I considered myself a good christian. I did not drink at all in high school. I abstained from sex in high school and college, up until I was 23. That is stellar, huh? What happened? When I was 25 I developed a treatable form of cancer. It is very curable but I still had to go through chemo. So, inevitably, when one goes through an ordeal such as that, you tend to think a lot about life and death and what it means to you. About a year after treatment, I really started to contemplate my life and my death. After facing cancer, I saw things in a different light. there was no longer any way to ignore my mortality. One day I will die. Once I realized this, I mean, really understood the inevitable, I started to form questions. When did religion first start? It was before Christianity or judaism. When some neanderthal first started to contemplate the bizarre and random patterns of night and day, cold and hot, snow and rain, thunder and lightning....he began to make up reasons for these chang

I believe that man's greatest fear is not being able to imagine being immortal. The thought of an ultimate end is incomprehensible. believing in Heaven or reincarnation is a huge comfort and makes life easier to live. That is my answer to why there are so many religions now and thoughout history. It is such a simple and clear explaination that, I feel, is difficult to refute. Once someone honestly asks objective questions about Christianity, it does not make much sense. Why are there so many religions? Adam and Eve would have shared the message with their children and each genreation after that. All civilization would have decended from Adam and Eve and so there should be some record of these beliefs. Yet, that is not the case. Why would God create Adam and Eve only to tempt then and then condemn them? People may say "God had reasons we do not understand." To that I say that they would have been made clear or else how are we to understand Him? Why would God make things such a mystery

I want to be clear that I am not anti-religion. I am not mad at any establishment or have any ill-will towards christianity. In fact, there are many aspects of my personality and morals that it heavily influenced and I am thankful for that. I have zero desire to deconvert anyone from christianity or any other religion. there is a large part of me that misses that comfort and long for it again. If it brings peace to my friends and family, then by no means do I want to take that away.

I think that Albert Einstein's view sums it up....(I am paraphrasing)...he said God is an attempt to explain the mysterious and wonderous. He saw God everyday because he noticed the miraculous occurances happening all around us everyday.He was able to wonder like a child and in doing so, he was able to see God everyday. In this way and this way only, was he a religious man.

So I look for those small wonders and mysteries that surround us each and everyday. When I contemplate the beauty of a sunset, the heavenly taste of certain foods, the smell of a spring morning, it makes me feel alive and allows me to appreciate the brief life that I am fortunate to live.

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