New Pope Elected

 

After a day and a half locked inside of conclave, Cardinals have elected a new pope. Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, stepped onto the world stage Wednesday as the new pope and leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. He is the first pope ever to be elected from the America’s. He has chosen the name Pope Francis 1. : He is the first Jesuit, the first non-European in modern times and first Latin American pope. He also is the first to take the name Francis, for the saint devoted to the poor.

The new pope is going to have to work through some very serious issues during his tenure. Women’s role in the church, the exodus of Catholics in North America and Europe, priest molestation scandals, and growing Catholic populations in Africa and Asia.

Best wishes

http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm

conversation on religion w/my mom

So today I had lunch with my mom and it was all good, most of it was spent talking about a range of topics like women I’ve dated and the one I’m kind of talking too, relationships, changing my name, image, marriage, and lastly religion. I told her today something that I have held from her for a long time. I told her that I am not a Christian and don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.

She thinks that I’m going to hell but I think I proved my point and critique of religion quite well. I’ll probably have to dwell on even further during our next lunch because I didn’t have enough time to fully explain all my thoughts.

The whole conversation started because she went to visit a friend who is in the hospital dying from a rare liver cancer and she got to talking about how she almost died from a blood infection after she shattered her leg a few years ago. Basically she was telling me how she wasnt scared to die because she knows she is going to heaven but she wants to still be around for her kids.

We got to talking about wether she wants to be cremated or just buried in a casket. She said that she would prefer to be buried, and sarcastically I asked her why so you can be brought back to life when Jesus comes back.

Her answer was basically yes!

After laughing at her, my response was something that you know that’s highly improbable that people’s flesh will be resurrected along with the same consciousness. Then she started preaching to me about Lazarus and Jesus own resurrections.

I had to laugh again, and tell her that even if all the resurrection stories in all the religions and mythologies were true they still account for less than 1/2 of 1% of all the populations of humans across time.  And no one in recent history. Why wouldn’t you just be cremated?

By this time she started to suspect that I didn’t believe in Jesus as the way, the truth, and the light. So i just told her that I am not Christian. I believe in Jesus as a man but I don’t believe that he was anymore  or any less the son of God as you and I are.  He appears to have reached a level of enlightenment that we all would like to achieve.

Then she asked me about heaven

After a long pause I told her that I do believe in heaven (which I do) but told her that i believe that its more of a path than a destination. Once you die your spirit leaves its shell to be transformed or transported to a new shell in a new place or a new shell in the same place…

Just for her to think that I wasn’t a muslim or in a cult I had to tell that I believe in God, but my relationship is personal and not dependent on a book.

She wasnt buying that shit though.

I don’t think that parents with children in my generation and younger understand that how they interpret religion differently and don’t necessarily see it as important in our lives as they do. Maybe its an age, region, or generational thing. But I know more agnostic/atheist than I do folks that claim they know God.

I’m just shocked that our conversation on religion didn’t turn into an argument.

I Battle With Religion

So I started going to bible study classes three weeks ago; after procrastinating four months on the invitation by a young Chinese American woman whom I had a random encounter and conversation with in which we talked about morals and their place in society.

I have no clue why I am there. I mean its obvious that I’m there to study the bible. And there was something calling me to do something out of routine that involved being vulnerable around strangers…

I can admit that I am not a Christian even though I spent my adolescents n Lutheran schools and churches.  Thats’s not to say that I don’t believe in God. I believe in God like the sun is in the sky. Yet as I’ve grown older I’ve felt as if I don’t need the religion to be that bridge to God. I’ve come to believe the distance from me to God is always zero. Distance is not the same as time, and the time is always now; so God has to be.  Distance, Time, Space, love, etc are all layered on themselves and there perceptions twist around an axis that we all desire to meet. That is God to me.

(Its in this plane where I can be blinded by fullness of mediocrity and crippled by repetition which ultimately level me idle)

I do read the books of faith because I think they are good tools to life (not the only ones so that’s why I can never take it to heart). I believe that their intentions are well and their purpose holds truths but I have serious reservations to it being the word of God…  They can help you in disciplines and virtues that create an enlightened (Christ like) state of being which I’m under the assumption is the zenith of humanity.

On top of some of the best poetry being found in them the words do have power. It’s undeniable, people have done some crazy and beautiful things in because of their interpretation of that word.

Religion seems to complicate my faith at times. Jesus said this, God told Muhammad that, so you have to follow these tenets… I understand that belief is meant to be a great consolidation but it makes me feel burdened because from a religious standpoint I can’t know God directly and ‘be saved’ with validity among other believers of God.

My other concern is that some belief are outdated ( malaise makes you sick and not germs, viruses)and even the core principles such as creation just don’t make sense to me from a religious standpoint.

1-There being a chosen people of God and everyone else false in some a vague grey area as incomplete of glory unless…,

2-Existence of Dinosaurs cast serious doubts on most creation stories,

3-There being no prophets (enlightened ones) since the ancient ones left (no 2.0 version can ever be amended with a high success rate as ancient religions; making its even harder for newer religions to have validity),

4-somehow all new world problems can be interpreted by old world text. 1+1 can only be two if they meet. Sometimes we relate things that really don’t have correlation. New age problems are ones of magnitude not miracles.

5-What we know of God just maybe an alien encounter, and if there are aliens what does that do to our belief in god. Is religion exclusive to just earth or is it universal like some laws of physics. (this is an exaggeration but hey I believe in aliens)

6-Our beginning is still debatable, did we really come from a monkey or did we come from an evolutionary process

7-Resurrection of the flesh. Really? That shit just don’t happen.

 

It’s possible that I got into bible studies to turn doubt into faith, make new friends of a new kind, or to just experience more outside of myself. I’m hoping that I can come back to this post with amendments on how it has improved my overall l view of religion.

I battle with religion and the purposes society preaches to us but I still have a respect for it because it is necessary to believe in more than what we know and that’s an imagination that can inspire so much good. Create so much self-worth out of despair.