Beliefs and all that jazz.

I'm damned, apparently. I'm going to go to hell and burn, baby, burn with all the other people who don't believe the same as my family.



Oh, yes, I was told this in fact, by my parents. They said it in the most lovingly way they could with the reassuring touch to my hand that I will find my way eventually.



There's something about religion that gets to me. This exclusion of other beliefs... this hurtful way of telling someone who's not a bad person that they're going to hell that just gets to me. And the condescending way of telling me that I'm going to hell just because my beliefs differ from there's. Is that what Jesus taught? Is that what his message of loving one another *was*? Because I'm not buying it.



I know I'm not going to hell. I know this because, frankly, I don't really believe in hell.



This will come as a shock to a lot of you, but did you know that the past two years I was actually considering being a pastor? I still think of it from time to time because I do like religion. I like the community when you get into a nice one. I like the love and the feeling of belonging that it gives you. The structure, the niceness... All of that I enjoy. The thing I miss most about being a part of a church was the lovingness that was brought to me by everyone I came in contact with. Sometimes I contemplate going back to church, but then I recall the reasons I left.



I left the church because of the attitude that the people there had towards anyone a part of the LGBT community. I'm bisexual and this is a big thing to me. It's not something I can turn off or on. It's who I am. I can't change that part of me ; Lord knows, I've tried. And Sunday after every Sunday the pastor would shove his beliefs down our throats about how every homosexual is going to hell and how God hates the gays and how the LGBT community is disgusting and unnatural. After a while, this starts to get to a person. How can a God be loving in one sermon and so disgustingly hateful in the next?



I left the church because politics was also brought up every Sunday without fail. I'm a liberatarian with very liberal leanings. If I had to choose between the two big parties, I'd choose Democrat before I'd even think about going Republican. There would be no choice for me, in all honesty. Now, as you can just guess, the pastor I had wasn't friendly towards democrats. In fact, he hated them with a passion I'd only seen in Rush Limbaugh. Every Sunday after the election was a Sunday to bash Obama and discuss how he was ruining our country. I'm a person who believes in divorcing politics from church wholeheartedly. If I wanted a running commentary on how our nation was doing that Sunday, I'd've stayed home and watched Fox or CNN.



I miss the church more than most people can even fathom. I grew up in the church. Some of my closest friends were people I'd only see in the church. Some of them won't even talk to me now that I've supposedly gone to the "dark side". I miss the loving arms that would wrap around me when I came in on Sundays. I miss the good parts of religion, so much.



I think I might try to find a church that suits me. Not even because I so much as believe in the Christian God, really, but because I miss the sense of community. I miss the sense of oneness. Of being a part of something that's bigger than myself.



There's a pretty Episcopalian (haha, spelling error?) church down the street from me I might check out. Or the Catholic one up the street from me.



<3.

Ruthi.