I think it's a throwback to the days when we felt we had to appease God, and then we would be rewarded. Instead of blood sacrifices, we shower praise on a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient being and hope that if we are good enough or worthy enough it will grant us what we want. I've never understood that. The story goes supposedly that it created us and gave us free will and wants us to love it as it loves us. My question has always been: If it is all knowing, complete and all encompassing, why does it have a void that needs to be filled with our love? How can it need or want for anything? A need or want would suggest that it is not complete, not all encompassing and not all powerful. If that is the case, would that make it not god? Also, if something is complete, then it is no longer growing. Anything that is no longer growing is either dead or never was alive. Can there be consciousness without life?
I've never understood why people praise god in thanks for things, yet when bad things happen or we lose something that we love we just shrug our shoulders and say "It's all part of God's plan". I think it's a dangerous idea that I have fallen into before that, when things go my way, when everything seems to happen right and effortlessly and coincidentally that it must be destiny, or God is rewarding me for something. You see, that way of thinking plays into our egos. It plays in to the idea that we are special, or have done something good, or that god has a plan for us because I'm me and I'm important to this world. Then, when something goes wrong, or you lose something you loved you feel that you were not good enough or did something wrong or are being punished. Bad Religion wrote a great song about this called "only rain". Sometimes you feel like it's raining on you because of something you've done.
Rain fell like judgment across my windowpane.
Said it fell like judgment, but it was only rain.
In truth, the universe treats chicken shit and chicken salad exactly the same in the end.
I like when people praise god for things. Like when you sit down at dinner and you thank god for food. The truth is, the universe is working against you every day. The truth is, some poor farmer is busting his ass every day to make ends meet or some underpaid immigrant is working in the field for not enough money or some ecosystem is being spoiled to grow the crop, the earth is being poisoned by the pesticides that made it possible and monsanto is getting rich off all of us and owning our asses. The truth is, you bust your ass every day at a job you hate just to be able to buy that food. But, hey thanks God! No, to me, the world is working against us at all times and everything we can be thankful for is through our own struggle.
"Dude you're being a Negatron! You should be thank god you weren't born in a third world country!"
Ok, well I'm sure all those people who are suffering just for being born in a third world country pray every day for what they need. Why are their prayers not granted? Is my soul somehow more worthy than theirs? Did I do something good in a past life to deserve to not be born in to that? Is God racist and favorable to Americans? We have to realize that many of the luxuries we enjoy were bought with the suffering of others, and I'm sure those people prayed in the midst of their suffering. I'm sure that children born in war zones pray for safety and deliverance. I'm sure victims of genocides prayed for help.
"oh, they weren't praying to the right God".
I thought there was only one.
"Well they're heathens who don't believe in Jesus".
Oh. Gotcha.
I think what is really the cruel joke is that, the better you are, the kinder you are, the more you sacrifice yourself for others, the more the world will destroy you. In fact, it's a given. Jesus, MLK, Malcolm X and Gandhi were all killed for their work. The truth is, the better you are, the more you will be hated and that, is a cruel, cruel joke.
In fact, sometimes the people that I have been kindest to have been the most cruel and taken advantage of me the most.
Not that I will stop. The basis of my spiritual beliefs do not rely on God at all. I can sit and speculate on whether or not God exists for eternity and ask it for a sign so that I can anchor my faith on it and I will be talking to the ceiling for the rest of my life. Apparently, it is not as important to sway me as it is to convince some wedding attendees 2000 years ago with a vulgar display of alcohol creation. I mean, I just need a little help with my depression is all, I'm not asking for some element to be transmogrified.
Anyways, my point is that you can ask for the invisible guy in the sky to bestow mercy, love and compassion on you and it'll be like waiting for your sandwich at kwik check. However, you have the ability to create mercy, love and compassion in the world and bestow it on others, perhaps answering a prayer of theirs.
It's sorta like the DIY ethic i learned from punk rock. You can sit around forever and wait for some record label to discover you and some booking agent to book your shows or you can put out your own records and book your own shows. You have to be the things you want to see in the world, in spite of the world.
But sometimes I need a break. Sometimes I need a boost. I want to believe in the fairy tale, but as life has gone on all the fairy tales have been shattered for me. I've lost faith in everything we're supposed to believe in. The family unit, relationships, authority and God. I wish I could believe in them, but instead I'm just watching the world go crazy around me and perhaps I'm going crazy too. I don't know. It's so much easier to see other people's insanity. Tell me if I've lost my mind. It seems to me that insanity is the rule, and sanity the exception now.
"Dude, you should thank god for your friends and family"
Fuck that. I work to maintain my friendships and family relations
"you should be thankful for your health"
Or what? Is God going to cause me to get old one day and get cancer and die an agonizing death?
"Well, that's going to happen anyways"
Exactly. What happens if I don't believe? I'll never get my hopes up for special magic to be bestowed upon me? Maybe god will eventually take everything I love from me? All my relationships will fail? Myself and all my loved ones will get sick and die? Everything that is sacred in the world will get destroyed by cheesy, greedy motherfuckers? I'll have to toil every day for the rest of my life?
Oh yeah. All that's going to happen anyways.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy life and am happy to experience the good and bad. Any experience beats non-experience. I'm just not going to ask the ceiling for good luck anymore. I'll create my own, thanks....
I think I summed it up best in the song Drifting Away:
Betrayed by the things that I can't accept
A riddle that I must not get
For if perfection is complete
Then God, he must be dead
Take this from my hands
I'll collapse beneath the weight
Of things I'll never become
The guilt from what I'll never be
Is our only hope to clean the slate?
Or will patience and time still erase
Greed and envy from our eyes
Our regrets and our wasted time
Take this from my hands
Maybe this is not my fate
To know what can never be known
To have even one ounce of faith
To have even one ounce of faith
Sometimes I envy the man who's got blind faith
Other times I want to laugh in his face
But he has an anchor upon which to weigh
His fears before he drifts away
But I have no solace for my soul
I can't believe what I can't hold (what I can't conceive)
They say that faith is truly blind
Well why the fuck did god give us eyes?
Faith's not enough
The ship's going down
It always been
The time is now
It always is
And never when
And never then
It's always been
