Sometimes I grow frustrated with the conventional idea of God. The idea of God, heaven, hell, the overworked stories that bury themselves inside the bible, I just can't place my heart in to it. Now, I don't want to give the impression that my ideas are impervious to change. Far from it. I enjoy discussing new ideas and allowing my thoughts and words to flow depending on the time, the place, the people. My thoughts change often when it comes to religion and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's reasonable and should be outright expected. Except it's, more often, not. If you change any bit of your thoughts, some would see it as a weakness. Something changed your mind and people hold you to it, shove it in your face, and remind you of the time where you didn't believe that and except you to feel terrible. They expect you to feel weak, ashamed. They expect you to feel hypocritical. But why? There should be no reason to do that to someone. If anything we should be encouraging them. We should be encouraging people to explore new ideas and twist it and turn it and change it all they want to what they feel is best. To what they feel comfortable with. See, when it comes to religion people often expect you to have a cemented answer. When they ask, they want to know who you affiliate yourself with. Where you stand. But what if you are not at a standpoint? What if you took different beliefs from each religion and changed it to fit you best? Why do people bestow that type of pressure on each other? Muhammad Ali had once said, "Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths". And in the end, isn't that what religion is all about? Our truths and how others and ourselves can learn from them? And while, I don't exactly believe in a God, I still see that each religion is trying to offer something to this world. Something beautiful and it's up to you to use it anyway you want to. You can use it to justify your actions. You can use it to hurt others, save others, help others. And while it can be dishearteningly cruel, it can also be merciful.Merciful. I don't believe in God but if God were true, I wish for him to be merciful. I can't believe in a God that is malicious. And for that reason, I do not believe in a hell. I don't want anyone to be punished for being human. I do not seek pleasure from the thought of torture being inflicted on someone for all eternity. I cannot stand the thought of the resonance of their eternal screams echoing in my head. But alas, I pray for a heaven. And others say that one cannot exist without the other but I disagree. I don't associate the two as opposites. They are things that can stand by themselves. Just as our emotions. I do not believe the opposite of love is hate and I do not believe the opposite of sadness is happiness because they can exist without the other. We feel them either way, and we don't need one to feel the other. But again, I cannot place my heart in heaven. Though I do appreciate the thoughts of eternal happiness, I cannot believe in such a place
but something better. I believe in an afterlife but I do not believe in what the stories in those mystical books say the afterlife is like. I don't think it has a specific location or look but a feeling. I think there's something big out there. Something better than what we believe. Something we're not getting a hold of. Something we're missing out on right now. Something beyond our imagination. Something that makes us feel apart of the whole universe and beyond.
And then there is the thought that may presumably haunt us all, that we are gone. That we no longer have the capability to think. That we don't even know what we are where we are or even have the ability to ponder. Just an empty acceptance of nothing. I don't want to believe in something like that. It terrifies me to the core. I don't want this all to go to waste. I want to continue thinking, moving, feeling. The mere possibility of it is dreadful, to say the least. But perhaps that is the curse bestowed upon mankind.
I don't think any of us are wrong. It is your truth and you'll die with it as your only. It won't matter what anyone else thought. At least we can count on that.
