In the beginning...

Since most of the people who read my original blog (Living Life to the Furrest, which has gone underground) are atheist or agnostic and skip over most God-related discussion, I figured I may as well start a new blog where I can dive into it into detail without offending my loyal readers...

Of course, I'll still offend them, just with less Jesus. :D

Instead, I'll offend everybody, most likely, religious and a-religious alike. Yey!

Obviously, that's not my intention. My intention is to sift out my thoughts and experiences about religion and lack thereof from the perspective of an "in-betweener".

The first time I ever read any of the Bible outside of school and without being forced was around the second week of May 2008. So basically, for nearly a year, I've been exploring the Bible and other churchy things, and while I feel I've learned a ton, I am so aware that I have learned next to nothing.

In the beginning, the opposition to me reading the Bible was fierce. In spite of having a BSc in biology, people around me started to question my rationality and categorized me as a right wing, conservative Bible thumper- just because I was reading it. At that point, I didn't even believe in any of it yet. I was just learning for the sake of learning.

Suddenly, I was expected to throw my years of biology away and believe in the literal telling of Creation, hate the homosexual community and start bombing abortion clinics.

Well, no.

I love my gay peeps. And really, not to love them is unChristian in my opinion. But that's another issue for another day.

I won't say I'm well-versed in Bible things. Honestly, so far, I've read Matthew, John and Luke, James, Ecclesiastes, a few psalms, quite a bit of Genesis, bits of the Corinthians, Philippians, um... you know, bits of stuff all over. There are some books in the Bible that I still don't know exist. There are some books I've read twice already. Some parts I've read dozens of times. So obviously, I'm not a pro and I still have a lot to learn. A LOT.

I'll also be honest and say a boy gave me my first Bible. I really thought he was my person, and he was a Christian. No matter what, his kids would be Christian, and in order for me to see any possibility of a future with him, which would include Christian babies, I had to find out a way to come to terms with religion and a way to respect my own future babies' beliefs.

As it turns out, my passion for learning made him feel like a bad Christian and I ended up keeping my searches and eventually my faith entirely from him. He'd ask me if I believed in Jesus and I'd always say either "no," or "I don't know," when really, I wasn't so doubtful one way or the other.

I continued my secret quest for learning by listening to sermons from a number of churches, along with lectures on youtube and subtle [and not-so-subtle] chats with both believers and non-believers. Sometimes, the discussions go well, and other times, I am shut down- by both sides- and being shut down so often leads me to categorize myself as an "in-betweeny" as I mentioned earlier. I'm too entrenched in the Bible to be non-threatening to the atheists and I'm too much of a religion-virgin to get along with the religious.

After twenty-eight years of swaying between atheism and agnosticism (but by far, leaning towards agnosticism), I have found a love and passion for learning about Christianity, learning about the teachings of Jesus and learning about the Almighty God, but somehow, I have yet to make the link between religious practice and faith in God.

In theory, it works. You sing hymns to worship God, to express your love and devotion. But when the multitude stands up and drones out barely audible mumblings with their noses pressed into old, musty hymnals, I lose the connection. Or, when I look back at the times I went to Catholic church with my grandparents as a child, as the Eucharist was served (passed out? Sorry, I don't know all the terminology yet), my grandfather made sure we didn't get any because we weren't raised "right" with the church. Why does a person have to know the rosary to know Jesus?

I'm a dog person, hence the "furry" and "dogma" play on words. And so, I'll use a dog analogy. My brother was short on cash and his dog needed a rabies vaccine by law. So he brought his dog to the vet down the street and asked for the rabies shot. The vet refused. He told my brother he had to buy the package with ALL the vaccines or the vet wouldn't vaccinate the dog at all. So, on my advice, my brother left. He'd listed the vaccines in the package to me and there were so many, including optional ones, like Bordetella and Lyme. We don't have Lyme disease here (yet). That many vaccines in one day would have done damage to that dog's immune system.

Based on my experience, I draw parallels between that vet and the church. Because of its own policy, the vet refused to give a single core vaccine and the dog walked away vulnerable and unprotected, just like the church (as in the group of Christians) refused to teach me Jesus simply because I wasn't ready to buy the whole package either.

Over the past year, the Christians I have learned from have put the Christ back in Christianity. Jesus is all that matters and the rest follows, they say. Jesus changes your heart and as a result of a changed heart, the rest follows. And I can buy that, because honestly, having Jesus love you no matter who you are does change your heart, similar to how a person who is newly in love has an altered perspective. But in this society where parents are abandoning their kids constantly- and I don't mean giving their kids up, I mean, walking out on them, and also just not being present in their daily lives- it is so easy to see how belief in an unconditional, undeserved love like that would become harder and harder.

I knew it in my own life. I've always felt a struggle with feeling loved. My own mother left when I was two. To learn abandonment at two years old is to learn that a person can just fail at being lovable. How can Jesus love me if my own mother didn't? How can Jesus, who knows everything I've done and thought of doing and everything I will do in the future stay with me always if my own mom gave me up when I wasn't a full person yet?

How can He not? If, as they say, I'm a child of God and God's love is unimaginable and completely outside the realm of any human capacity for love, then how can He not?

Anyway, all that to say, I've started a new blog where I can spew out my ideas on faith, religion, the religious, the non-religious, the church, the Bible and everything else that might cross my mind regarding any of it.

And I'm sorry in advance for offending through misnaming, accidental blasphemy, not capitalizing the right words, and frankly, just saying things I'm not supposed to. I'm sorry for offending- I'm not actually apologizing for what I'm saying or going to say, because not only am I still learning, but I'm just speaking my mind here. These are my thoughts and you're free to comment as you please (unless things get out of hand and I have to limit that, but we'll pretend to be optimistic for now :D).

So yeah. And so there was life typed onto this blank blog. Thank God. lol