Beliefs

Everyone has beliefs. These beliefs are what make us think about what is possible and what is impossible. These beliefs vary from person to person, and although we try to explain our points of view to other people, they tune out and hear what they want to hear, or they try to tell us that there is something greater out there than what we believe in. The biggest, and most common; belief is that of God and/or Jesus. Most believers believe that He died to save our sins, that if we hold Him in our hearts we will go to Heaven, that He'll answer our prayers if we ask Him to, and that we have to have faith in Him. How do you have faith in something you don't believe in? Why is it that if you don't believe, you won't go to Heaven? How does He answer us if we pray? How can one person die to save us all?

If He died to save our sins, why is it that our sins seem to continue to plague us? We all feel guilt, and by praying we will be forgiven for our sins. Strong believers seem to think that by praying and asking for forgiveness that they will be automatically forgiven, and this is supposed to rid them of their guilt. Sins are nothing more than wrongdoings and there will always be someone who will hold a grudge against them for whatever it was they did. My guess is that they can just shrug it off as they've prayed and asked for forgiveness.

Well here's my belief. If I've done something wrong, I have to live with it. Maybe the person I've hurt will forgive me and I can accept that, but I will still feel bad for what I've done. I know for a fact that if this is shown to anyone, there will be a million and one questions as to why I don't believe in God and Jesus. Not all of them I can answer, but if I reverse the question on them, I'm almost positive that they won't be able to answer it either without repeating themselves. This, in the end, will make me feel guilty because I've made someone think about something they don't want to think about.

It seems overrated that we can only go to Heaven when we die if we believe in God and/or Jesus. That's great. I'm happy for those people, but when we die, we're all a dead body. I believe we have souls and that they go to better places after we die, but where that is I have no idea. Heaven only seems to exist because people believe in it. How can it be proved that there actually is a Heaven if none of us has ever seen it or been able to gain a true understanding of what it is? As far as I'm concerned, it's just a word put to anyone who is a believer in God and/or Jesus, they will tell me that it exists because God put it there so we have a better place to go after we die. What they fail to explain is that it is definitely real.

However, if there is a good place to go after we die, then there must be a bad place as well. This bad place has been labelled Hell. Here's the funny thing. They say that bad people go to Hell because they have done really bad things. So how come they don't get forgiven and allowed into Heaven? I've recently been told that Hell doesn't exist because everyone gets forgiven for every bad thing they've done. There has to be an opposite to everything: male/female, hot/cold, happy/sad etc.

It seems as though I'm envious or bitter towards people who believe in God and/or Jesus. I have to admit, I did at one stage believe in Him. I used to believe that He was the almighty creator and that he was our Saviour. I was about thirteen when I realised that one being couldn't save the world. Now I'm being told to think about it again and then I will understand why God and/or Jesus is our Saviour and why we must have faith in Him. Sorry, but I can't have faith in something I don't believe in.

I have prayed once. When I was about ten. I was expecting some kind of reply to my prayer and I never got it. I prayed that my family and I would be looked after so none of us got incredibly sick. In a way, I guess I did get my reply. My grandfather died two years later from cancer and it was an extremely painful death. Another two years later, I'm diagnosed with epilepsy, and my aunt and uncle have a severe car accident, which caused problems with their spines. A year later, my cousin miscarries her baby due to toxemia. To add to my "answer", my grandmothers are sick as well. My grandmother on my father's side had a heart attack and nearly died. My grandmother on my mother's side had lung cancer, but managed to get it removed, luckily, but the doctors told her that there is a chance it will come back and they probably wouldn't be able to remove it. I'm not being melodramatic and am not seeking sympathy from anyone. This is just the way it is.

I'm guessing my prayer was either ignored or I got my answer and it was a big no. Now I understand why I was never granted my wish. There is nothing there you can talk to and get an answer without them being human.

Sure there is the Bible that's supposedly written by people who witnessed it all first hand, but what's to say that they actually saw the event and didn't just make it all up for a good read? I know what other peoples' answer will be to this: "They actually saw it otherwise they wouldn't have been able to write it in such detail... yada yada yada". I'm not trying to tell anyone that what they believe in is wrong, I'm just trying to get my point across without being interrupted or told that I should think about it all because I should believe in what I don't want to believe in.

A very close person told me of an experience he had with a man who preaches. Fred* got him to turn a light on and then asked John* what had happened. John said the light came on. Fred then asked him to sit down on the chair, so he did. Fred asked him the same question. John told him that he sat on the chair. Now I will quote what John said Fred said: "What would have happened if the light bulb blew when you turned on the switch?" John's answer: "The light wouldn't have come on." Fred's next question: "What would have happened if the chair had broken when you sat on it?" John's response: "I would have fallen." Fred said: "Just because you can see something doesn't mean you can have faith in it. So why can't you have faith in something you can't see?" *Names have been changed accordingly.

My answer to this: if you can see something, there is a definite possibility it will fail on you. If you can't see something, there is nothing to say it won't fail on you, but there's also nothing to say it will fail on you. That sounds contradictory, but the point is that if you can't see something and don't know for sure if it's even there, how can you have faith in it? Again, I stress this, I'm not trying to tell anyone they are wrong in what they believe in. This is my opinion and it deserves as much respect as anyone else's opinion, whether they agree or disagree.

I know that there is probably a contradiction to everything I've said in here, but I can assure you, no matter what you tell me will make me believe in something that doesn't exist except for what's in people's minds. I'd also like to point out that I'm not trying to tell anyone that they should believe what I believe. I'm merely making an observation through my own thought process.

Well that's about all I have to say on the subject. I'm no religious know-it-all and I don't claim to be, but I do know what I believe in, even if other people think I'm wrong. I feel sorry for the people who won't accept the beliefs of others, even if they are different to their own. This would be a very boring world if we all believed in the same thing.

(Note: as I have stated several times throughout this essay, this is solely my opinion. I do not claim to be right or wrong and anyone saying otherwise has misinterpreted what I've written.)