Sherlyn+K’s+2017+OpEd+Article



I wished for a lot of things when I was a child. But I recall that the strangest thing I wished for was to be a white person. I wanted to be Caucasian, but not because I was bullied for being Asian or because of my skin tone. I wished I was white because all of the white kids in my class knew what God was, and I didn’t.

I wasn’t raised with a religion, the only religious practice I was involved in was putting incense sticks on the table and then eating food. Even then, I had no idea who I was supposed to be talking to, or what I was doing. In school, I was constantly wondering what Christianity was. The only thing I knew was that it’s a big group of people who get together on a Sunday in an old building, put their hands together, look up at the ceiling, and ask an invisible man for help. It wasn’t until recently I began to expand my vague knowledge of Christianity. About a month ago, I was told that God and Jesus are different, but Jesus and Christ are the same. A week or two ago, my friends informed me that different religious groups like Catholics, Protestants, the Orthodox Church, Mormons, etc, are all denominations of Christianity. Up until that moment, I believed that Christianity was a sub division among many different types of religions like Catholicism or Protestantism.

Although my goal was to discover more about the Christian religion, I found that the more I learned about it, the more difficult it became to believe it. I’ve questioned a lot of my friends about Christianity, some of them being Catholics, Mormons, or non denominational. Although they have different views on Christianity and the Bible, the one thing they would consistently tell me was: “It’s something you have to learn when growing up”. The fact that they could not answer a multitude of questions, and told me that I need to grow up learning it is definitely unconvincing. If I want to learn more about Christianity but cannot “understand” it unless I was raised in a religious family, then it’s not worthy to be understood now because the concept of Christianity does not make any logical sense to an unreligious person. Being raised without a religion allows me to see a viewpoint that religious followers do not consider because they were nurtured to believe a certain way.

One idea that I find incomprehensible is the fact that Christians will spend their lives living for death. From what I understand, heaven after death is what many Christian denominations believe in, and they will spend their life attempting to be good people to be accepted into this selective society. To be a “good Christian”, an hour or so of church is recommended on Sundays, and the possession of a Bible somewhere in the house is advised. When people are in need of help from a challenging situation, they pray to God and ask for his “guidance”. It is important to know the difference from good and bad (although from my perspective, the definition of good and bad can be interpreted differently) and it is imperative to atone for your “sins”. If you want to be accepted into the great society of heaven, then all of this must be accomplished during your life on Earth. What I can’t comprehend is the necessity to live a life on Earth if your goal is to live a life after death.

Another concept I am unable to understand is the Bible. Before writing this article, I attempted to research on the production of the Bible, and the stories are incredulously unbelievable. Not unbelievable as in astonishing, unbelievable as in “people actually believe this stuff?” The stories just as well could have been exaggerated analogies and false anecdotes. Even so, billions of people place so much hope and trust into this book. It is so incredibly vague that Christians had to branch into different denominations because it was interpreted too many different ways. There are too many loose ends of the Bible that are simply overlooked because above everything, you need to have “faith”. I have faith that I can do well in school, and I complete my task without the help of any hidden manifestation in the sky. Christians put so much faith into something they need to have even more faith to believe.

I could continue on with the false logic of religion, but that would take too long, and I do not have the energy to continue such a large rant. Below I decided to list some of the many concepts that were not understood to me when learning about the Christian religion: > > > > > > > > These are only a few of the many questions I would like to be answered, so if anyone is reading this. Please, enlighten me.
 * If God made the universe, who made God?
 * If God created Earth and put humans on this planet, why did he create other planets but inhibit human life on those?
 * What if the people who distributed the concept of God were just crazy?
 * Why did Jesus die but get reborn again if the point of him dying was to take our sins with him?
 * If God sends humans to Earth to live a life and return to heaven, why do some of us (like myself) not believe in him?
 * Why did God make humans in the first place?
 * If God made Earth, and wanted the people to believe in him, where do other religions come from, like Buddhism and Hinduism?