All right, I am all for people having faith, believing in God, and so on. I really am. What I am not ok with is people trying to force me to believe what they believe, how they believe, and so on....

I have my own set of beliefs. I do believe in a higher power. I do believe in spiritual guardians or angels, and I believe in doing the right thing. I also believe that the creator gave us the power to reason and made each one of us different for a reason. It makes things interesting. If two people are exactly alike and believe the exact same way on everything 100% of the time, then one of those people is unnecessary. 

Now, at present, my personal beliefs stem from my baptist upbringing + paganism (christianity is much more pagan than most people realize) + wicca + gnosticism. I believe that most religious books are allegories and parables.

 I tend to picture the almighty as a woman. This is because when I imagined the creator as a man, I did not find it soothing nor reassuring. Males have inflicted an amazing amount of misery on me, so this is not a big surprise. When picturing God as a man, he tends to come across to me as an uninvolved, uninterested, and basically a fectless thug.  However, when I picture the almighty as a female, I am able to relax, open myself up and let go. I have been informed in no uncertain terms that this is blasphemy. Which is odd since the bible actually says "God created both man and woman. In his own image created he them".

This sort of thing is precisely why I don't go for organized religion. If you have a thought that varies from what the mainstream goes for, then you are a blasphemer. This is fascinating when you consider the fact that Jesus was hardly "mainstream". He encouraged new ways of thinking and looking at things, but apparently we are only supposed to see things exactly as Jesus did...which is hard since we really have limited info into his psyche. And he died young, so never he had the chance to become bitter and thoroughly disppointed with this experiment called "life".

My point here is that we do not have to believe the exact same thing in order to find peace. We don't have to have the same name for our chosen deity to know that we aren't supposed to kill each other, steal from one another and so on. It is perfectly alright for you to love your god your way...but try not to run with the arrogance that you have a lock on all things spiritual and the rest of us are just poor little lost lambs destined for eternal damnation.

When I picture the creator as a man, all I see is an absentee father at best...a dead-beat dad at worst (it depends on the day you ask me). The God that I was raised to believe in and pray to left me feeling remarkably alone, abused and abandoned (the three A's). My parents have this amazing faith in their God and he seems to love them very deeply by all accounts. I had faith like that, and I can remember the exact moment that I lost it. I was ten, and a cousin that I had worshipped since I could remember raped me. I was 10 years old and God either couldn't protect me, or chose not to. Neither one of those options worked for me.

I would love to have unyeilding faith, but....I have thoughts...I live in the world...and I have a problem with putting my faith into any entity that doesn't seem to accept the consequences of the things that have gone wrong. If it's something good, he takes the glory. If something bad happens then everyone points the finger at the devil (who...by the by...is a pussy) and says "it's the fault of Lucifer". These things do not inspire confidence.

I don't expect you to agree with me. I can only look at it from my perspective and my way of reasoning. What I am asking for here is for the world to appreciate the fact that for me, spirituality is personal and private. If it wasn't, then people wouldn't feel so awkward talking about religion with other people. Believe as you must. I will do the same. My father has been beating me over the head with his King James all of my life (figuratively speaking) and I still have my own perspective, which doesn't totally line up with his. And He is not unsettled by this simply because he has no clue. I haven't told him because I respect his beliefs, I don't expect him to change them just because I am not comfortable. Others should show the same courtesy.