Okay, here's the thing...

I have been waiting to touch on "touchy" subjects for a while. I don't ever feel like posting them on facebook because my condescending "friends" always feel they need to have a say in the opinions I am expressing. Mind you, I am talking solely about my  facebook friends, not my REAL friends who wouldn't be bitchy about stuff like that. Anyway, I also feel as though some people really don't care to see my opinions on facebook anyway. I can express them more openly and in depth on here anyway.

I want to touch on the subject of religion. I know what you're thinking...

"*GASP* Why would you want to do that?! That's too sensitive of a subject"

Well,  here's the thing. I have been a "Christian" my entire life. I have gone to church basically since I was born and have always considered myself one. More specifically, I am Methodist, which, in my biased opinion, is the best denomination one can be a part of. I feel as though the Methodist denomination is one of the most accepting denominations of the Christian faith. Now, let me specify why I placed Christian in "" in my first sentence. Over the past couple years, I have been struggling to understand my beliefs in God and the Christian Faith. In high school, I was in youth group and participating in Mission Trips around the country to help those less fortunate than I. I LOVED going on those trips, and I loved going to youth group because I felt as though it was so relatable, and it really helped me understand the type of person I should be.

Once I got into college, I stopped going to church on a regular basis. Everyone knows how difficult it is to get up on a Sunday morning to go to church, especially if you are a college student. I didn't do a whole lot of partying my freshman year, so that really had nothing to do with it. I just much rather preferred to sleep my Sunday's away than get up, get dressed, and go to MORE lectures. I can probably count on one hand how many times I went to church throughout college... at least while I was AT college. Whenever I went home, my mother forced me to go.

I wasn't quite turned off to Christianity to begin with in college, but I really started to drift farther away from wanting anything to do with it when my roommate was a "Bible-thumper." Now, I loved my roommate. She is one of the sweetest, most genuine people I know (then again I can say that about almost all my friends), BUT she was VERY Christian... Always quoting the Bible, always reading it, always trying to give me advice based on what the Bible says. Now, I won't deny, the Bible tries to  instill great morals in people. It no doubt has great lessons to teach people, especially children, but I don't want to be preached at by my roommate. They were always holding Bible studies in our room and one night they started talking about homosexuality That's when I decided I was fed up with what the Bible said. I will touch more on homosexuality later, maybe even in a different post, but let me be clear. I am ALL FOR GAY RIGHTS. Nothing can or ever will change my mind about that.

Alright, so, I started getting really turned off to it. First of all, WHY do we Christians think that Christianity is the way to Heaven and the way to be saved? Because "The Bible tells me so,"?? Well, let me drop some knowledge on you (although you may already know anyway). The Bible only accounts for the last 6,000 to 10,000 years of existence. Those that believe in Creationism, and especially those that are extreme Creationists, believe in a Young Earth--that the Earth is literally only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, everything that is written in Genesis is 100% FACT and evolution is absolute malarkey. Well, we have this wonderful thing called... dare I say it... SCIENCE. Is science always concrete?? No, but it has provided us a lot of information about a lot of things we thought we knew but were apparently making fools of ourselves over the last couple centuries. For example, the Earth is flat.. if you sail too far on the ocean, you will fall off the face of the Earth. The Sun revolves around us, etc. I really don't need to go on, do I? Well, scientists have provided us with a wonderful technology called Carbon Dating. Basically, what my understanding of this is without googling it, is that the scientists test the carbon still left in fossils, rocks and living organisms to get a rough estimate of how old something is. With the carbon dating done on such things, scientists have pretty much 100% proven that the earth is WAY more than 6,000 years old... More like 6 BILLION.... Okay, just googled it... more like 4-4.5 billion. Regardless, it's kind of hard to go against something like that...

Now, Creationist like to sit there and say, "Psh... Carbon Dating is so unreliable! That rock could be 400 years old to 4,000 years old. That's how unreliable it is." Well, sirs and madams... are you scientists? No? Okay, so shut up. Anyway, back to the "why" question. Before the Bible even accounts for human life and Jesus, there were civilizations that believed in multiple Gods. For example, the Greeks, The Romans, the Egyptians, Chinese... etc. Almost any civilization believed in multiple Gods. But wait, all of a sudden, one thing happens and walla! That's what you're supposed to believe in now. I have no qualms with the belief in Jesus, as there are records of him being a real person. Then again, there are records of the Prophet Mohammad being a real person as well. Both of these people were similar in the sense they were advocating for their "God" or their "Father" or whatever. So, who is to say that one is right and the other is wrong? And what about the other religions out there? Who is to say that their religion is any less legitimate than anyone else's? "Because the Bible tells me so." Hmm great excuse.

If we took the Bible literally for every word printed in there, oh man. I would be a little bit afraid of what society would be like right now. That's the other thing I do not like about Christians nowadays. People are basically picking and choosing what they want to believe and what they don't want to believe about what the Bible says. I watched a video the other day about a guy doing interviews that the Minnesota State Fair regarding why people were voting against same sex marriage. "Because the Bible says it's wrong." That's what a lot of people said. By that logic, the guy asking the questions said something along the line of, "Alright, so since being gay is a sin and marriage is only supposed to be between a man and a woman, and congress should have that power to deny that to people, the Bible also says that divorce is a sin as well, so shouldn't we have regulations against divorce and not let people do that?" Of course they all said no. But why not? The Bible says premarital sex is a sin as well. You know how many people have premarital sex nowadays? The bride should be stoned to death or executed for not being a virgin at her wedding, according to the Bible. So, shouldn't people who have had premarital sex not be allowed to marry since they have sinned as well? Just like the gays? Hmm... Most people would say no. Why? Because they have accepted premarital sex as part of a lifestyle nowadays, but we are STILL stuck on this whole "being gay is bad" thing.

I don't feel as though I need a book to tell me what my morals should and shouldn't be. I think I have those pretty well figured out for myself. Jesus preached that we should be accepting and love everyone, regardless of what they have done (in most cases anyway... I think it would be kind of difficult for even Jesus to accept and love someone like Hitler... though Ghandi did it...). But we have people like the members of the Westboro Baptist Church who take the Bible and the preachings of Jesus way out of context to only benefit themselves.

What's more is that Christians claim their faith as the RIGHT faith... the one EVERYONE should believe in because it's what God wants. What baffles me is that Jesus was JEWISH! There was no such faith as Christianity back then, and the Bible even says the Jews were the chosen people of God. How did that change? And don't even get me started on my views about the over-powering Catholic Church. I LOVE reading about and watching documentaries about the history of the Catholic Church, but if anyone knows anything about its history, it's a very dark, very dangerous history full of hypocrisy and hate. Well, maybe I won't go as far to say HATE, but I can't think of a suitable replacement word as of right now.

What I do like about some Christians and preachers of the Christian faith is they are becoming more modern in their belief systems. Just as "rules" have changed in the Bible about women cutting their hair and whatever else, they are adapting to the need to be more accepting of all peoples, especially those in the LGBT community. They have become more accepting of what science says and accept many of the scientific findings. Many pastors are no longer preaching homosexuality as a sin because of how far we have come in the technological and psychological studies of homosexuality. It's NOT a psychological disorder, it's NOT a disease, and the pastors that are in the right state of mind have accepted that. I just wish more people would come to terms with that.

I have lost touch with my faith in recent years because I have felt as though a lot of Christians are hypocritical... "Love everyone except..." "Never do this except when..." They are always making exceptions for things when it will benefit them. Now, I am not pooling all Christians in here, but there are a lot of people out there who are like that. I believe in a higher power. Heck, I might even believe in the Christian God, but until Christians stop using the Bible as a crutch for their own benefit, I will find it very hard for me to want to call myself a Christian and want to be associated as such. I myself feel like a hypocrite by calling myself a Christian simply for the fact I hardly believe much of what the Bible dictates us to do anymore. "A Christian person would be accepting of all the Bible says and live their life accordingly." Well, not me. For now, I am going to believe what I believe about my morals and values. I am going to believe in a higher power because I feel there is one out there somewhere. So what am I exactly? I called myself a Christian at the beginning, but am now kind of denouncing it here. I am still not even sure of that myself. But as far as Christianity goes, I am kind of laying that by the wayside for now until the hypocrisy and demand that "the Bible is concrete" ways of thinking subside.