We all too often get wrapped up in perception, what do I mean? We tag things in so many ways to attempt to put them in a box. Say, religion persay. In my belief, everyone has religion. One of Webster's dictionary defines religion as 'a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith', ok, now which one of us can say that some part of our life can not be defined by that. Sure, some of us worship a higher power, and some of us do not, but in that, both are measures of faith. In my view, either way, you either have a faith in a higher power or you have faith that there is not one. My choice, I pray to a rebel king.
I have been following the teachings of Jesus Christ right now, but still I cringe at calling myself a Christian. I am all too often disgusted in the way that so many label themselves as Christians, almost like a 'Get out of jail free' card, they use it as a implement to overlord over others, and spy down from a tall pedestal and chastise, judge, hate, and blame. The sad part, they have created a image of what a 'Christian' is. If you ask many people to define Jesus Christ, you will get words like peace, love, prophet, son of God, for the people, crucified, saved me from myself. Then, when you ask to define Christian, and if it is quite the opposite, hateful, angry, judgmental, and so on and so forth. For me, there is no hate, there is no judgement, only love, in that, you don't have to like, you just have to love. So, for the next few minutes, I am going to spout on what it means to be a servant of Christ, and what does it mean to me.
First of all, for anyone new, I am not a lifelong Christian, haven't been, I have prayed to Odin, I have prayed to Satan, so many other transient beliefs along the way, and I have had faith that there was no existence of a higher power at all. In that, when I began my trip into the church, I went in with total skepticism and in the way that I was reintroduced to church, I went in looking for a way to find fallacy and fault so I could get back to my Sunday morning schedule of sleeping in until I was good and ready to get out of bed, usually at the crack of noon. I had become accustomed to that life, and I quite enjoyed it, either way, with everything I had done, if there was a God, with everything I had done to spit in his face, He was going to be in no mood for me, since all I remembered from when I was young was smoting and hell fire and brimstone, or so I thought. My last time at a church for a service other than Christmas for my mom had been in my early teen years, where I was told, 'either cut my hair or don't come back' , to which I replied, 'Deal', and that's where church left off for me.
So, when I was told it was time to attend church once again, I was not a fan, when the morning came, I proceeded to put on my 'Hellraiser's Ball' T-shirt, every single one of my rings (making sure I didn't forgetmy 'victim' ring, and it was on tight, a large silver ring with 'victim' in raised letters printed backwards, just in case you wanted to make your mark), my darkest set of Loc's (sunglasses), and my dirtiest pair of jeans and boots. To church we went. As we entered in through the door I had planned to have everyone stay away from me, and just suck it up and get through it. That's not what happened, sure there were the usual stay aways, but then there was Russ. One of the founders of the church, if you picture a Disney grandfather, that's Russ, with the happy-go-lucky attitude to boot. It confounded and confused me. On top of that, there were all of these 'happy' people, in my life, I had gotten good at reading people, I was used to the fake smiles and how to do's, but this was different, sure there were the fake smile folks, but there were also people who really seemed to just glow, it confused the crap outta me. I had planned to point out the hypocrisy and go, but it was going to take a little while longer than I expected. (to be continued)
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