Semana Santa

Hoy es Domingo de Ramos, el inicio de Semana Santa. Holy Week is a huge frikking deal here. I think it actually all begins with Lent, or Cuaresma. Each Sunday during Cuaresma, there is a procession through the city that starts at dawn at one of the many churches and goes on all day and night. During Semana Santa, the processions and vigils are all day everyday.

I have never been as bombarded with images of Jesus dying on the cross as I have been since I arrived in Antigua. Everywhere you turn, there is an image of the cross, of Jesus dying on the cross, of Jesus carrying the cross with thorns on his head. It´s interesting, but all a bit...morbid. And guilt-inducing. And since if there is a God, he/she/it is probably omniscient and there is no point in hiding my thoughts anyway....

When people ask me these days what my religion is, the term ¨lapsed Christian¨ pops into my head. The definition of ¨lapsed¨ means ¨expired, voided or terminated¨ and those seem like the right words to describe my view of the Christian religion I was raised in. I usually don´t say that though, because for some reason I associate that term with people who were practicing Christians or Catholics at one time and have gotten lazy or are indifferent presently, but still identify themselves as Christians or Catholics and plan to someday return to the faith or believe that they are still essentially Christian. I don´t think that applies to me because I don´t think I´m just lazy or indifferent, nor do I ever plan to return to the organized faith I was raised in. I made the conscious decision that if being a Christian meant believing in and living the kind of life I was taught to live while I was in the church, then the hell with it, I was rejecting it all. The self-righteousness, the judgmentalness, the intolerance of other religions and beliefs, the constantly enforced notion of guilt....excuse my language, but f*&% all of it.

I was raised my entire life in the church, alternating between Korean Presbyterian and Korean Baptist churches. In the Presbyterian church, I was taught that Christians are a ¨chosen people,¨ which made me think that ¨hmm...that seems a little unfair of God...how come he didn´t choose the other people? Shouldn´t a loving God want EVERYONE to go to heaven?¨ In the Baptist church, I was taught that salvation was a matter of free will...as is every decision we make in our lives. The thing was, every decision I made for myself seemed to be ¨wrong¨or ¨sinful,¨ at least according to the leaders at the church I attended (which may not be a fair representation of all Baptist churches, since I went to a fairly infamous Baptist church in the bay area that has been called a cult more than once for its insane level of conformity (of action, thought, dress - basically if you asserted your individuality in any way, shape, or form, you were made to feel guilty of sin)). The conformity and the judgmentality always bothered me, but I stayed because the sermons often hit my core - the pastors were extremely gifted at exposing the human condition...and I think there is something in each of us that desires to seek the truth about the world and ourselves. After awhile though, I had to admit to myself that I just didn´t agree with their intolerant view of the world. And ever since I left the church for good...which I think was around 8 years ago, I´ve fought to shake off the repression built by 20 years of doctrine and guilt.

So here´s my completely heretic view of God. I do believe there is a God. And I´m not afraid to admit that some part of that belief comes from my need to believe there is a God because when I am hit with situations over which I have no control (i.e. a terminal illness or death of a close one), I find myself silently praying to God. Because sometimes there´s nothing else you can do. The God I pray to is the God I grew up with, but any prayer I pray these days starts with ¨God, I really don´t know who you are or what you are like, and maybe you don´t exist, but if you do exist and are a good God....¨

The thing is, I think there is one God. And I think it is the same God that Christians, Jews and Muslims pray to. I can´t speak for other religions because I don´t know much about them. But to me it seems that if God is a good and fair God, he/she/it is not going to punish anyone who sincerely believes in the existence of a divine being to whom we owe gratitude and prayer, whether that person is a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. Because if that person of faith was wrong (meaning, they prayed to the Christian God when God more resembles the Muslim God, or vice versa) then their sin is simply one of misguidance...and why would a loving God send a sincere believer with faith to hell just because they were misguided? In any case, I don´t think God is a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or whatever else. God is God, and the truth is none of us really know for sure what God is really like or what God really wants from us, so why can´t we just agree that no one knows for sure and just let each other be (or in the words of Rodney King, ¨Can´t we all just get along?¨).

I believe God is a good and loving God. I also think God has a sense of humor. And that he/she/it gave us this life on earth so we could enjoy it...so we should. I think if a good God had one edict to give the world it would be: BE HAPPY!*

Yup, maybe it´s heresy, but there it is, my views on God in a nutshell.

*With the common-sense caveat that you should try your best never to hurt other people in your quest for happiness. In any case, I think that is implicit anyway because I think as human beings with a conscience, we cannot truly be happy if we hurt other people along the way.