Just how strong is your faith to God?

I'm not sure if I believed in a man called God. I'm not even sure how he looked like or if he was indeed ever alive. It could very well be a she. And no one can answer that question. How do you go about tracing the identity and work of a man who lived a million years ago among the ignorant and new and be professional and general about it? No way.

Over the years, I've witnessed how religions or rather God, one or many, whatever works for you has salvaged and crushed at the same time. I'm not going to be discriminating, or be badmouthing any one kind of religion, just to be clear. Only voicing my own personal views on the whole crushing picture like I would on my personal blog. (I like disclaimers :P And a lot.)

There are a few instances, friends, who got me thinking. Are pledges and faiths in a specific religion or God's teachings be such binding, and rendering poor souls to helplessness? It deters progress and thrills, defy wishes and decisions. Life became not about living, but following and judging and saying yes and no to the wrong persons. Life became about abandoning thoughts and dreams because apparently, hello, sinful thoughts and must be eliminated and so forth. God, and I thought the situation would gradually be a tad bit better than, i don't know 10 years ago?

I recalled vividly when I was in high school, I presented this newspaper article, one about a murder. A Muslim father murdered his own 19 year old daughter because she wanted to marry a Christian blue-eyed man who by the way, I think loved her. The case took place in America where the father has raised his daughter. The daughter scored good grades and was the kind of daughter any father would like...and her father decided to kill her because he himself put and raised her in a Western country where friends and people she met are mainly Caucasians and mostly Catholic. Hmm....stop and behold the irony. And it is only one of the many other cases where family members murder one of themselves in the name of God.

I am certain that by God's grace and the faith in Him, a lot of people has survived. Over the decades, people had gone through numerous wars, natural disasters to slightly more mundane and human challenges like loss and separation, deaths of loved ones etc...Many of these people have survived, I'm sure, through praying and spending Sundays in a church in a group who ate turkey and open presents laid under a tree. I guess there are shades of gray when it comes to religions, just like most things are.

Tell you what I think. I think everyone is God, yes, man or woman or child and whatever race and skin color, whatever native tongue, wealth or poor. You are ultimately the reason why you acted, why you spoke and thought and behaved the way you did. You are not breathing and eating and crying and laughing and fucking for anyone else's sake but yourself. You are making the decisions, calling the shots, and acting on strange but valid impulses. And then dealing with whatever consequences. As far as I'm concerned, as long as you are not hurting anyone or yourself, it's your life and you shall live as you deem fit. So, religions, they are like school and other life experiences where you should just be taking whatever you think is helpful and useful and use them as a guideline but nothing extreme.

Evanescence - My Immortal
Jojo - How To Touch A Girl
K's choice - Live For Real