There is no God?

I’d like to know why the Culture has made me feel bad for believing in God?

Maybe it’s because we’ve had so many assholes talking at us about God, when in reality they were using God to make themselves gods on earth. -see most televangelists circa 1980 to 2000

And then there’s organizations like the Catholic Church who purposely hid evidence that people in their organization were breaking the law and God’s laws by molesting children. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Catholic hater, but I think that many times throughout history, the Catholic Church has been more concerned with the organization, comprised of its priests and bishops, than with the spiritual well-being of it’s members. And don’t even get me started on infallibility…

There’s also the Church of Atheism, headed by its twin popes of Dawkins and Hitchens. Those guys can be as dogmatic as the popes of the Catholic Church.

All I know is that when I see the sunrise or when a particularly beautiful day seems to elevate everything I see and hear and touch and taste and feel emotionally, I know that there is a God. When I see thousands die in natural disasters and there are women crying in the streets over their dead children, I know that there is a God. I know that there is something greater and more beautiful and terrible than I can imagine. And this is the failing of most religion; God may love us, but he has a difficult and sometimes horrible job to do. That job is supporting the universe, and to do that, people have to die as well as be born. People have to be allowed to be evil to each other so that we can be greater than we are and learn what is good.

You see, I don’t think God looks after each one of us like a little child, at least physically. God is as the mountains and the oceans are. He does not make it possible for your country to win wars or for you to win the lottery or for your favorite sports team to win the championship.

God gives life and takes it away. He produces beauty, but allows horror. God is life, and in between the terrible parts, God is love.

I’ve Found Something

You may have remembered this post I wrote about my son’s upcoming Baptism.

I have done much soul searching since then. I have looked into my past and tried to see what has made my Catholic faith such a burden and so cumbersome. My problems with the Catholic faith have stemmed from several things, the first being something I will call the stigma of Christ. It is the cringing I feel when I see someone proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Savior. But what about that truly bothers me? Part of it is the history of some people who have had very poor and misguided behavior and ideas about what and who Jesus is.

I know Jesus does not “hate fags.”

I know Jesus doesn’t “want my money.”

I know Jesus doesn’t want you to kill anyone. Period.

I know Jesus wants us to accept God’s love.

I know Jesus wants us to love each other.

I know Jesus wants us to forgive each other.

And I’m starting to wonder just what it is I have a problem with in my faith?

I know the answer to that.

I don’t have a problem with Christ. I have a problem with the people who say they speak for Christ and God. And taking my cues from Christ and Buddha, I must seek until I find and I must be compassionate and I must forgive people. I must forgive all of those misguided and spiritually bankrupt people who speak in God’s name when, if I can stop for a second and listen to the world and God in my innermost being, I know what the truth is.

And here is another secret that Christ and Buddha knew: To know God, you must be aware. you must be willing to shine a light on all parts of your self, from the good thoughts and the bad, the prejudices and pride-filled parts too.

My problem is with people, not God and Christ. And I’m feeling so much better about a lot of things, but there a still a few I’m not so happy or comfortable with. I’m still a bit apprehensive about aspects of my faith. But the important thing is that I seem to have found my faith.

Now I have something to believe in. Now I know what my life’s purpose is. I am here to love and forgive and be my best. And that is all you have to do praise God, because God doesn’t actually want you to praise Him. He wants you to love. God wants us to love and forgive people, nature, politicians, priests, criminals, cops, governments, each other, and ourselves.

Whenever people love and forgive each other, that’s where you’ll find God. And that’s what I found that was missing.

The Invisibles

by Grant Morrison

Baptism

My son is to be baptized soon. And sitting in the office of our Catholic church, a religion I have many problems with, I have to recite the reasons for wanting our child baptized.

Initiation.

Original Sin.

Salvation.

Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?

And then I am told that what I was told was Original Sin is not what “The Church” now says is original sin. Now we are to realize that we are born into an imperfect world and can only be made perfect through faith in Christ. And who doesn’t want to be made perfect, eh?

You say you smell hypocrisy? I say that you are correct.

The reason we are baptizing our son in the Church is because, well, family on both sides expect it. And the Catholic faith isn’t all bad, except for some unnecessary deification and tons of dogmatic red tape, like most religions it does assist in instilling a moral compass of sorts, albeit one that is Christ centered, or at least the Catholic Churches version of Christ.

I will be happy when this is all over. I have grave aversions to anything false and not done whole heartedly.

This is my latest sin.

Freedom

I am lost. But come to think of it, this place I am in and what I am writing about may as well be about the television show (and how I hate TV, except for LOST).

I am in a place that I have no bearing and I am afraid to start in one direction or the other because of one simple thing: Truth.

Everywhere I turn are control structures, lines of thought and dogma that cloud the issue and alter reality. These ideas and religions offer you truth, but deliver slavery.

Run from anything or anyone that tells you, ” You must…”

Some magickal writings tell us to create our own framework, while others preach no dogma, which is dogma in itself.

Maybe I’m not after truth, but freedom. Freedom from other ideas and books and religions and television and media and fashion and…the World. Death comes to mind, but this defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Silence is another word. Complete and total silence. Being cut off from anything that can render its message to me in any way, shape or form. Tabula rasa is not good enough. I’m talking womb. I’m talking rebirth. I want to wipe my hard drive and build my own operating system from the ground up.

Everything thought and action will be me and I will set myself free.

Time Divided By…Infinity

I’ve got a thing for fractals, which are, “…generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole…”

When I was in high school and college, I would sit in my room late at night and ponder the nature of the universe. What was here before everything? How can you get something from nothing? Can you keep dividing something into a smaller part, like time?

I think time, and maybe everything else, is a fractal, which come to think of it jibes with holograms. Maybe every single thing is a fractal hologram, or pieces of a hologram and we are all part of the One fractal hologram’s subdivisions…

And suddenly Phillip K. Dick’s VALIS is making more sense to me.

Index Card Introspection

I bought some index cards in the hopes that I would use them to outline my novel and nail-down the characters and their roles toward the plot and some other writer tricks I had seen or read about. That was almost a year ago.

I still have no novel.

The index cards, up until last week, were still in their plastic wrapping all shiny and new.

I was thinking about the 10 non-virtues of Buddhism and how I have not avoided them to some degree or another, either now or in the past, despite my great work. I was going through the catalog of my shortcomings and seeing how my ego and limited points-of-view had stressed the many parts of my life and I want to make things better, not only for me, but for everyone around me. I could see how I was unintentionally, or at least subconsciously poisoning my environment and adding to my karma. Karma will drag you down.

Karma is like credit card debt; it keeps piling up and making things harder for you in the long run.

So I was uncluttering my go-bag and came across the index cards and thoguht they could be useful to document my shortcomings and show a way for me to stop hurting myself and other people. I started writing what it was I did wrong. I had to step outside of all of the chatter in my head that was saying, “Hey, its OK to do this, after all YOU deserve this, or THEY deserve that, or its NOT HURTING ANYONE THAT MUCH anyway.”

I went through about twenty cards, all filled on one side with the things in my life that did not really benefit anyone at all, let alone myself.

After I reread the cards a couple of times and meditated on how I could make things right, I started to turn the cards over and write what I would do or how I would approach the karma or suffering or shortcomings in my life. Positives for negatives. I was balancing the equation that is myself. I was going to make things better and since then I’ve been feeling good and catching myself before I open my mouth to speak harshly or thinking to judge without compassion.

And you know what?

I’ve been feeling really good. Things are getting better.