A Confession

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I have a confession to make.

Many times I have asked myself “Do I really want to do this?” By “to do this”, I mean to talk about Christianity the way I do now. It is not that I have doubts about my feelings towards Christianity, it is my feelings about many of my good friends who happen to be Christians. 

Majority of my friends do not know about my views on Christianity (simply because I dare not let them know). Some of those who do have stopped being friends with me, about which I am saddened. The very few of those who do and yet still accept our difference in this philosophical area and remain friends with me, I appreciate and am grateful to their tolerance and patience (not to mention their friendship!).

I know even those people who have been “tolerating” me cannot understand why I am doing this and what I am talking about. They were born and grew up in decent Catholic families. All their lives they are surrounded with love, kindness, compassion. They enjoy church music, spectacular worship ceremonies, friendly caring atmosphere at church activities such as helping homeless people, organising charity fund raising, etc. They find solace in praying, in almost-transcendental tranquility when contemplating the spiritual meaning of life. And a lot more. All they could probably see in me is a mad guy raving about something he doesn’t know and doesn’t even try to find out.

But I believe I have found something. And what I’ve found is not what many people would  want to see. 

What I have found is while there are many great things about being associated with Christianity - as the examples I mentioned earlier (note: I am not saying “there are many great things about Christianity”), there are many dark aspects of this religion. These dark (rotten, evil dark) aspects of Christianity are most of the time cleverly concealed behind a loving, caring facade that many people are attracted to because it responds to and satisfies their human and spiritual needs. 

All I want to do is to point out these dark aspects. First of all for myself as I have always said, and secondly for people who might have had similar observations but have never put them together categorically or dared to speak out.

I also want to assert that there is no need to be part of an out-dated and monstrous religion to cater for one’s human and spiritual needs. If you feel the love, kindness, compassion while you are in a religious environment, it is simply because these qualities already exist within yourself. They are also inherently within almost every one of the human species, even though of different levels and magnitudes. It is just mistaken to associate these universal qualities with religious doctrines or to regard them as exclusive properties of church’s teaching. If you tend to help homeless people or to run charity fund raising events, you would do that anyway even if you were not a Christian believer, or any other religions’ believer for that matter. 

Similarly, the transcendental tranquility can be experienced anywhere outside the religious atmosphere. Life including the universe itself, even though cold and impersonal, is vast and magnificently beautiful; contemplating which can often bring up experiences equal if not far surpassing any religiously induced sensations.

I understand why some people see me as “angry”. It is basically because they are angry themselves at what I have to say. And they probably are angry because they see I am upsetting the apple cart. They are scared that when all the apples have fallen off then they would not know what to do with the empty cart. They should realise that it is perhaps a chance for them to lighten the spiritual burden that has been imposed on them from previous generations. Walking through life by oneself unaided by any supernatural being is probably a frightening thought at first. However once one has become familiar with the nakedness of truth and more confident of oneself then it can also be exhilaratingly peaceful.

There are quite a few “aggressive” atheists out there doing a great job of “bashing” Christianity. It is very tempting, and quite easy, to just bring up reasoning, logic and scientific evidence to bash the Christian belief. It asks for it, being so blatantly nonsensical, illogical and dark-age immoral. It is however probably not most productive in terms of convincing anybody. The first thing believers will do is erecting a wall of defense around themselves, then after that will certainly be anything but an open and frank information exchange.

I just want to know how come it seems so simple and easy for me to see things that many others do not and can not see. Am I missing something? Am I reading into things to much? The more I search, the more I find disturbing facts in more areas. I have so many questions about the Christian faith and doctrines that have never been answered satisfactorily. I wish someone well versed in Christianity could provide me with straight, honest answers to those questions. Without these satisfactorily straight and honest answers, I have no other choice but using my observations to come up with my own views about this religion. 

I do not want to be and try not to be seen as “aggressive”. It is not easy. There are always people who want to shut me up and tear me down at all costs. Even though it is not pleasant but I am getting used to that. What I am concerned most is by saying out loud what I really think, I am upsetting and offending many of my Christian friends and risking losing their friendship because of that. 

It is a hard task to balance between expressing what one feels compelled to say and maintaining what one values so dearly. At times I have thought of giving up. It is no fun to be seen as a trouble maker, even by one’s ex-friends.

I wonder what an idealist who commits to truth would do?

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