The End of Days? Hardly.

Clearly, someone miscalculated last time...

There has been a lot of talk about the world ending lately. I find it amusing on so many different levels that I just had to incorporate this into my blog today. Over the last year, I have been thinking about my personal relationship with God. I have been thinking about what it is that I truly believe in and how does that determine my life from this point on.

I have always made it known that I am a "recovering Catholic" and this is just to show others and myself that I am not fond of all things that the Catholic Church preaches. On one hand they can teach that Jesus wants us to love other and yet on the other hand that love is conditional based on sexual orientation. Let's not forget that in the past that the bible was used to subjugate people by forcing them to believe that there is a better life after death if they just accept their current fate. So while talking about people like Osama Bin Laden and radical Islamic views, lets not forget many of the people in the past who were murdered in the name of Jesus.

Those radical views are not views that I share. Twelve years of Catholic school has led me to believe that I should always believe that there is good in everyone. Of course, that has bitten me in the ass more times than I can count, but the God I believe in is based on love. However, I am not blinded by faith to think that things will be handed to me. I know that I need to work for what I have and help others when I can. I think this is why I find my job with working with students so rewarding.

My personal relationship with God involves me praying and having conversations with him/her. There was one point in which I find myself praying for the people that I love and wishing them happiness and success and not praying for my own happiness. I often times pray for strength because I feel it is one thing that I need the most. It is not that I do not want to be happy because I know that I need to fight for what I want, but I know my life is not as bad as other people around the world. I recognize my privilege and I cannot take that for granted.

I have always found it hard to describe my relationship with God. I am not one to preach about it. I think we are all entitled to what we believe and we are also entitled to not have other people's views of God forced upon us. However, when I read The Shack by William Young (which is an amazing book), I finally felt that the personal one on one relationship was validated. I do not need church to believe in something. I am a good person and would never intentionally harm anyone; I just find it hard to see the bible as more that just a book written by man.

So when I see things like this, which is describing dates of when the rapture begins leading to the eventual end of the world, it makes me shake my head. Why do people feel the need to concoct such things as if God would ever make it possible for any one of us to predict when he/she decides to judge us? The planet Earth is just a marble in this vast Universe, this beautiful universe that was created for a higher purpose that you and I can never comprehend. I almost consider us to be like an atom in the body of this universe or perhaps maybe this universe is the body of God. So in that respect, he/she will just disregard us based on text that man wrote? I have dreams all the time that zombies are coming after me, does this mean I should write it down and call for the end of days?

Then I can only imagine the reactions of the people of other faiths who read this stuff and be like, what the f*ck? I can see Muslims shaking their heads and laughing while saying, "and they think we are crazy." I am not sure I have seen any other religions try to calculate the exact moment when those who are "righteous" will be taken away while the rest of the heathen fight to stay alive in a real life version of the Night of the Living Dead. This type of thinking is the root of the elitist mentality that some people are better than others.

This elitist mentality has been played out in history as well as in our current time period. The bible has been used to show that there are heathens out there that are less than human and deserve what comes to them. You can include the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the massacre of the Indigenous population in the Americas as just examples of "elite" people playing God. You can see it now in how so many people are against gay marriages by saying the God would never allow it because homosexuality is a sin (less they forget that Jesus died for ALL our sins...but clearly that is irrelevant).

I am digressing here. In my past posts and poems, I have often talked about fate and the universe. These things are synonymous to me talking about God. Those phrases are one and the same. We all have to figure out the paths in our lives. I was recently reading a passage from The Alchemist that leads me to really think about what is really in store for me in my quest for inner peace:

There is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.... The soul of the world is nourished by people's happiness.

The world is not coming to end whether it be Saturday or 6 months from then. We should focus more on what we want to do to make this world better than dreaming of a time when we separate good from evil because none of us are perfect...even if we do go to church on Sundays.