just minishorts.

You've read it wrong. I wasn't condemning anybody Well, yeah I was only condemning particular divisions of society who have REDUCED the entire holy being (be it Christ, Buddha, Krishna etc) into a cruel and unloving being who will torturously send an unbelieving soul to hell just for the sake of them not believing.

Adoring God, whoever you prefer him to be, is not about living in fear, nor is it about making others fear.

There are other ways to spread the good word (whichever version you choose it to be), and telling people that 'you'll die and live in hell if you don't believe in my god' just isn't the way to go.

It seems as though Christianity is one that I've been talking about mostly, so allow me to talk about how Buddhists too make this fault.

At the place where I work, there's a small Buddhist community that spends every afternoon chanting the mantras. The old, the young, men and women alike, would be there chanting, chanting, and chanting, and sometimes, from where I'm sitting on the fourth floor, I can hear the 'soothing' rhythms of their chants. A few months later, I don't know if soothing is the right word when I see the way they choose to practise the Buddhist teachings.

In Buddhism, many practise the ritual of 'Freeing the Live', fang sheng. The men set terrapins free, while the women would set birds to the sky. The normal temple allows this practice on special occasions, or at least, the normal temples that I visit with my mother does this.

This place near my office seems to be freeing terrapins in the huge lake every other day. In the mornings when I drive to work, I would sometimes see a terrapin or two walking along the gravel. A closer look and you'll see these are not terrapins, but land tortoises. They do not belong to the lake. They'll DIE in the lake.

And yet these practising Buddhists are setting these poor creatures to their eternal damnation every single day, chanting the good Lord Buddha's name in vain, I say. Anyway I too wonder why they don't have to go to work, because the chantings go on in the late mornings, times when people should be busy working to earn a living, and live a good life.

Have you ever been 'evangelised' by a Buddhist who tells you that your brand of Buddhism is practised wrongly? Well, believe me, I have. And many would agree that there is a tug of war between temples to keep devotees to themselves. The concept of God is manifest in every living thing doesn't nearly exist everywhere. Even visits to particular Taoist mediums might tell you not to go to another temple anymore because they teach you the wrong things, or, the idols in that particular temple are not filled with the good spirits of the deities.

I chanced upon a blog recently that had this very troubling line, and this was said by a woman who has been a Baptist for I say, 50-odd years?

She said this, (unabridged) 'The best person in the world will go to hell if he has not accepted in his heart and soul Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.'

In response to my comment to one of her posts stating why the God will bar homosexuals from entering heaven (yes I quoted Leviticus to her), she said this to me, 'I hope you find that free ticket to eternal life and the peace that passes all understanding, just as I have.'

And she dedicates the entire site to proclaiming her love for Jesus. In that same site, she talks about how Allah is not a true God, that people who advocate euthanasia are anti-Gods, and that homosexuality, well, wrong wrong wrong.

She calls me 'a non-Christian who hates for Christians to tell her what God is about.'

I tell this lady, Jeannette, no. I don't hate for Christians to tell me what God is about. What I hate, is for Christians like Jeannette, who tell the rest of the world what God is NOT about.

I disagree with this person, because in my personal book of understanding, there are no tickets to heaven. No purchases required. And, living life right shouldn't be because of living life to achieve eternal life, or nirvana or etc. Living life right should be for the simple reason of respecting life, itself. This is why I sincerely cannot take people who accuse atheists and agnostics for living without morals or conscience.

What, indeed, is so wrong about living life right for the sake of living it right? Do we, as human beings, need to be so way-less as to be accused of being unmoral merely because, 'I do not believe in God.'

After all, believing in God is not equivalent to being a morally just person. If you need to pile your worries in God and trust in God merely because without God you are unmoral, then what kind of person are you? I call it quoting God in vain. When you say God-fearing, does it mean you are only a good person because you are afraid of God?

Whatever happened to the concept of being good just because? No strings attached. And definitely no, not because being good because God wanted us to be good.

If life were so miniscule as to living it right just to acquire the end of times in a 'peaceful' manner, and that be your reason for loving God… well… it's simply not worth living at all. Life is more precious than all that, and please…

Be human. It's more important than being anything else.

It all boils down to fear. They're all preaching to us, different things, because they know we all fear one big thing: DEATH.

The problem is no one who is living knows about death, save for those who have so-called experienced 'out of body' experiences, and come back living to tell the story. The irony of it is, no one's word is against theirs because we didn't see, and they so called see.

And then we say, 'Wah that person, almost died, but didn't so he came back and tell this this this, and because he has seen this this this, of course what he says is true, really really… true one.'

So we have another flock of born-again believers, whatever the religion is.

Yet we fail to recognize this one thing, those who almost died, they didn't really die. They didn't, they lived, to tell their tale, and one thing I can bet you, they DO have a fighting spirit. So strong were their minds in action that they were able to piece together visions BASED on their very own strong beliefs… so the staunch Taoist would have seen a vision of the a revelled deity, and the staunch Christian might have seen a passage leading to light while the other end of the universe begs him to come back to earth and live again.

They didn't die.

But my point is, who else have you seen resurrected?

Jesus Christ was resurrected.

Gautama Buddha achieved enlightenment, Buddhists call this the achievement of final nirvana.

But we don't know whether this is true or not, because everything else happened so long ago.

So where is the basis of religion?

Kalau bukan takut mati, what else?

So you scared to die or not? You scared die adi you dunno where to go right? I tell you, very easy one, believe in Him, you will be by his side and you will achieve Eternal Life. Trust me.

You scared to die ah? Why? Because you do so many bad things right? But never mind, you do bad things now, later when you reborn, you suffer another 100 years lor. SO HOW? I teach you, you sit there and meditate (btw, if you really sat from day to night meditating, no way you'll find time to go and steal or rob or rape, go figure).

So? How? Scared leh. Never mind, this week, go and pray, pray already, you will feel MUCH MUCH BETTER.

Amen. Gate gate paragate parasamgate.

Whatever.

Perhaps I've just embarked on my very own personal journey. While previously sensitivities such as the issue of religion, and how I dislike the efforts of evangelists trying to force their doctrine of love upon me has frustrated me to the point of 'pulling hairs' (THINK: minishorts grabbing a palm load of hair and pulling outwards), this journey has led me to a marathon-like reading of related articles, websites, blogs.

Didn't I reiterate already that I was am not the first to be offended by your efforts that do nothing, of course, but mean good. Like many others, I'm merely being ungrateful, and in the process of trying to justify my sinful rejection of God, I'm always delighted to find others who think alike.

My father's Protestant, my mother's a Taoist, as for me, I'm an agnostic believer who slants more to the Taoist sect, but have been going to church since a kid. For the past five years, I've rejected the Word in favour of offering unclean incense before the table of 'false idols', and yet recently, I've grown up and decided that God is manifest in every living thing (read this as the very basis of Taoism) and have been divinely told (I meditate, go figure) that God understands and God loves me for me regardless, and that being the reason why I've started attending Sunday service again.

So Caleb, Catholic by birth and more insightful and prolific than me, has posted about the fight club he chooses to root for. Which led on to that significant post by Tym, which again led me to Scalzi's My Jesus forgives Your Jesus carsticker site, which led on to a fantastically new term (coined in 2004, though) for those which we all know as evangelists, who tell people that they're spreading the Word as God's servants.

Leviticans.

Excerpts from this post:

What makes a Levitican, in my book at least, is the willingness to transmute one's beliefs into hate and intolerance, to deprive others of rights they ought to enjoy. Leviticans have ever been with us. They quoted the Bible to justify slavery. They quoted the Bible to try to keep women in the home. They quoted the Bible to keep the races pure. They quote the Bible to try to keep gays and lesbians from the benefits of marriage. And each time, after they've quoted the Bible to their satisfaction, they go out and use that justification for their hate to do terrible things.

The next time you, whether you're Catholic, Buddhist, Taoist, Christian-who-is-not-Christian enough, gets approached by a Levitican, ask him if he eats pork, or if he's already circumsized.

I will adore God in my very own ways, thank you very much, and you know, you can't really teach someone what is the right way to love another.

…this intense wish to be right, all the time. Usually its easy to delude myself into my own universes, especially if you're the only kid at home, and when you're brought up to believe in yourself.

When I was young, my teachers used to write in my report card, under conduct:

B+, good student, but sometimes, overconfident.

This is a trait that shines still, though it is not always a bad thing.

But throughout the years, experience has taught me that perseverence does not always equal success, and plans do not always get carried out. Whatever makes the cut though, is always a silver lining in the gloomy born cloud, and well… it takes a while to realise this anyway.

How I wish at times like this my gut feelings are not real, are not right. But experience too, has taught me, I'm usually quite right.

I've wanted to believe in this line: I shape the realities around me. But right now, I don't want to believe it because, what I am shaping right now, isn't exactly in my control, isn't exactly what I want or will to be.

If you have read me for a very long time, you would know what's going on.