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On religion

Posted on November 30th, 2006 by Josh.
Categories: religion.

This is a topic I think I’ve only really discussed recently with my brother.

I get more and more the feeling that my parents are concerned, and it gets to me, whether they know it or not.

Where does my faith stand? Why don’t I go to church too often these days?

Let’s take a little trip back to when I first began college. In the months leading up to the start of classes, I found that there was a small Lutheran church group on campus. They held services on Sundays, as well as Bible studies and all that good stuff. I went for a while. Met some good people, but I started going less and less. I’m not entirely sure why.

Once that happened, I spoke with the on campus “surveyor Christians” - the ones who stand around asking passers-by if they have a moment to answer some questions. The conversation seems to always follow the same path. Do you believe in God? Yes? What moment in your life did you feel that Jesus truly touched you and you found Him? Something like that. That always bugged me. Does there have to be a moment to base your faith on? But I shrugged it off. I decided these guys can’t be all that bad, so I went to some Bible studies, even went to a service or two. Soon enough, I decided that they were weird, maybe even cult-like, and I didn’t want to go to their Bible studies and church services anymore. It just didn’t feel right.

At this point, I started to get annoyed by the surveyors. I started to get especially annoyed by the preachers on the mall yelling and condemning the students on campus. How many people are either of these groups really getting through to? Well, the first actually seemed to get through to quite a few - but at the same time, their cult-like appearance deterred many non-believers. Let’s focus on the latter. The guy that stands on campus condemning frat boys and sorority girls for sleeping around and getting drunk all the time. The guy that stands in downtown Phoenix yelling his lungs out that God is vengeful and we must repent. The groups that stake out corners on 4th Ave. (Tucson) or Mill Ave. (Tempe), trying to bring the news of God to those who just want to go have some drinks and have fun. They’re just alienating non-believers and (whether they’re trying to or not) coming off as condescending towards them. People see them as having a (literally) “holier than thou” attitude, and they just usually end up mocking them and Christianity.

I think that’s when I first started to become annoyed by organized religion. Beyond that, I grew annoyed with things I would hear from the church. Things like:

• Pokemon is bad. It promotes false gods and other religious ideas to children.
• Harry Potter is bad. It promotes witchcraft.
• Video games are bad. TV is bad. Movies are bad. They promote (fill in the blank), and we will not stand for it.

Really? Are they serious?

To take it even further, I started having issues with how literally the Bible is taken. Points that began to really rub me the wrong way:

• Gay marriage is wrong. This leads us to believe that we must ban it within our government.
• Evolution cannot exist, as scientific theory believes it does. There is only the divine creation, and that’s how it all began.

About gay marriage: Why the hostility? Maybe God doesn’t see gay marriage as a true union of two people. That’s fine. Whatever. To me, it doesn’t seem like it fits the course of nature, but I have seen evidence to prove my feelings wrong. Fact of the matter is, anti-gay marriage legislation is discriminatory and denies legal and economic rights/benefits. In no way does legalizing it say that we think God is wrong. It is just one of those things that creates enemies of Christianity.

About creationism: You want to take the Bible literally? You want to say God made the world in six human-defined days? Fine. But it makes no sense. What about dinosaurs? Humans were not around when they were. What about all the evidence that proves that organisms do indeed mutate and evolve over time? Why can’t the Bible be viewed in a non-literal fashion? Maybe God spent all this time finetuning his creation over a few billion years, until He finally got it right and humans came into existence. It’s just another one of those arguments that seems like it matters so little, yet Christians push the issue so much that it makes those of us who do give credit to evolution feel like they (again) have this “holier than thou” - “we’re right, you’re wrong” attitude.

Now, I know these points I’m making are generalizations. Not all Christians fall into this sort of attitude. But I’ve noticed it (or at least parts of it) within any church I have gone to (Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc). But these are some of the things I think about, and those attitudes make me feel like I don’t fit in the church.

But again, they’re rather trivial.

The one thing that truly gets to me about religion is.. why is Christianity right? Why are other religions wrong? Are all Hindus/Islamists/Jews/Buddhists/etc truly damned to hell for not believing that Jesus is their savior? It’s a hard pill for me to swallow. If God is love, as is often said, wouldn’t He show love to the whole world? Many of these non-Christians will never hear a meaningful word about Jesus and God as portrayed in the Bible. How is that their fault?

I don’t know. It really just blows my mind to think about, and that’s why I usually stop at this point and don’t think about it, and go back to whatever else I’ve got going on in my life.

I do consider myself a Christian. I’d probably even still identify myself as a Lutheran (though that’s not the important part). I just have a hard time with these concepts and facing them in a church setting, and I don’t know what to think about things.

I don’t know if I need to change something someday, or if He’ll find another way to reach out to me.

But at least now I got it off my chest. I don’t know. For now, it’s back to the grind of work. I’ll figure it out later, I suppose.

8 comments.

Jack In The Bejesus

Posted on February 18th, 2006 by Josh.
Categories: religion.

Wo told me this little gem, which was told to him by Micah, which was told to him by.. who knows? Anyway, take a closer look at the Jack In The Box logo. Is that really just an OX, or is it a Jesus fish!?

1 comment.