How No-So-Catholic College Opened My Heart
By Lust for Life ~
College has been a huge eye opener for me, like many of the other students at the catholic university I attend. Sure, there's an abbey and a monastery on the campus, but almost none of the students are religious. This was a huge shock for me as I have attended Catholic school and church my entire life.
My parents, especially my mom, are really Catholic. My mom has always been active in our church, and my dad loves going to mass early Sunday morning to start the week. For most of my life I too 100% believed in everything the Catholic Church teaches. In high school I started to feel wishy-washy about gay marriage, and the more I studied religion the more I wondered why it had to be so complicated, but the church had to be right since it was the original church based on the only god to come in the form of man, right? Wrong.
In college I learned that Jesus is essentially just one of many pagan figures who share near identical life stories, and much of the Bible is based on astrology, which the Catholic Church says is evil. Jesus is just one more symbol of love and goodness based on the sun-gods of ancient civilizations.
Besides that, I was living with homosexuals, and I could see they were just like everyone else. My parents hate gay people because they truly believe gay people do not love each other the same way that straight people do. I know, I don't understand that reasoning either. I believe Jesus would love gays just as much as everyone else who has a loving heart. It really hurts my feelings when my parents judge gays for kissing in public, people showing off tattoos, or people doing anything my parents don't agree with. That attitude is the reason young people feel ostracized and miserable rather than loved as they should be.
Jesus is essentially just one of many pagan figures who share near identical life stories [...] based on the sun-gods of ancient civilizations.I also started to realize that sexual activity outside of marriage could be done out of real love, not just because of animalistic lust that humans should control. Humans existed long before marriage was created, and the only reason marriage was truly needed in society was to make sure a man's son really was his son so he could sleep at night knowing he wasn't giving his inheritance to the neighbor's kid.
So now I subscribe to my own belief in the higher power of love. Love truly is the most powerful force in the universe. It fills people with positive energy and strength that not even fear or hatred can. People will do just about anything to be loved, and all animal species more complicated than fish can feel love. I believe that Jesus was a perfect example of love, so I can never truly turn my back on his followers. I suppose I'll always be one on some level. I also share Jesus' love of calling out hypocrites which is why I've decided to one day become an investigative journalist.
But I will no longer follow the biblical myth of Jesus being born of a virgin and dying on the cross, nor do I think there is a hell. Most likely we're worm-food, but whether heaven or an afterlife exist or not, we should all love and help others. This should never be done out of fear of eternal damnation, but for the satisfaction of simply doing good. When good people die, whether they go to a shiny cloud in the sky or not, they leave the world a better place than they left it, and that's the true calling of all human beings.
My parents, especially my mom, are really Catholic. My mom has always been active in our church, and my dad loves going to mass early Sunday morning to start the week. For most of my life I too 100% believed in everything the Catholic Church teaches. In high school I started to feel wishy-washy about gay marriage, and the more I studied religion the more I wondered why it had to be so complicated, but the church had to be right since it was the original church based on the only god to come in the form of man, right? Wrong.
In college I learned that Jesus is essentially just one of many pagan figures who share near identical life stories, and much of the Bible is based on astrology, which the Catholic Church says is evil. Jesus is just one more symbol of love and goodness based on the sun-gods of ancient civilizations.
Besides that, I was living with homosexuals, and I could see they were just like everyone else. My parents hate gay people because they truly believe gay people do not love each other the same way that straight people do. I know, I don't understand that reasoning either. I believe Jesus would love gays just as much as everyone else who has a loving heart. It really hurts my feelings when my parents judge gays for kissing in public, people showing off tattoos, or people doing anything my parents don't agree with. That attitude is the reason young people feel ostracized and miserable rather than loved as they should be.
Jesus is essentially just one of many pagan figures who share near identical life stories [...] based on the sun-gods of ancient civilizations.I also started to realize that sexual activity outside of marriage could be done out of real love, not just because of animalistic lust that humans should control. Humans existed long before marriage was created, and the only reason marriage was truly needed in society was to make sure a man's son really was his son so he could sleep at night knowing he wasn't giving his inheritance to the neighbor's kid.
So now I subscribe to my own belief in the higher power of love. Love truly is the most powerful force in the universe. It fills people with positive energy and strength that not even fear or hatred can. People will do just about anything to be loved, and all animal species more complicated than fish can feel love. I believe that Jesus was a perfect example of love, so I can never truly turn my back on his followers. I suppose I'll always be one on some level. I also share Jesus' love of calling out hypocrites which is why I've decided to one day become an investigative journalist.
But I will no longer follow the biblical myth of Jesus being born of a virgin and dying on the cross, nor do I think there is a hell. Most likely we're worm-food, but whether heaven or an afterlife exist or not, we should all love and help others. This should never be done out of fear of eternal damnation, but for the satisfaction of simply doing good. When good people die, whether they go to a shiny cloud in the sky or not, they leave the world a better place than they left it, and that's the true calling of all human beings.
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