Gods

Many of my friends and family, the couple lucky people who fall under both categories, know that I am by no means a religious person.  I was not raised to believe in the Christian God, or any other God, Gods, or Goddesses, and on my own have not picked up any particular religion.  This is not to say I didn't try.  When I was younger I dabbled in Christianity off and on, and for about a week in sixth grade considered Wicca (Buffy, correct my terminology if I am wrong).  But no religion has really stuck, and I see flaws in many common-day beliefs.  I am not so extreme as to back the "Religion is doing what you are told despite what is right" but I'm pretty close to being there there older I get.

I do have a sense of Spirituality, if you could call it that, though I usually just label myself as Agnostic for the ease of it.  I believe that all Gods, be them of whatever religion, are created, strengthened, and maintained by their followers and by people who believe in their existence.  And with this, Gods can only have direct influence over those who have chosen them.  IE "Your God cannot punish me because they are not my God." It gets confusing.  Therefore, all Gods, past and present are/were "real" in a sense and no religions prior to Christianity were "wrong."  This is actually one of my biggest problems with many religions, the belief than those who believe differently than you are wrong and that you are right because of some sort of ethereal proof. 

On a similar, but different, note, I would like to think that the Afterlife is whatever you make of it or believe it to be.  I like to picture Hell almost exactly like the Hell of Dante's Inferno, mostly because it made so much sense to me and was fairly logical in its set up.  Either that, or it is a great mixing pot of all past afterlife expectations, which is also one of my favorite theories.  Heaven is something I believe in not for the sake of myself, but for the sake of my loved ones who have passed on so that I can sleep at night believing that they have passed onto something good. 

This is just a short ramble.  I find myself now, more than ever, surrounded by religious people.  I feel as if some of them think I am lost, or that I need someone to "shepard" me to the "right path" but I am perfectly content where I am with the beliefs that I hold.




"If God cannot accept me for who I am then they are not the type of person I need in my life."