I have been a person who has been surrounded by religion and close minds all of my life.
That is a sin. God prohibited us from doing this. Woman cannot preach because they have to be submissive to man. Homosexuality is a sin and if you are one you are going to hell automatically even if you are the best person in the world.
Eventually you create a concept of what you can do and not, and when you see other kids around you doing things you are not allowed to, you feel out of your reality. Then when you start to grow you are told that "rock" music is bad, and that listening to this and that is bad for you, that you can't play videogames or better said I have never had a "Nintendo", "xbox", I had a Sega Genesis that its video card was damaged so I rather not to play than playing and seeing everything in a green scale. Then I remember I was 13 or something and they created a "Teens" group at church and the FIRST class was about "masturbation" and why was a sin. I literally got so pissed that day because I felt like if they were attacking all my natural process that is call "GROWING". I felt so overwhelmed because I couldn't think, I couldn't be, I couldn't look, because everything was a SIN.
Eventually I started to have all this traumas with God, Church and Religion. I have been a geek and a book worm since I am a child. So I am very aware about all the extremist religions and their "saint wars" and massacres perpetrated during centuries. So something in me woke up and I started to question if what I have been taught all my life was correct and if there was only one way. It is fun, because I have been told many times "Who started to put those thoughts in your head?" and the answer always is "My own mind".
IT was very obvious for me that something wasn't right. Since I am a little kid I have always identified myself as a different person. I have been this kid who is in sports but I don't like soccer as everyone else. Everyone was bullying someone else and playing with other kids but I always rather to have conversations with adults that with people of my age. I was that kid that was in the library reading about philosophy or greek history or something instead of doing nothing and wasting my time, while the rest of my class was playing sports or taking care about stupid things like falling in love in highschool which for me was stupid by then. I was that kid interested in exploring the world and who wanted to meet someone who was just strange as I was. So I started to skip school and go to the "big city" with my bestfriend to meet with girls or boys who were queers as us. I have always known that I was queer and different. I always knew that my life wasn't going to be easy just for the fact that I wanted so much in life and I was in a small town in a third world country with close minds around me or open minds but frustated ones because they were controlled by machismo or because they never had the strength to follow their dreams.
So I have been living around religion, my family and some of my closest friends still attend church. People around me saw me change. I didn't want to go to church anymore, I had spent all my tuesdays, wednesdays, and fridays from 6:00 to 7:30 pm at church and every sunday of my life since I was borned to when I was 19 years old. I started to live by myself and I knew that people would critize me most of my family will call me the "black sheep"
The real world. The complexity about the Universe and human life itself opened my eyes and mind.
I will never blame my parents because they gave me books. I didn't quit church and separated from church because drugs, alcohol or the party style life. I stoped agreeing with church and their beliefs. I started to wonder and question everything I have learned through my all life. I am not saying that church is bad, I think that for many people church is the only way to keep their lifes in balance and in good standing. I think that some people are good people because they keep church, faith, God and religion in their hearts. And that is when I realized.
When you question this people about things in earth and the universe that can't be explained by church they have nothing. They become powerless, they don't try to acknowledge the truth, so they turn to God and their Faith, because all things that can't be explained are a God matter and if they don't understand they have faith, because faith is about believing in those things that you can't see or explain.
I as a human started to question my own beliefs and my "faith". What will happen to all those humans in the amazons, in the artic, in Africa that do not know or have never been aware about Christians, Muslims, Jews and some other "special" religions. What about their beliefs, because this people are more connected to mother nature than all of us, and therefore they have more respect and more empathy with another beings including plants, animals and human beings than us.
I started to realize about history and how many events have happened due to religion and close minds. How many MILLIONS have died through history and through time because they were not ok with religions or because their beliefs were different. What about those kids that commit suicide because they love so much their families and their religion that the only way and the only solution for them is to end their life because they don't see any light because of who they are and their nature. When I see so much hate in people's hearts and how they kill someone and thousands in the name "of", or how people become bullies and think they are better than someone else just by being "normal".
I have learned and I keep open to learn more about how life works and to learn from others. Because it is so true that the more you learn the less you know. Learning and opening your mind makes you a different person, it makes you more emphatetic to learn and to people. You realize that there is not absolute true in the world or the universe, or there might be an absolute true but we as humans don't know it. And maybe someone or a few people knows it but what I can say is that I don't.
I believe that there are forces in the world and the universe that I will never (or maybe someday) understand. Some people call it God, Mother Nature and several more names. It is undoubtely for me that there is a force that moves the universe and creates life and transform one being to become part of something else. I understood that life and death are both beautiful that happens in an specific time and both have their own qualities.
I have learned that religions are very important in humans because for many of us that is the only thing we have that gives us hope to keep fighting and to keep living. Not knowing for sure if there is something else afterlife but by faith we believe that we have a purpose on earth. I have learned that religions many times goes along with ignorance, fear and close minds.
I can't say to you that the world would be better without religions because as I said before, for some religion is everything they have, religion is their salvation and their only hope. But I do think that being open and learn a little bit more about tolerance, letting live someone else with their beliefs and respect ourselves as humans will do the world a better place. Because when you impose something and force someone to believe something in any way and whatever it is ......GOES WRONG.
It is hard for me to keep alway from religion (I will not be part of it again or at least that is what I think for now) because many of my loved ones are still part of it and goes to church and their mind is very closed and small that for them not being in church means that you are a sinner, an alcoholic, a smoker and all the bad things in the world and that you are condemned to go to an afterlife full of bad things because of your decisions. I believe that hell and heaven are meant to be in earth depending on your decisions. But yet again, explaining this to them has no fundament becuase the bible, the tora or the coran doesn't say so.
A little essay and thoughts about religion.
With love.
Uno.
