Faith

I have found myself thinking about faith and religion for a while and reading Cody over at alternative life has had me thinking some more and this is the result. With the exception of 4 years of hell known as high school, I received most (1 year in the public during grade school) in private parochial schools. As a result, I have at least some education in the church and church doctrine. I will say here that I no longer believe in the church, I do believe in a higher power of some sort and I believe in fate and destiny and that the universe has a funny way of bringing people into our lives when we need them the most. So where is this headed? Well I keep getting asked by people to define my religious beliefs so here I go. First, one of my biggest bitches with the church is over money. I have worked in banks and have seen some deposits made into church accounts and they aint small people. I see clergy driving 30-40 thousand dollar cars and wearing designer clothes. I have also seen fist hand some of the multi-million dollar churches dedicated to “worship”. So what is my problem with this? In the bible, Jesus led a sermon on the mount; nowhere in the bible does it say to build houses of wealth and vanity to worship the lord. My problem is with multimillion-dollar churches being built while the sick the hungry and the homeless sleep in the streets in the shadows of that million-dollar building. If the entire monetary wealth of the Roman Catholic Church were applied towards doing the work of the lord rather than the trappings of feudal theocracy built on wealth power and greed, what would this world look like? The institution of the church itself is not the house of god, its a billion dollar a year business, not for profit my ass. You wan worship god from a garage, from a tents, or anywhere else, people can gather to worship. My other bitch is the hypocritical judgmental assholes that stands at a pulpit and spout the “words of god” to the applause of those who are too fucking brainwashed to read the book and find the answers for themselves. The bible in black and white says judge not others least ye shall be judged thyself, it also says to love the sinner but hate the sin. I find it funny that Christians can damn homosexuals to hell and treat us like shit and try to keep us from having the same rights as straights in this world because if we want to get technical about things then slavery is perfectly fine, so is polygamy, and we shouldn’t eat shellfish or tough pigs skin. I find it amazing that they can justify what parts to leave in and what parts to ignore as out of date passages, if they can interpret out one part then they can shut the fuck up over another. My last bitch is this, Christians have been one of the most persecuted groups in the history of the world and also one of the greatest offenders of genocide, murder, and torture in the history of the world. I find it amazing the Christians in this country forget that if not for a group of people seeking to escape persecution for their beliefs this country would not exist as it does today, so what in the hell gives the church the right to dictate to anyone what they should believe, how they should live their lives, and who they should love. I’m not anti religion, and I respect anyone right to the beliefs of their choice, if someone chooses to believe the world is flat that don’t affect me, if a person believes in Allah, Buddha, of God its doesn’t affect what I believe, and Who I love, Who I want to marry won’t affect them . Ok end of rant, I am sure I will be catching some shit over this one.