This writing dates back to the Summer of 2006, I was twenty years old at the time of this writing. I remember scribbling it furiously, on a whim of inspiration, into a black five-subject notebook. I’ve since edited it, but the general foundations of the writing have been maintained. This work has had a major influence on my perspective regarding god, religion, or belief in general — I may not agree with parts of it now, but it is still incredibly important to my foundational beliefs.
We are washed. The philosophy and belief systems we encounter early in life have baptized us. We will either believe them all our life, question them as we mature, or run away and never look back — but we remain washed, no matter the fight we put up. We live with the influences of our youth all our lives.
Every idea and philosophy accepted by us is reflected in our actions. We adopt our mantras based on the ideals allowed to govern our mindset.
We are washed: in constant defense of our way of life — our influenced routines.
Even the holy Christian God, the Great Baptizer, continually washes many minds around the world. Equipped with several ideas and philosophies that take control of the way a man acts and functions. Even the atheist creates their own god: theory — nothing controls or creates but the laws of science and the varying degrees of experiment.
And because of the many baptizers thrust upon the world, we will never fully agree. Who can be right when we all have different experiences?
For example, one can say that execution as punishment of an individual is justice yet another may call it an act of murder — who is right? Nobody.
There is no god. There is a god. There is this god and there is that god. I have my idea of proper philosophy, yet there are multiple interpretations of my idea.
I suggest, live after the baptism you are aware of, and never mock the baptism of ideas you cannot understand —yet even me suggesting this is a way for me to sprinkle your heads with the waters I preach, a cup of ideas I inherited.
I am not an atheist, I sit in the shallows, ready to be dunked into my spirituality. Christened by Christ, I am a Christian.
I am a fool. I am an idiot. I have nothing. I am nothing and know nothing. God has become my thoughts and I am forever seeking his victory. I am before his glory and his glory is before me. I am without God when I am beyond his word — this I know for the bible told me so. If I lack prayer, then I lack God. I have been washed, bathed in the blood of a murdered and tortured messiah.
Religion: mere ramblings of men, set aflame in the world to be taken as fact.
Here now, I ramble and these words are of no consequential worth. This writing is an act of idleness. I have nothing and am the same, nothing. My heart is empty, lacking truth because that which I proclaim to be truth was discovered in an ancient book I read in my youth. I came upon my knowledge as a person becomes a better athlete: with training, taught the traits by practicing a way of life.
I am totally undone. I have nowhere to look — nothing to trust, not even God.
The word of God is truth. His word is not written but spoken.
God breathed the Holy Bible into existence and inspired men to write it. How do I know? The very same writers told me.
Everything learned is instilled by mankind. There is no great baptizing god. There is only human influence and ideas.
This is my conviction, my mournful dilemma: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit as mere ideas, inventions of man.
I am inching ever closely to the shore beyond this messianic blood pool and it scares me.
I will no longer be a thoughtless submissive. If I choose God, it is because I have examined all the questions and possibilities of my beliefs and have decided he can still be my overlord — thoughtfully submitting.
My baptism is speaking to me, telling me that it’s natural to question, that God will forgive me.
The Christian will sin. The Christian is sinning right now. The Christian is not perfect. The Christian is shameful. The Christian is a hypocrite. The Christian is a liar. The Christian is human.
What is better when you are baptized just like me: To not submit and feel guilt for it or to submit fully and continually fail at it? True faith would be submitting and trying to be a so-called good Christian, but I can’t do that.
I often struggled to appreciate fellow Christians that knew nothing of their own religion, asking them how it was that they could worship a god they knew so little of? There are many practitioners of blind faith in Christianity and if there happens to be a god rewarding such behavior then I am better off not worshipping such a master.
We are all small and worthless, every one of us. Nobody is greater than the other. If somebody happens to not meet your standards of philosophy it does not make you any better of a human — you are worse if you don’t share your ideas and try to understand theirs. We know nothing. We can presume to know the truth and even be entirely sure of our beliefs, but does not make our ideas true. We don’t know all the answers and never will — there will always be disagreeing, because our past experiences differ, because we were plunged into very different waters of ideas growing up.
There are some fortunate enough to have similar backgrounds and beliefs who gravitate toward each other, find their communities, and excel together: that is where true happiness exists. It’s curious that even if we are all the same format: flesh and bones — we find ways to be uncommon.
Theory, philosophy, and culture play out their own survival of the fittest contests in our minds and communities, but that should never allow us to discredit the one thing we can be certain of: we are all human.
It ends here. Surely, I had more to add, but I allowed it to linger off on an idea that’s so simple: that despite our differing beliefs, we are all the same animal. I ended there, because there’s more to say, that my twenty-year-old self couldn’t quite write or think about yet. But over the course of these 13 years since I wrote this, I’ve thought a great amount on what it means to be human and to develop ideas, laws, and definitions for the world around us, and the meaning to this life.
The power we are granted to be creators of our own reality, to define God, to subscribe to a belief is astonishing, and I am proud of humanity for creating God, the most good and perfect being, because that says something about humanity — it says that God and the good ideas that envelope his benevolence reside within every single one of us.
God is great, because it is what we can become: our highest self — as individuals, as a community.
