The Beginning

My first post is about religion. Don't worry, I'm not going to preach and this topic, most certainly, will not become a trend. You see, I have grown to be a very disillusioned individual when it comes to religion. I spent 16 years at a Christian school and my family, namely my father, is radically religious. I followed for a while, it's true. I was fed thoughts and taught, upon pain of hellfire and rejection, to regurgitate everything I heard. It wasn't until I began reading on my own that I began to question things. I was led to believe that the questions I had were to be treated like a cancerous blight on the face of my salvation. Even so, questioning began to make me feel better.

When I say I felt better, it's not to say that Christianity made me feel bad, but rather that the blind pursuit of biblical ideals made me catatonic. So, too, the church-going culture, or "fellowship" (a term that, to this day, triggers my gag reflex) caused me discomfort. The music, portrayed as being pleasing to the Great Unearthly Being, grated on my every last earthly nerve. I was once told that Heaven would consist of "an eternity of singing praise to the enthroned Old Man". My immediate reaction to this image of eternity was revulsion. I couldn't fathom standing around for all of eternity, watching the guy next to me screw up his face in cathartic concentration and pump his open palm into the air.

At first I thought these prejudices were indicative of my spiritual degradation. I didn't have an aversion to what was being taught, necessarily, but more so, an aversion to the people teaching it. I realized, through these discoveries and through other actions by "good Christian" kids in the youth groups, that the "body of Christ" (as they refer to themselves) is just as morally stunted as the "misguided" non-Christians. I began to picture the allegorical "body of Christ" as a slobbering, diseased husk of a hobo curled up in a pool of excrement. As a result, I stopped going to church.

I have a close friend that was in a similar situation. He had begun to question whether or not Jesus was the Son of God. Even though the Christian culture would demand he be ostracized for such a taboo doubt, the best and most fulfilling discussions were (and still are) to be had with this friend of mine. In many ways, we've begun searching for answers together.

I plan to make this blog a multifaceted depot for anything from fiction to philosophy, but I wanted to start it all here. The journey I've made through the robotic world of Christian thought has led me to where I am today. I revile religion in general, not because I desire to be recalcitrant, but because I don't feel that religious people are up to the task religion presents. It's not an exclusionary tool, as so many are wont to use it, but instead a method by which to know ourselves. Though this may, at first glance, seem a solipsist and new age point of view, I don't intend it that way. Knowledge in general is what I'm after.

I exist; this is the basis for my search of knowledge. Christians would advise that the search should be based in the Bible. Of course they would say that. It's in their programming, but I do not wish to be a robot. At the same time, however, I do not wish to dispel a philosophy based solely on my dislike for the culture it inspires. To summarize, I've come to the opinion that consciousness gives birth to knowledge and spirituality comes from applying that knowledge to existence. In general, I don't feel that religion makes the application. The knowledge they apply has been passed on through ambiguity.

"Beware of false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance." -George Bernard Shaw

Thanks for reading.