take note (controversial)

As we grow up we find that our faith gets lost, our love replaces things we used to know and our decisions get harder and harder to make. Sometimes, I've learned you have to take the good with the bad and find a new faith in order to survive. I used to believe in what I could not understand, in what my parents always told me was how the world is. I used to be the person that believed in whatever anyone told me and then I found out the hard way that the faith I always believed in so naively isn't what it means at all. I found that love, true, passionate and undefining love took the place of that faith in my life. And people misunderstand that, people take that to much to heart and judge me for it all the time.

I had a long talk with a dear friend today and I came away from it thinking about all of this. Faith is something that no one can ever take from you, it's something that no one can give you either, you have to find it on your own and some take longer to find it than others. Some have never been taught how to find it either, so those of you that judge those who have no faith in anything, or that don't believe in a religion or a higher power, you must realize that you were the ones that were helped along the way of finding that faith, others were not. I find so often those with a religious belief that become so judgmental towards those with a different belief than their own and to me, someone who was brought up devoutly catholic, I can't see how that isn't totally against what faith teaches. Ask me sometime, I can quote the bible, I can talk intelligently about biblical stories, about catholic traditions and what the church means. I know it all, I grew up within that church,and how unChristian is it to judge someone else for something that they've never had the opportunity to have? Some are so quick to judge, so quick to think that what they believe in is the the only thing to believe in.

I'm sorry right now if this offends anyone, that is not my intention. But sometimes, some of us lose our faith after experiencing something, some of us find that there are other things to put our faith in, and some of us never have had the opportunity to have that faith. For me, my faith is everything I have. I believe very strongly in what faith gives us, but I don't necessarily believe that faith means judging others that don't have the same beliefs as we do. That is not what Christ was about, that is not what any disciple or saint did, they befriended those that were not like them and gave them opportunities, they did not turn them away. And like it or not, someday we are all going to be judged, and whether or not your faith is the "right one" is no one's on this earth to say.

One thing I will say in closing is that though I am not a perfect person, I do believe very strongly in being a good person and living a good life, a life I am proud of, a life that I can defend. And my faith is strong, my beliefs sure, it is the church and the people that run it that are questioned in my mind, nothing else. We are all human, we all make mistakes, whether you have strong religious beliefs or not, we all will stand beside each other when our world's come to a close and maybe what saves each of us in the end is whether or not we judged those that we loved, whether or not be stood beside them through the storm or whether we walked away when they needed us the most just because they were different?

In closing, I want to thank a dear friend of mine, because after that conversation today, I realized that though she is a very religious person, she has never once judged me for the decisions I make but rather as our friendship has grown, she has stood by me, whether she approved or not. That's what real friends are, for all of you who have abandoned friends because of difference of opinion, take note... maybe you aren't as good a person as you think.