much as I am questioning "Christianity". Have you ever investigated the Bible? Orgazmo and I watched a Penn and Teller production the other day that broke down the Bible and showed why it is ridiculous to view it as a flawless document - which is exactly what most Christians believe.
Do these people not think? That's what bothers me more than anything about this. The closed mindedness of it all. Most Christians I know strike me as ignorant people who have been freightened into believing in a God that they've never even bothered to examen.
For 18 years I lived with two people who never once openly questioned anything about Christianity. Blind faith. 24/7. That is what Christianity calls for. Faith. Believing in something that every part of our brain calls bullshit on. Why do people do this?
Anytime I ask a Christian a challenging question such as "Why does Matthew 1:16 refer to Jacob as the father of Joseph, while Luke 3:23 refers to Heli as the father of the same Joseph? Doesn't that seem like a flaw in the Bible to you?"; I am fed a cookie-cutter smile-because-God-loves-you BS answer such as "God has a plan for all things - you can't question Him like this - it says so in the Bible". Oh how convienent. The very book that I just demonstrated to you as being inaccurate is now being cited against me for the reason I shouldn't question it. Are you human? Did you listen to what you just said? How can you actually believe that the Bible is perfect when it clearly contradicts itself several different times?
You know, maybe what bothers me the most about "Christianity" is the fact that millions of people believe in something they have never questioned, nor would still be likely to believe in if, with an open mind, were exposed to athiest propaganda.
These are the types of questions I want answered for me. "Have faith" is no longer good enough. This post is merely the tip of the iceberg as to how I really feel. I am not an able enough writer to articulate all of my thoughts in a short enough post that people will actually read, so this is what you get.
I refuse to lead my life being a close minded member of the herd being shuffled closer to death while burning an hour in church every Sunday trying to make ourselves feel better about being a self-righteous prick (which is exactly what a lot of "Christians" I've met are).
If anyone has these answers for me, I'd love to hear them. And I'm sorry for coming off so hard-core and bitter in this post. I didn't mean for it to read that way, but it certainly does. Think of me as a puzzled young man who simply wishes to validate his life teachings. Pray for me.
-UB
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