Save Me Jesus. My Faith Has Been Stolen by the Righteous.

As long as I can remember I've had doubts about religion. When I was younger I did all the typical Catholic rituals. I attended mass on Sundays; I did my communion, and even confessed my "cardinal sins". I did it not out belief but out of tradition and fear. I feared that if I didn't do these things I'd end up hell. It all changed when my mother became ill and was placed on a life support machine. I had an epiphany that would change how I viewed faith, religion, and God. I asked the priest of the church if he could visit my mother and that it would mean a lot to my family. What I got was a flat out rejection. The priest didn't believe he needed to be by the side of one his parishioners. He stated that the hospital had its own priest and he wasn't going to visit my mother. I was shocked by his response and said fuck it. This is when I started to drift from religion and my faith would temporary fade.

My mistake was that I associated religion with faith. I believed the two were intertwined that one couldn't exist without the other. What I learned is that religion is ruled by the corrupt and faith is ruled from within its God's gift to humanity. Over the years my faith in God grew stronger. No matter the situation God never left my side. When my father pasted away God pulled me through that difficult time. When my nephew was in the Intensive Care Unit, God shined his light and led him out of the ICU. Through all of my experiences I learned that I didn't need guidance from the middleman i.e. priests, pastors, church. I needed to go straight to the source God and ignore the preacher man.

I always get a kick out of the hypocrisy of religion and its leaders. They like to marginalize people and claim a monopoly over morals. These people point fingers at those they view as immoral. They then go off and do worse things like having affairs with male prostitutes, smoking meth, and abusing kids. Fortunately God has a great sense of humor. Every time they're close to imposing their views God smacks them and puts them back in their place. Case and point when the evangelicals made major strides with their family value nonsense in 2004. Luckily, the masses caught on to these charlatans and rebutted their growing influence.

Lastly, I don't hate religions I just don't like institutions that claim moral superiority over the population because at the end of the day man created these institutions. And the very nature of man is self interested and corrupt.


Later

L