Posts Tagged ‘religion’

I am probably about to lose quite a few readers and people I know in person with this post so bear with me… read it to the end and I REALLY want to know your position on it… so don’t forget to leave your comment.

I don’t believe in God.

At least not the same way you do. And in 90% of the cases not the same God. Not the limited God we learn to believe at church.

Yes… I have a problem with the church as an institution… Yes… I believe the church is a bankrupt institution, the biggest fail in the past 1800 years give it or take it a few years… and Yes… I am an Ordained Minister having being a pastor for the past 3 years or so.

I am not here to speak about CHURCH today tho, so let me stop here before I get started on the subject.

I am also refraining myself from talking too much about what I believe today.

I am here to talk about fact. To present my case and to know what YOU think.

I was 18 years old when it happened… and it was all because of a broken heart… looking back at it I say it was the most foolish thing I’ve ever done… well at least the most foolish one for the most stupid reason.

Let me rephrase that… the most foolish withn I’ve ever ALMOST did for the most stupid reason ever (what??? you wanna know the reason? I’d been broken up with… the one and only person EVER to brake up with me).

That wasn’t the only reason, but it was the one that made me reach the amount of things I could hold at once in my chest. (I was never one to open myself to anyone about what was going on with me).

It happened over 10 years ago but I remember the episode as if it was yesterday… I got into the house, went to the bathroom’s cabinet, picked up a bottle of aspirin (one of those with 500capsules they sell in the US) and locked myself in my bedroom.

The moment I turned the key I started crying.

Aspirin was my weapon of choice for 2 reasons (I could have chosen the .22 rifle I had inside my wardrobe): 1) I knew that based on my age/size/weight that as little as 20 could have killed me (I had a pot with nearly 500) 2) I am extremely allergic to the Acid Acetilsalisilic which is the main component of aspirin.

You see… I was born and raised in the church (my dad is a Worship Minister/Pastor and mum is a Bishop)… and it doesn’t matter how confused I was about things I had “discovered” (things I always noticed but only then started to make sense) I still had the “Fear of the Almighty” within me.

I made an ultimatum to God… He had 15 minutes to TELL me in a way I would know without doubt WHY should I not kill myself and made a series of questions which I knew I would never in 15 minutes would be able to get responded to me. I took my watch, took off my wrist an turned on the chronometer, opened the bottle and sat looking at it reading myself to have it.

with 15 seconds to spare my phone rang. My first impulse was to ignore it but I answered just for the hell of it.

On the other side was one of my closest friends. What he told me was more proof than I ever dreamed.

“Hi Yuri. I was praying just now and God touched me telling me to call you and tell you… that and that… and that… and that… (THAT meaning every single one of the things I demanded to know)”

So you see… for as much as I loathe the Church I have more than enough reason to believe in God.

And really… I don’t care the name you call Him/Her/It: Jehovah, Gaia, YHWH, Allah, I Am, The Force… There is something or someone out there with a bigger plan than you can thing or imagine.

And don’t start with the whole why doesn’t Got stops catastrophes, Tsunamis etc… they are all part of life.

I still believe God is LIFE.

I am still a believer… I BELIEVE IN LIFE!

How about you????

What do you believe on?????

I am still struggling to understand what’s the big deal about Christmas time and I have decided to outline some of the reasons why I don’t see thee whole shebang about the famed season.

Oh come on… humor me… Read the whole thing, If you don’t agree, leave me a comment telling me why!

1 – “Christmas is season to be jolly… tra la la la la la la la la” Then why is it that December, and in specific Christmas time has the highest index of depression in the year? I know the great majority of the population is very Jolly throughout December because of the holidays (and the holidays parties where everyone seems to overindulge a bit too much and don’t deny it one way or another you know you do it!) … but helloooo… what about the other 11 months of they year… can’t they be jolly too???

2 – Shopping sprees, debt, stress, consumerism, “I want this and that and that other thing” from you kid in a daily basis, advertisement going into overdrive building up since well… October(ish), etc etc etc… got the drill??

3 – Jesus was not born in December (ouch… did you know that? if you didn’t there are studies about it all over the internet… google it… the consent is something between August and September, if you did know that… wth…) … how come we commemorate his birthday in December??? Is “the most important day in the Christian Calendar” commemorated in the wrong day? Again… ouch…

4 -Even if JC were born in December, for the first 300 (ish) years of Christian tradition his birth day was never celebrated (it is true… check the bible)… It was customary at the time to celebrate the death and not the birth of an important person. That is apart from  some “pagan” cultures that actually used co commemorate the “birth” of their deities.

It was only in 435ac that the Christ Mass” was first instituted by pope Sixtus III in a celebration to coincide with the  birth of the  Romans primary god (the Sun) and Mithras a popular Persian sun god supposed to be born at the same day. The idea was to associate the one to the other to “facilitate” the assimilation and consolidation of the pagan masses to the  Empire assuring their loyalty (smart guy… Religion=Power)

5 – None of the ornaments used in the whole Christmas Shebang has a Christian origin in it’s symbolism most of them being inherited by the Germanic Barbarians… Sure… all of them have Christian symbolic meaning now… just not on their origins…

So much for the “Main Christian Celebration” of the year uh…

I could say more… but I am kinda late… and nope… I am not against getting the whole family together and giving presents to each other, eat good food etc… The thing that bothers me is the reasons we do it… after all that can be done any day of the year can’t it?

Wouldn’t it be GREAT if we were jolly… and together more often?? Do we really NEED the excuse???

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”… (From Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet)

Do I make any sense to you?? Do you and your family celebrate Christmas?? What does it mean to you?? What DO you celebrate at Christmas??

Zya!

I’ve been nominated on Bloggers Choice Awards ’09 at the Best Religion Blog category!!!

My first though was: “WTF???? The last thing I ever blog about is religion (unless it has to do with my mother… but even then it is about our latest brawls…)!!”

At first I thought Vic had to be joking… and then she e-mailed me with the response as to why she made the nomination: “well you’re a pastor so I figure it covers religion too – that was the best job-related category I could come up with I think you should talk more about your faith on the blog – it would add another dimension to it.”

Well… before I regain my train of thought I need to clarify something… YES… I am an ordained minister and yes I do have the “Rev”. Title in front of my name in most documents since last year… and yes… I was the pastor of a failed attempt of a church in London (even though because of this failed attempt in London I mentor pastors in 3 different states in Brazil with a combined number of members of about 500 people, and because of that I am in the fast track to become a bishop…), BUT… I also happen to be considered by a hell of a lot of pastors of at least 6 denominations as heretic and as what we Christians call “lost”.

Why that??? Because I was always curious… and inquisitive… and I NEVER ever believed on something just because someone told me so… And let’s put it like that… I can prove for A+B that most things many pastors preach about are wrong just by pointing it on the same bible they claim to follow…

But I won’t get into the merit of that…

The fact is that I am on a journey to discover just WHO is YHWH (“I am” as the bible says in Exodus) and in that I am discovering more of who I AM!!

Other thing you need to understand is that I come from a family that is fundamentally Christian for the 3rd generation and I am part of a 2nd generation of ministers… My mother is a bishop… father is a worship minister, have cousins and uncles and aunts that are missionaries and pastors… And for them to learn of my “journey” and the things I have been finding on it has been a HUGE shock for most of them… not that most of them will ever consider leaving mainstream Christianity, and most of them will NEVER give years to reason…

Let’s say that at some point in my life I got tired to get lied to… and I am in search of the truth… And believe it or not… the truth can be found in many more places than you think possible!

I might be “lost”… but I am trying to find myself… and I think this is why I have been refusing to take my own church ahead and have decided just to mentor other people… in private… shared learning… And if I ever become head of a church again it will be to preach things I actually believe in for a change… In that I am VERY proud of at least 2 of my disciples who are pastors in Brazil.

I think being a Christian is a lot more than just going to church… Hell… Jesus  was the BIGGEST humanist I have ever heard of! and if we have HIM to aspire to be like… then we have TOO MUCH to change in ourselves.

I have made mistakes… and those mistakes came with a price… And one of the costs of it all was my wife losing her faith… she was part of what used to give me strength to be on this journey… Now I have been struggling to find strength of my own for it… but I’ll get there… and if she wants some day to embark on the journey with me it will be great! But I know that right now she has to fight her own battle on that… so I let it be… that’s a decision she has to make on her own…

I think I’ve spoken enough of religion for today (that considering that I believe religiosity to be the rut of all evil!!!)!!!

So I am adding a new category to this Blog!

it is called “For the Journey”! and on it I’ll report on my finds here and then… Not going to be something very constant as atm I have more in my hands than I can chew… and I have to confess that I am struggling even to get started in the mornings… so imagine to get involved in research again…  but I think I have a good idea of what I am looking for now. Never forgetting what they say… living and learning!

I am an open box (that one’s for you David!! )!

zya!!!

I cannot stress enough how stressing it is to move tent!!

I was going to Derbyshire this weekend, for some alone… ME time… Well… not Alone, I was going with Chris, but as we were going in a photographic safari in search for a peregrine falcon that lives round the hills where he rangers around you can count that as quiet time… and maybe some camping!

Instead we’re going to look for houses… 3 setup for today… 2 for tomorrow… 3 for Saturday… FUN!!!

well… gotta run… have more websites to finish than I can cope with it… PLUS the editing of Giovanna’s Photobook… I should be rich with the amount of things I have do… am I? NOPE!

Enough whining and more getting busy with it!

zya!

PS: Got a call from Jamie today telling me to take a look at Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation website… He’s (Jamie) been researching into Apocalyptic Prophesy for about the same time as I have been… I didn’t know that, good to know there is someone else doing it that is not a complete freak(lol), he does follow a different approach than I do, but you will be amazed at how similar some of the stuff we found is…. Well… back to Faith Foundation, it fits PERFECTLY with some of the prophecies there…

Personally… I think it makes perfect sense, the idea Blair has had is GREAT and it really is the only way to stop war… But let’s put it like that… it is too much coincidence to be JUST coincidence… To tell you the truth… Se subject is freaking me out lately… Brrr… Hibby jibbies!

zya!