My Dear Hard Drive

Posts Tagged ‘religion’

The following is a response to a post at http://redcardigan.blogspot.com/2010/06/love-casts-out-fear.html and was intended as a comment but turned out to be too long for the form to accept.

I find these sort of articles interesting, as before I started reading what other people thought about the chilfree, it never even crossed my mind that someone would consider it odd or “unusual”. I crew up in a comparatively religious (evangelic Lutheran) family, but my parents were the odd ones out as they had children. Their combined 5 siblings were either childless, childless by choice or married so late in life that the ship simply sailed.

I am a married childless by choice woman. I knew at the age of 6 that I didn’t want children. FEAR had NOTHING to do with it, I just know I don’t want to. SELFISHNESS has nothing to do with it, but my view of the spiritual truth of the universe (can’t really call it religious as I don’t belong to any organized religion anymore) has a part to play. I believe that a child is a gift to his parents, but I also believe that “the gift of life” is no gift to the child itself. The value of life, I feel, is highly exaggerated. I often feel I’d rather have not been born at all, even though I have had a pretty happy life. In a way, I love my children too much to give them birth.

As for my marriage, I really don’t understand why I would need children to validate it. I don’t care if other people don’t take my marriage seriously because I don’t have children.  It’s none of their business, it’s between me and my husband. We wanted companionship of a person who is already sentenced to life on planet Earth, without the need to add more prisoners just to make ourselves feel better about life. From this point of view, I think parents are often incredibly selfish, not the child-free. Children are born because the parents need something to validate themselves, give a purpose to their lives, they have a need to nurture and feel love and what not. Where does the child’s needs come to play? In the best case scenario the child comes through it happy and contempt, and the arrangement is mutually beneficial, but that is not always the case, not even if the parents are the best in the world.

Fear is a big factor in having children as well as not having them. Fear, in general, is people’s highest motivator. For parents to be there are the following motivations, of the top of my head:

- Fear of not having someone take care of them in old age.

- Fear of ending up alone.

- Fear of marriage breakdown. (Same as with CF, but for different reason. Yes, CF people get divorced easier, but that has nothing to do with the assumption that parents bond better. There are tons of unhappy parents that stay together “for the sake of the children”. Studies also show that children make their parents unhappier, not happier, but less likely to file for divorce. Children are the true ball in the chain of marriage.

- Fear of not fitting in with society or circle of friends.

- Fear of God. (Usually deemed a good thing, but I wonder what kind of God rules with fear.)

- Fear of being forgotten.

- Fear that you’ll regret it later.

- Fear of upsetting their parents, who are dying for grand children to tote on. (Think about yourself, if you were catholic and simply didn’t want children – how would that go down? Isn’t it likely that you would cave to pressure?)

- The fear of being labelled selfish.

And the list goes on.

As for the child free, one of the high motivations you didn’t mention is environmental reasons. Every child that you have, increases your carbon footprint by 5.7, I read today somewhere else. Over population is starting to be a problem, and will only get worse. We don’t want to add to that. Also, many of us want to serve the society through voluntary work or other means, feeling that we have more value to other people (who are already here!) that way, rather than create someone to take care off.

The bottom line for both groups though is the answer to this simple question: Do you want them or not? Whatever fears we might have are really reflected on that one question. It becomes complicated if you simply don’t know the answer, or don’t know if your answer is socially acceptable or not…

I recently had a discussion about religion and what name do we give it. I was born Lutheran, and was given an upbringing that knew words like “heretic”, “God-fearing”, “sinner” and the sort. Pretty old school that is, go by the book, don’t add stuff, don’t take stuff away, don’t alter it as it pleases you. That kind of upbringing gave me the attitude that you can’t pick and choose inside your religion. You take it as it is or don’t take it at all – so I chose not to take it at all. I left church about 10 years ago.

I had trouble with certain things, like The tree of Knowledge between Good and Evil. First, God puts it in the Garden and tells these animal like creatures with no concept of Good and Evil not to eat of it. Because they have no concept of good and evil, they should not know anything about disobeying or obeying, either. Yet, when they fall right into the trap, God banishes them out of the Garden of Eden without giving them a second chance now that they would actually be equipped to know between good and evil. I thought he was just being UNFAIR.

Another thing I had problems with digesting ever since I was 6 years old, was that if God only lets people who believe in him and repent, in Heaven, what happens to people who never hear about him? Surely they cannot be cast out just because nobody told them? My auntie then explained to me that God will accept them if they still lived a good life doing good things without knowing. That satisfied me for some time, but then I started thinking that hey, if it’s okay for the guy who didn’t know about God to go about his life the way they FEEL is right, and without making too much of a mockery out of it, then why do we have to obay these silly rules all through out our lives that really don’t make much sense to a common man? Isn’t that UNFAIR?

The Christian God likes to put traps for people. He gives them sexuality and tells them not to use it. He gives them anger and tells them never to speak in anger. He gives them ambition, but tells them never to desire something that is not their own. He gives them pride and talent, tells them not to boast about it, but at the same time not to hide talent. (Okay, so that’s doable.)

And then what is Jesus? He’s the guy who changed the rules when people just couldn’t cope with the old stuff. Why do a God, an all-knowing power, need to change rules in the middle of the game? Didn’t he know from the start we wouldn’t cope? He should have known better. And then, what happens to those people, who lived before Jesus Christ, and lived by the old rules but couldn’t cope? Let me guess? The Hell with them! Isn’t that just UNFAIR?

Then when you read the Old Testament, you just crinch the whole way through. (Not that I ever made it the whole way through.) You wonder why God would say anything like that. He’s just an asshole! Your believing friends tell you that Jesus changed all that. What? Jesus changed God’s mind and made him more humane? Didn’t he KNOW BETTER when he wrote the Old Testament? Isn’t God supposed to be a constant, unchanging being, with all the knowledge in the world? Such beings are not being ILLOGICAL, and yet, this God was.

Then, God doesn’t like vain people, but he’s so vain himself, that if you don’t believe him, do as he tells you and worship him, he will get a temper tantrum and not let you in heaven or even send some horrible things your way to punish you and turn you back to God. The God is narcissistic!

I could deal with a concept of vengeful God, even a cruel one, but never unfair or illogical. Those two traits are a deal breaker for me. If God can’t handle being more just and logical than I am, then certainly there’s something wrong with the concept. And who told me about these rules that God has? Not God! God has never said a word about any of that stuff, not to me or anyone I know.

So I left the Church, and decided not to believe anything for a while. I don’t think I was being an atheist, but rather an agnostic. I just decided to give the whole thing a rest until it would make some sense to me. When I allowed myself to think about it again, I made one rule: Nobody would tell me what to believe if it didn’t feel right. I would not accept concepts as a whole, but would take information from within myself, not of books, no matter how holy they claimed to be. I would take answers from nobody but God himself.

God has a small voice. It’s not the booming voice that some people believe him to have. No, his voice is so tiny, soft and silent, that it is easy to ignore. We call it “conscience” or “instinct” or “gut feeling”. Unfortunately, it is the type of voice that can be manipulated, and interfered with. Like if someone tells you often enough that sex is bad, that is going to mix the signal God is sending. We can mistake other people’s messages for Gods messages. That is why you can never be quite sure that what you believe is correct, as listening to the signal without interference is quite difficult at times. What I know about God though, that he understands this, and won’t hold it against you if you get it wrong. To get it right isn’t more than solving a problem, and if you can’t solve the problem, it’s not something you should be punished for. You have been given limited resources and varied resources and not all people can be judged by the same scale. That is not to say you would be judged. Life isn’t a competition, and the reward for it is always the same; Heaven. We’ll all be sitting there side by side, Bush, Hitler, Gandhi and Mother Theresa, as equals. After we cross that barrier, we’re no longer human, but souls, pure souls, without any interference of the signal. Then we know what God is saying, without hesitation, and it would be illogical to then say: “Oh, now that you know everything and see me, I’ll send you to Hell!”

And of course, the biggest interference of them all… If you are a devout Christian, you have been warned by others that listening to people like me is dangerous. I am here just to speak on behalf of the Devil. I am here to lead you to evil. I cannot say anything to prove that wrong, but the good thing is that the True God would not punish you for listening to those warnings. He understands that not everyone will get it right. He will let you go and speak awful things about him, and understand. And when you die, he will give you a smile and a wink and go: “Oh boy, you got it wrong, didn’t you?” And then you will reply, as now you know everything, with a smile and go: “Oh God, did I ever!” and he won’t punish you for using his name in vain, even though you didn’t really use it to address him.

Where has this world come to. Here we are debating over the issue of the lack of scientific proof of Gay people being born gay or having chosen to be gay… There is not sufficient amount of scientific evidence, they say. The evidence that exists, must be manufactured by pro-gay activists. Now the irony is, that these people fight the battle of an entity, that hasn’t been even remotely proven to be real, regardless of a lot of people believing that he is.

We don’t know if God exists. We have absolutely zero (0) chance of ever finding out for any reasonable certainty that God exist. Secondly, we don’t know even with a remote certainty about his views to gay people. We have a lot of interpretations of a book that hasn’t been proven to have anything to do with the real God, if there is one. And yet, we’re expected to accept legal decisions that are largely based on wild assumptions of this entity and his opinions versus not quite conclusive scientific evidence and the testimony of people who actually are gay. Like if there was even people who had MET God, let alone BEEN God, they would have a fight, but we have a whole bunch of people who ARE Gay, who somehow are not entitled to an opinion on whether or not they chose or did they have the right to choose to be gay.

We know that gay people exist. We are not sure if God exists. Which is more important? Do you think that God disappears if being gay became the norm? (As if it would.) Are you worried about the mortal soul of these gay people? Why not let them have the choice of risking burning in hell for their “choices” and mind your own god damned business. (Pun intended.)

I just ran across a website of a young man who is desperately trying to stop masturbating because God wouldn’t approve. He sounds genuinly distressed about it, and convinced that he is doing the wrong thing. In addition he’s in a relationship with a girl he obviously doesn’t love, mainly because her mother wants him to. There was so many things I wante to tell him, but all of it would fall on deaf ears, as I am a non-believer, a spawn of Satan as such. Nothing I could possibly say would help his situation, but to throw him deeper into his own guilt and desperation if he saw any value in my words at all. Read the rest of this entry »