July 2003

Some weeks ago I witnessed the confirmation in church of someone in Anna's family. It proved to me that my choice of not doing the confirmation was a right one.
The program of the confirmation that I witnessed was to me something that emphasized the one-directioned way the christian belief works. The program held, among others, a "confession" which, summarized, was something like this:
"We confess to you, holy God, that from the moment we were born, we have been living in sin. We sinned in words, thoughts, deeds and ignorances. Through our sins we deserve to be eternally rejected, if you should doom us in the way your strict justice requires to."

I was brought up a christian, but in time I've read things, seen things, heard things and most of all, NOT heard things, that made me question the fundaments of the religion.
This confession was one of the reasons I didn't do the confirmation.
How can someone possibly be confessing to something like this? Accepting this?
Wasn't it supposed to be so that christianity, Jesus, God, or religion in general, would bring liberation, support, empowerment of your being?
How can a God of this power burden already a newly-born child with saying that it has sinned already, and that it's doomed, when it doesn't even know yet that it exists? There's absolutely no logic, and most certainly not any mercy in that.
Of course there are people who in the course of their life make mistakes, or do something wrong. I'm not talking about killers or other criminals, but people who try to live their life the best way they can. Who learn and teach, who help and are being helped.
How can they be judged as sinners? It just doesn't make any sense.

It's not that I have become an atheist, but rather tried to find and combine the best things of several active and passive beliefs.
There are good things in christianity, as there are good things in all beliefs. And as I think that most of the major beliefs (forgive me if I insult any of you in any way), christians, muslims, jews, are built on the same fundaments with the same main characters, only with different names, I think it's a bit ridiculous that we are all fighting with eachother and blaming eachother for minor things and claiming to have the best religion ever.
Let's just be fair to eachother and do what each and every single one of those holy books says: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
If one would combine all the good things and live up to it the best way possible, there might actually be some sort of a paradise...