My mom did not go to church that Sunday. I wasn't going to go anyway, and I knew mom did not have the audacity to disobey God. It's not the devil talking: this is an example of the devil losing.
I believe God has allowed us to know the story of how Satan came to be the Father of Hell because it's an example of what most Christians are doomed to. Christianity is a man-made religion. God does not want us to serve an idolized religion that happens to include worshipping Him, He wants us to worship Him and Him only. The followers of modern Christianity are like Satan, but instead of attempting to overtake God, they attempt to overtake the souls of the saved to bend them to their individual biddings based on judgement and duplicity. While it is true that God does not want us to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, he does not mean in a glorified church house only soul suckers attend.
Don't get me wrong, church is a place meant to worship God. Church is a place meant to save souls. But church is also an easy target for the devil to invade. Stating prayer requests in front of a congregation is just as harmful as it is helpful. While you can get more people to pray over something bothering you, the devil can hear what you request prayer for and attack the party or thing you're praying about: this is a prime example of why things get worse before they get better. Churches also have some kind of painting or statuette of a rendering of what Christ might have looked like -- on the cross or otherwise -- and we could fall victim to worshipping that manifestation, an idol, than the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself.
Church is a gamble -- the only guaranteed things that are positive in the church house are teaching and fellowship. Even then, both are of the world. Whether you have an original KJV, an NKJV, Gideon's, or whatever other version there is of the Bible out there, many fail to acknowledge that the Bible was not written by God Himself. The Bible was written by men -- many men. That doesn't mean it's also correct to assume these men weren't the mouthpieces of God through means of writing and preaching, but man is prone to error. There could be verses in the sacred books that God did not tell them to write, but they did so anyway due to their own biases against the world.
The City of Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed by God, but only because the city was rampant of lechers who weren't discreet. God knew that if these people would not be faithful to their partners, they would not be faithful to Him, which is why the city faced that terrible fate. Even though this is a straightforward event, the Bible is full of equivocation.
It is not uncommon for everyone to get different interpretations out of the multiple books, chapters, and verses of the Bible. Because of this, no one man or woman is right or wrong when trying to understand the Bible. Why? Psychology has proven that people take stimuli how they want, making the Bible easily analogous to Horoscopes. Like Horoscopes, people take scriptures from the Bible and apply it to the way they are currently living their lives. Whenever someone sees a scripture they like or approve of, they carry that scripture everywhere they go; conversely, whenever they read even a verse that they dislike, they tend to ignore it and actually forget it's there, unless they know the truth about it that deals with their life, which convicts them and makes them want to avoid it at all costs.
The main thing everyone seems to know and agree upon about serving God, or living their life daily without knowing Him, is that nobody is perfect. God is merciful, God is charitable, and God is grace. People seem to forget that and never fail to judge others or size them up because of the sins or worldly wrongdoing they commit. People even go as far as to state that God will quit answering you if you choose to live a sinful lifestyle. If that were really true, he would not keep making mankind, because all man does is live sinfully. As long as people continue to repent, I see no reason why everyone on Earth right now cannot make it to Heaven.
I have said all of this in order to state this fact: people cannot choose who they are because of the parents they have, the genes they possess, the talents they lack, or anything else that may make them insecure about being in the world. God has made them, fearfully and wonderfully, and, in His eyes, we all are made perfect. It is other people who judge His creations who are at fault.
All of the phobias people have against each other are really implicit biases that should show you how they have grown up. Many Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and some Millennials are against women preaching or having equality, solely because they are not men. God can call anyone to preach and God wants everyone to be equal. He has told us that we must love everybody, not just the people we choose to love.
Which brings me to another phobia a lot of straight people possess -- homophobia. What many people have shown they are too ignorant to understand is that sexuality is not a choice, and just because two men or two women fall in love with each other does not mean it's the end of the world. God has put soulmates for each and every person on this Earth, and if it just so happens that the person is of the same gender, so be it. No matter what, love is love, and love is what God desires everyone to have. There may be some verses in the Bible against homosexuality, but people throughout history have tampered with things they shouldn't have, and not even the Bible is safe from being tampered with. Those verses were written by men, and just because it has been acceptably part of the word of God does not mean that the verses actually came from God.
Something rampant now more than ever is ageism and ignorance. I have seen so many youth activists, including myself, suffer from attacks of those who want to remain ignorant. Malala Yousafzai even stated her teacher knows that the reason there can never be peace is because people refuse to seek knowledge. History is apt to repeat itself, especially with the idea of political correctness. Apologies to everyone who would rather not be reminded of history, but history is recorded in order for us to remember what has happened in the past so that it does not happen again. Just because some things of history are disagreeable to the general public does not mean it should just perish. The cold, hard truth of the matter is that not everyone is going to agree with you, not everyone is going to share your beliefs or your viewpoints: instead of arguing and being petty over something that shouldn't concern you because you don't live in a time as bad as what has been recorded in history, you should accept the fact it happened and look at the future.
I see discrimination everywhere I look. I also see religious "backup" as reasoning and evidence to support the discrimination against people today. But I am here to tell you, just like in court, religion is a weak way to justify why a person should or should not be guilty. Conviction is something personal between God and the one who may be convicted. It is not right for anyone to judge another person solely because of your personal and religious beliefs. If you do not have clear evidence and reason from facts and science, you will never get anywhere in life, and you are really just dehumanizing people for your own enjoyment.
That, my friends, is the truth. The darkness lying from the truth is not the truth -- it is merely the truth's shadow. This shadow is the reason equality is not fully achieved around the world. This shadow is what religious affiliates confide in to avoid the truth behind their discrimination, biases, and errors of judgement. In the end, it is still only God who has the final say. We should not be afraid of the judgement of man because we are all alike. It is the reason behind conformity. Call me one to be free from it, but I cannot escape who I am, nor the group I am with. It is an everlasting rain on both the just and the unjust. Some will call this radical, but it is only the truth. This is the truth that lies within me and you: there is no escaping it. It will eventually come out and catch you. I hereby state that these are facts, which I have spoken, that are true.
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The Truth's Shadow
Short StoryA short story defining the difference between religion and the supernatural.
