Jazzperous™

I have grown up in a Christian family with two parents who both were brought up in an even more Christian environment. My parents have never been active Christians though while the rest of the greater family, aunts and grandparents and cousins, have. But we have always had this close connection with the local church and I started early to attend activities such as boy scouting, orchestras and choir singing. At the age of 19 I was finally "saved by Jesus" as it were. I was a soul on fire and preached the gospel as soon as I could. This phase of my life last for three four years or so. Today I look back on these years as very dark years of my life and I regret every single day I called myself a Christian. Why? Let me tell you...

1. I fooled myself

For all those years I ran around in church with my Christian friends I was quite jealous of them. They were always happy and that happiness was something I wanted. I was also working hard to fit in; not only in church, but everywhere. One answer to this might be found in the fact that I am adopted and at the time I grew up, was one of few adopted children in the neighborhood. It wasn't easy, at times it could be a living hell. In church I felt that I was loved and that people around me enjoyed my company. I played my saxophone at services and people came up to me afterwards telling me how good I was (nowadays I think that I could have been standing in church farting and people would have enjoyed it...). Of course I felt "at home" here. 

Perhaps I wanted it so badly I lied to myself. I had listened so many times to people saying that Jesus loved me, that he was alive and that I was a sinner, and perhaps I finally bought it. And I believed it for a couple of years. At the same time, my parents and especially my dad, started to turn away from church and his religious past. My dad and I used to watch the night sky together watching stars and planets. He used to share his knowledge as a physics teacher on evolution and big bang. Deep inside I still believed in the evolution theory even when calling myself a Christian. 

I didn't want Jesus, I didn't want God. I wanted something else and that was only the social aspect of the church. They made me feel that I was loved and at the time, that what was I needed. Perhaps you could say that this was one of my greatest parts I have done as an actor. I fooled everyone and I fooled myself.

I worked as a youth pastor for a year and I preached to kids and youngsters about love, Jesus and God. I said to them that "Jesus loves you" but each time I said that, I doubted it even more. I felt bad for preaching kids this when I knew that if there was a God he didn't give a shit about them. Their parents could still die in a car crash, they could still catch cancer and there was no plan what so ever with their lives, as I told them there would be.  I fooled them too.

I needed proof, I needed visual proof. I needed to see a burning bush. I think that most of my friends that I have left from those days, can agree on that I had my doubts and I always asked questions and had debates going with them. I wasn't happy with the answer that "Believing that God exists is enough". I had to see it. I couldn't care less about all the stories, made up examples of how complex our body is that there simply must be something divine behind the construction. To me it was all the easy way of explaining things we can't understand. And that wasn't enough for me. 

At the end of my Christian career I started to question the fast that God is love. I couldn't believe that Christians said that "greatest of all is love" and at the same time pointed their hands towards people who weren't allowed to be or experience love. Who were we to judge what is love and what is not? Why is God interested in who we sleep with at night? The God that the Christians around me believed in was a God who said that love is great as long as it isn't love between two men or two women. I started to rebellion this theory that homosexuality wasn't love and this is still something I am greatly upset about. If God won't allow two men or two women to fall in love with each other, he is, if he exists, not a God that I want anything to do with. It is as simple as that. Not to mention the douchbag he was according to the old testament...

These are the main reasons why I left the church, the bible, Jesus and God behind me. For long time I didn't even care if there was a God or not. So what? That doesn't mean I have to agree on that I am a sinner and that I want to abandon my life as I live it today where I am convinced that the only person who can change or improve it, is no other person than myself. So what if there is a God, I am not interested in having anything to do with him. Period. 

But today I am happy to say that I don't believe there is a God at all. To me it's a mind-game, brainwash, a wish rather than reality. All my Christian friends are brought up in Christian families and therefor also brought up in the Christian religion. I forgive them, they don't know better, they never had the chance to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be Christians or not. They will continue live their lives with their eyes shadowed by the fine words and stories of something better than we have today. They will continue lack the empathy and the ability to see things in different way than their own. They will continue believing and not seeing.

In this blog post I am not giving an answers or debating anything. I am just telling what I believe and what I have believed. Oh, it's not about believing anymore - it's about conviction. And this is mine.