Religion and Christianity. Two words that are not mutually exclusive but yet for so many of us they are. Religion and Islam. Religion and Hinduism. I guess it depends on what one grew up in, a Christian household begets a Christian child, a Hindu household begets a Hindu child and all that, all up until they decide to question it, to question that whose foundation is so brittle, so fragile that it can easily break and yet so strong and heavily indoctrinated in our formative years that crushing or questioning that part of ourselves can lead to so many fractures in who we are and rebuilding that can be scary.https://epicpulseke.com/how-to-know-you-are-on-the-right-path/
But blind faith? At a young age, I’d read the bible over and over completely. Sometimes for discernment and other times, because I loved the stories, most times, I liked to pass the time thinking about the unsaid parts of these stories, the depression that Isaac must’ve gone through after his father tried to kill him, the way Jonah must’ve felt backed into a wall of the blackmail to accept a calling he didn’t want, it all lingered in my brain.
The way Leah talked herself into adapting life with a man she didn’t want to be with, the way Hosea must’ve talked to himself in his sleep knowing full well his destiny was to get married to a harlot. I thought about Sarah, and what she must’ve told herself in the dead of night when she couldn’t sleep being so scared that her husband could go on another quest to kill their son.
Did Abraham ever doubt himself after he believed to a point of ending his own son? Did he suffer a psychotic break? Was he not even remorseful about it at all? These what-ifs linger in my mind rent-free and I constantly wondered whether I would ever get any answers, but the most terrifying thing I faced for so many years was asking them? could I ever voice this to anyone?
Would it be equivalent to blasphemy as my Sunday school teacher had so often said about questioning the bible? How I do explain to others that I always thought that Lots daughters suffered a psychotic break after losing their mother and their friends and home, and also being offered by their father to random men to abuse and molest them and in turn led them to have relations with their own father?
Did Noah ever question himself? Did his family question him? Did they question God? Did they ever get over the horrid sin of murder that they helped with? Were they ever held accountable or did they just never tell anybody? And if they did, did they say it proudly, like a family legacy? Or was it in hushed tones, passed from generation to generation?
All the time that I wonder, I ask myself why? Why do I look so much into the past, instead of being a good believer and staying silent and merely having faith? I could say it’s the humanity of it, the parts of me that question the faith always wanted to put all these characters in this storybook in a human light, in a questioning light, in a light of error to question whether it was their humanity or their faith that made them triumph.
Did Jesus loath judas? When he was betrayed by him? (Mathew 26:50) “be quick about it, friend,” did Jesus say these words with sarcasm? Pain? betrayal? Tears in his eyes that a friend had betrayed him? Or did he say them with pity, knowing fully well that his friend and disciple was merely a pawn in a long game designed by his own father?
To appease his father’s ego, this man (Judas), would later realize what he had done and go on to kill himself, did Jesus live in peace with that? With knowing that all these would happen to his friends? Knowing that Peter would always be by his side but also knowing that Peter would deny him three times, perhaps not of his own will, but because of prophecy? Scripture? To be fulfilled?
Mathew 26:53-54): don’t you know that I could call my father for help, and at once he would send me more than twelve armies of angels? but in that case, how would the scriptures come true which say that this is what must happen?https://images.app.goo.gl/mWcs7nzvpwUfJnrZ7
This makes me think that he too didn’t have much of a choice in what happened but was merely an overseer that it happened as it was told. Because in the same book verses before he had expressed fear, and uncertainty, (Mathew 26:42 “if this cup of suffering cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done,
And this verse stayed with me in all my years in the faith, this verse that showed me that it was god’s will to have his son die, perhaps you ill reason that it was for our sins, but as powerful as he is claimed to be, he had every power to merely forgive without the harsh act of killing his son, but alas, he had to prove a point.
And every time I knelt to pray, be it in a happy state of thankfulness or a state of sorrow I found myself wondering, am I worthy, of any of it? What makes me think that my fate is any different if the son of God himself is put through a horrific death to prove a point if the father of many nations almost kills his promised son.
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