lv

I was just reading a few random journals, and thought maybe I should update one of those newfangled fields (ok, so they're not new anymore) on the profile bar to the left. How about the 5 Items I Can't Live Without?

So I look at it and think, I could be witty and just put food, water, shelter...but that stirred a memory instead. Actually, a rather piviotal memory of my past.

Long ago, in a time far, far away, I was a freshman in high school. I attended church, youth group, went out on mission trips, and through middle school and some of elementary I was big into the whole Christian music scene (Petra, DC Talk, Steven Curtis Chapman, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, you name it). But something always didn't feel quite right.

So I'm at our high school youth group one evening and just sitting there listening to our youth minister give us his spiel. (you know, everyone likes to tell their stories, share their beliefs, it's not just ministers, all of us do...ministers are the ones who can just do it to the most people...) Anyway, things go on, and one of the adults gets a little pissed, raises his voice and says, "this is not social hour, please be quiet, respectful and pay attention!" People around our circle of nearly 60 young people had been talking and being a bit noisy.

This hits me in a weird way, and I look around and see people who simply are not very interested in this, not respectful, not considerate, and not really "here."

I kind of pass that off, as I get that feeling in church quite often, that unsincere fakey feeling. So the youth minister continues on and we're talking about things one cannot live without, spinning that into a yarn about Jesus' love. He lists things like food, water, shelter, and god.

Well, this hits me pretty deeply too...and I make my own conclusions. I think people's fundamental needs can be summed up as food, water, shelter, something to believe in, and someone to love or be loved by.

That seems fairly obvious to me, but what I realized was that people in religion, namely my youth minister, are not perfect people. They make mistakes, the make mistakes in judgement, in belief. Just like everyone else. That's so obvious in retrospect, and I was never one of those people who thinks ministers are perfect conduits to Christ, but for some reason that fact had never really truly made any difference to me. Another thing I realized was that it wouldn't have mattered if I spoke up about a clarification on what people require to live. The important thing to the youth minister and those listening, was not the means, but the ends of the mini-sermon. But...if you achieve an ends through faulty means (or by not caring about the means), does that mean the ends are just? I think that was the beginning of my realization of how much of a leap of logic and faith Catholic/Christian religions are.

That night I finally let it sink in just how fakey religious groups could be, and just how wrong everyone is at some point, even people who are supposed to be dictating and molding the belief and value systems of many people.

That was the last night I went to youth group, and the last real moment I remember of church. I still attended with my parents while I lived with them, but that was just one of those very vivid moments in my life.

I'm sure everyone has them, and I love hearing them. I just find it weird how the same old observations somehow mean more in one moment than they did in dozens of moments previous.