Why Religion is Fun

So I find it odd how people act about religion. People hate it. Actually, I don't find it odd, because I understand it. It's not so much the funny beliefs. It's the rules. No sex. No adultery. Burn in hell if you do this, or that. Be a little goody two-shoes bitch.

The funny thing is, that's not the way it works. You interpret religion anyway you want to interpret it. No, not really. But you interpret it how you interpret it.

To me, the bible doesn't say shit about sex. No wait, it does. It says, sex is normal, but ideally, you should treat it with caution, because fucking around too much with people can fuck things up.

So that's what I do. I have given up fucking around too much.

The bible never says anything about drugs, that I know of. I don't know the bible very well, though. But Jesus does enjoy the occasional, or very frequent, glass of wine. Very much so. Also, a pillar of mysticism is that you should do some cautious experimentation with illicit drugs, preferably hallucinogens.

As for the other rules, they are fun to follow. No stealing. Love thy neighbor. Those ones are easy. Forgiveness, baby. I like to think I am good at that.

So I enjoy the goody-two shoes lifestyle. I am clean of the drugs I used to be addicted to. I feel love for the people I like, which is most people I know. I am a good person. I do God's work. I am a servant of God.

Because that's what being religious is about. Being part of God's army. Feeling righteous, and being righteous at the same time. Having a mission, a place in the world. Knowing that God cares about you.

Another thing is fun is too proudly wear a cross necklace, so everyone knows. A lot of people are turned off by it, but fellow Christians will look at you and think, well, she's a good person and someone I'd like to know. Even non-Christians might think, she's a good person but not someone I'd like to know, necessarily. Depending.

It is true that not everyone thinks highly of the morals of all Christians. Some Christians are nasty. But when you see someone wearing a cross necklace, you automatically think holy, righteous person. Subconsciously.

Some concepts that are fun to think about when you are religious are the power of God, the power of the holy spirit, and the power of holiness and virtue in general.

And then sometimes when you are bored, you can pull out your bible and start reading. The bible is a fun, fun book. No, I don't take all the stories literally. In fact, I think a lot of the so called "miracles" are merely hyperboles. But there are fun concepts, fun stories, fun things about the bible. That's what I like about the bible. It's a fun book.

Another secret is, guys dig it too. A lot of guys do, seriously, even if they are not religious themselves. No, they don't want you to preach to them, or have you drag them to church, or convert them, or anything. They will talk about it with you though. But the thing is, there is an automatic association with good, Christian girls and sex.

It's not true of all guys, but true for some. Some guys dig the bad girl image. A lot of guys prefer the good girl image. Because they have a strong desire to defile and desecrate goodness. Not taint it, just defile it.

But that's not the reason I'm religious at all, that's just something I was thinking right now. It's a secret I am sharing with you, not for any particular reason.

My Christian Enlightenment

So I had an enlightenment a month or so ago.

One thing you should know about my enlightenment is that I just tagged on some shit to it about all religions being correct to sound more politically correct.

So I used to think that Christians were kind of stupid. Now I actually think that Christians are way smarter than atheists. Actually it's not a matter of one being smarter than the other.

I didn't understand the idea of getting saved. The thing is, it's not really supposed to make sense to us because we're not God. That's the thing about Christianity, or this brand of Christianity I subscribe to. Part of it is accepting that you don't know fucking everything.

Which is something that atheists refuse to do. They think that they are capable of comprehending the universe. They can't accept that the universe follows a logic that they are incapable of comprehending.

Except that when I reached enlightenment, I did comprehend it. And I remembered how, the only way to get around the hell problem, is to have people accept Jesus.

You realize that God IS NOT all powerful. I don't believe in an all powerful God. My dad told me that I wasn't allowed to believe this. That if I believed in God, He had to be all powerful.

But I don't believe in an all-powerful God. My God can't do something like, say, create a rock so big He Himself cannot lift it. My God can't do that! Well, that doesn't logically make any sense! Yeah, because my God cannot do everything. He can't do things that don't logically make any sense. And saving someone who has not accepted Jesus, or bringing someone back from hell, are things that don't logically make sense to God. Because God follows a higher logic.

People think the idea of hell is funny. You realize, once you have properly had the shit scared out of you, that hell is the scariest concept there is. There is nothing fucking scarier than hell. It's this state of horrible horrible agony that goes on for eternity and never gets any better.

Non-Christians get annoyed by Christians trying to convert them. One thing I have learned is, Christians really aren't trying to be mean when they try to convert you. They aren't trying to be intolerant of your belief system. They seriously just want to save you from the fucking most horrible scariest shit ever.

You realize that God hasn't talked for 2000 years. That's not very long for God. The way humans think is different from the way God thinks. You also realize that there is no way in fucking hell the bible is inerrant. You know why? Because language is so fucking shaky and unreliable. Like, today, people don't even agree amongst themselves what words mean. Think about being translated between languages, and several times into modern-day English. They keep translating the bible because the English language keeps changing. There is no fucking way the bible means exactly the same thing now as it did back when it was written.

So these are my ramblings for today.

An Evolving God

So, I'm not sure how well my theories hold up against the bible. The parts of the bible that I am familiar with are more like history or mythology, and there isn't a whole lot about the nature of what God is, apart from there being only one god, no gods before this god, three parts to this god, basic stuff like that. The parts that are mythology are stories God told that didn't literally happen as He told them, like the story of Creation, and Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and the story of the tower of Babel. Like, I don't believe the reason people speak different languages is because God confused their language when they were building the tower of Babel.

I was just reading Genesis again and one of the things I noticed that didn't make any sense is that Adam and Eve have Cain and Abel, and then Cain kill Abel, and then God curses Cain. So, if you are following the story, there should be only four people in the world at this point. Well, now three, because Abel died. But then God casts Cain away, and Cain complains that anyone who finds him will kill him, and God put a mark on Cain so that that no one would kill him, and then Cain goes off and marries some woman. What the hell? From whom did this other woman come from? Did Adam and Eve have a lot of other children that aren't mentioned?

So what I am thinking right now is, maybe, I don't really know, but there was evolution going on, and Adam and Eve were the first people who evolved from the apes or whatever into a human form. But this was happening everywhere, so there are other people other places. I don't know, that was just something I thought of right now.

So, I wanted to talk about this shattered God more. The purpose of life is to help God evolve. We are all pieces of God. So what God does is, He sends a piece of himself out to Earth, and that piece is the soul of a human. On Earth, that person forms bonds with other people, who are also pieces of God, and hopefully a bond with God directly. Upon death, God draws the piece back in, and that piece is again basked fully in the unlimited love of God. The bonds that the soul created on Earth are what help God evolve and grow stronger.

When fully basking in the eternal love of God, everyone is at their best. On Earth, you are still connected to God, but you are separate. You experience hardship and desire, and things that tempt you to turn wicked. As God challenges us, He challenges Himself. He challenges us to forgive one another. At the same time, He is learning to forgive us, and love us despite our wickedness.

You can not give birth to something that is not present in you. God Himself is not wicked, but within God is a desire for wickedness. He gives birth to creatures with that same desire. Within God, is humanity, even before humanity existed. That includes the positive aspects of humanity and the negative aspects of humanity. But the difference between God and humans on Earth is that within God is also a good force which overpowers the desire for wickedness.

See, God in his entirety is perfect, but in this case, perfect is relative. As God evolves, the definition of perfect also changes, and becomes better.

That is why God evolves throughout the bible. God causes death and destruction in the old testament. Perhaps He has a hard time forgiving people for their wickedness. God's rules do change as time goes on. Jesus sets out updated laws from the laws that Moses set up.

There are more than just three aspects of God. The father, the son, and the holy ghost are just the basic aspects of God.

All this is just speculation.

Bible Study

So yesterday I went to bible study again, as it was Thursday. Sitting there, listening to them talk, I was struck by thoughts of what people I know would think if they were there listening to them. I think the same way my friends do, for the most part, but for some reason I let the weirdness of this situation flow right past me.

So, in case you don't already know, I was raised in a liberal family where God was absent. My parents didn't stress the non-existence of God, it just wasn't really a subject that was discussed. Yet, as I got older, I began to realize the impact of Christianity on this country and conservative Christians. I remember closely following the 2004 election (I remember the 2000 election too and being pro-Gore but not really understanding why Bush was so bad). By the year 2004, it became clear that this president was no good. At least, I thought it was. Yet, during the 2004 election the gay marriage issue was hot, and it got the conservative Christians out to the the poles because boy they didn't want gays to marry, and while they were there they voted for Bush, tipping the election in Bush's favor. That's how I saw it. And it pissed me off.

Then in 2006 I became delusional, with delusions based on Christianity, in particular that I was the second coming. I had to endure the horror of being dragged to doctors and hospitals, while firmly maintaining the belief that I was not delusional. To me, I was like someone who was being persecuted for their religious convictions. That's what it felt like to me.

My beliefs could be shaken but they would not go away. I sat at home and read the bible. The New Testament, which I had never read before. I looked at pictures of Terri Schiavo protesters online, read about the outrage that these conservative Christians felt about Terri's feeding tube being pulled out, and I laughed. These people had it so wrong.

I don't call myself Christian. That would scare the people at my bible study, because even though I sort of incorporate Jesus' teachings into my own life (without even realizing it usually), I'm not "saved." But what I'm trying to say is, Christianity has become huge in my life, for whatever reason. Not because I favor Christianity over all other religions, but because it's the dominant religion in the United States. And it's not that I favor the United States over all other countries, but because it's where I live. And I feel this desire to do something to change the country, because Christianity in the United States isn't working, in my opinion.

There's something I do when I'm at bible study. Most of the time, I don't sit there and think, "I'm undercover as a Christian." I convince myself I actually am Christian, because I accept most of Jesus' teachings. But the thing is, I haven't been "saved." I think for myself. I value thinking for myself. And I don't think that God would put us on Earth, and then either save us or damn us to hell, based on whether or not we accept a particular story, in which the truthiness of this particular story is extremely questionable. We have the God-given gift to think, to question, to decide for ourselves, and we are doing God a disservice by refusing to use this gift and submit to blind faith. And because this is the way I think, if the people I go to bible study knew this, they would be disturbed and pray for me to change, for me to see "the light," for me to be "saved," and accept that this is God's word and everything the bible says is absolutely literally true and not to question anything that God says or does.

And I like the people at bible study, because what I value is acceptance of all different sorts of people, even though I think some of the things they say are sort of strange. I like the pastor there a lot. So this realization disturbs me.

Faith: I Figured it Out

So I go to a bible study every Tuesday. I find these people at this bible study very interesting. I go every single Tuesday, and because of this I am praised by them for my "great faith." Of course, they don't know that I actually don't believe in faith. Though, I'm pretty sure I know what would happen if I told them what I really believe. They would still welcome me there, but the whole bible study would take on an exceptionally preachy tone, because they would be trying to "save" me.

The whole idea of faith is something I never really thought about until certain delusional things happened to me. I realized there is nothing really good about having faith. But I think I may have figured it out yesterday. In order to be Christian, you have to believe that your thinking processes, logic, and judgment is worth absolutely nothing, compared to that of God. There is no way us mere humans can understand God.

Take the whole idea of Jesus dying for our sins. Why did that have to happen? I mean God created us, didn't He know we were going to sin? It seems like it sort of caught Him off guard. I think He set Adam and Eve up. But anyway, my understanding is, that act in the Garden of Eden set humans up for a tendency towards sin.

But why? Why did God design it that way? It seems to me that if God were truly the only god, He would have designed all the rules of the universe. Are there some things that are out of His control? Is there some other god above him? No, the bible says that this god is the only god. It seems to me that God doesn't have as much power as He claims to have. Someone is lying here.

And then for some reason, you have to be sinless to get into heaven. Unless, of course, someone sinless dies for your sins, and then you believe in that person. Same thing I said before, if God truly makes the rules, He could have designed it any way He wanted to.

It seems to me that is foolish to believe everything you hear. Especially when you hear stuff that doesn't make any sense, like the stuff I just mentioned. But if you don't believe this particular far-out crazy story, you are damned for all eternity because you don't have faith. This makes no sense to me. But, I am merely human. All this, of course, makes sense to God. And I should just accept that my own thoughts are worth nothing, any conclusion I come to using my own judgment is probably wrong, and that my brain isn't worth a damn thing. So that's where faith comes in.

The End.

Stupid Western Culture

Sometimes if I think too much about the culture we live in, the inconsistencies drive me crazy.

So I live in conservative Christian north Idaho. I own a bible. I read my bible, usually nightly. I attend a two and a half hour bible study on Tuesday nights, and church most Sundays. According to facebook I'm a born-again deist. I change my beliefs from time to time, and whenever I change them I'm a "born again" something or other.

I don't know if that's even relevant, but the point is I listen. I see value in acquiring information and then using my power of reason to reason my way through it, to decide what I believe and what I don't believe.

Trouble is, I'm not allowed to come to my own conclusions about things, unless they are consistent with other peoples' conclusions. If they don't match up, I am labeled unfit to make my own decisions.

It's because of the culture we live in, stupid materialistic western culture, that thinks that everything is physical and chemical.

Anyway, what got me started on this was that the night before last I had a bad dream about malls. It may have been about malls because I died in a mall in a previous life. This is a subject I won't get into. Anyway, it felt as if my mind were under attack. I was wondering about this, and looked up "psychic attacks" on the internet. I came across some interesting pages. I can relate to the symptoms of being influenced by a spirit. I can relate to the feeling of being "drained." It's not a feeling of being hungry, tired, or even depressed, but just like the life is sucked out of you. It's not like you're coming off a drug either, I know what that feels like. When I was feeling "drained," I felt this other person inside of me and I was worried that they were going to take me over completely. I was scared.

It's culturally accepted to believe in the bible. In the bible, Jesus drives demons out of people. But today, that kind of stuff doesn't happen. Or maybe I'm getting two different cultures mixed up. There's Christian culture and then there's atheistic culture.

My mom talks to and trusts psychics. The same psychic she trusts told me that my "mental illness" wasn't just a mental illness, it was a psychic thing, but that my brain was adding to it too. She also said that it's not just in my head that a spirit is messing with me, there is (or was) one pestering me. But my mom likes to talk to psychics to contact the dead relatives. I read on the website yesterday that dead people aren't really a good source of information because they don't necessarily have any more information than they did while they were alive.

At any rate, I don't even know why I'm posting this, as it may make certain people think that I am unfit to make my own decisions.

The Inexplicable Need to Study the Bible

I don't even know where to start because there have been so many things on my mind lately: family-wise, relationship-wise, and book-wise. I listed those in order of heaviness, starting with least heavy to most heavy. So first and foremost comes my book, and what comes with it. And right now, with it comes an inexplicable need to study the bible.

So I got in a discussion with an unnamed person the other day. This unnamed person told me that she doesn't vote or follow politics because it is part of her philosophy that goes back to when she was a kid, and her parents raised her on Jesus' teachings, one of them being "be no part of the world." So apparently, they interpreted this to mean be no part of politics and stay completely out of all of those matters. Now I'm no expert on Jesus' message but I have a fair amount of knowledge on the subject, and I was pretty sure that Jesus wouldn't say that. So I got out my handy-dandy bible and told her to show me where he said that. She couldn't find it, and ended up looking it up online. The passage was in John, and she gave me the line number so I could read it, and it said something like "they are not part of the world, as I am not part of this world." Looking at this line in context, I told her that what Jesus was probably trying to say was that he is not a part of this world because he is God. This unnamed person looked at it, and agreed that that was probably what Jesus meant after all. So that settled that.

But anyway, the feeling that I needed to study the bible actually started before that, and it came out of nowhere. So right now I have a New International Version, which is an easy to understand translation. I've decided that I will read and re-read and re-read it, focusing on the New Testament, mainly the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Then I will get as many other translations as I can find, and read them, focusing on those same four books, comparing and contrasting differences, until I know what Jesus said backwards and forwards. This is what I will do.

At least, this is what I think I might do, between working on getting published, doing classwork, maintaining a social life, watching the O'Reilly factor (if I get cable), and whatever other obligations I might have.