It’s been a long while since I’ve blogged.
Maybe because of that I find blogging seems awkward. Even the word “Awkward” is spelled awkwardly, just saying. I decided that I’ll blog about something awkward and hope that the awkwardness I’m feeling will be reversed by an equally awkward post.
Religion! There’s nothing more awkward than talking about religion.
When I was young, I knew that I have a “dual citizenship” when it comes to religion. I was baptized as Roman Catholic and Aglipay (Aglipayan? Whatev). I was first baptized as an Aglipayan because my father was late on my baptismal day and the Catholic Church then doesn’t allow a fatherless child to be baptized. My mother, who was very determined to have me baptized that day, decided that they try in the Aglipay Church. But sadly, they don’t also allow baptism without the father’s presence. One of my father’s friend decided to cut the crap and pretended to be my father. After the ceremony, my father finally came. He insisted that I should get baptized again with him in the Catholic Church. After that I was pledged to both church.
Up to this day, that’s the story I’m telling when I’m asked about my religion. One thing that I’m thankful of is finding friends doesn’t care about other people’s religion. Don’t get me wrong most of my friends are very religious in nature. They attend their church’s masses or whatever, read the bible and even follow the restrictions mandated by their church to the letter. We even have an Atheist friend. They learned to respect the fact that some people have different beliefs. That or we just learned not to talk about it at all.
That being said, I didn’t chose my friends to be that way. I have nothing against religious people. The only thing I am against is those religious people who are self-righteous about their belief.
As I am not a religious person myself, I am appalled by some people who claim to have a strong connection with God and yet utters word like “Sana kunin ka na ni Lord” or “Di ka patatawarin ni Lord sa ginagawa mo!”. If you are a religious person, I find it very hard to give my sympathies to you if you are using the God to smite someone for you or even pass judgement as if you’re God. There’s this one time when someone was eating a adobo rice and I was eating pork adobo on lenten. He told me that I’m committing a grave sin. I told him it was the only thing I could eat off their menu and besides his rice also has meat in it. He told me God would forgive him because there’s only few meat in it (implying that I would be forsaken since I ate a stupendous amount of meat). I said “I now baptized you as fish” to my adobo, and proceeded to eat. I know it’s not that elegant, I could have told him to just fuck off but I digress.
When our neighbor changed their religion, I asked my father the reason behind it. I told him to change our religion too because maybe being a catholic is doesn’t bring that much pizzazz. He told me that religion is meant to guide people closer to God. Being closer to God implies that we must act according to His teachings in order to become a good human being. “Does that mean that Catholics doesn’t make good human beings, since they’ve changed theirs” I asked him. He told me that, people have different questions, therefore needs different answers.
I’m kidding, that conversation never took place. I only asked why he chose to be a catholic and if my neighbor’s new religion is better than our. My father told me that:
“Mas okay katoliko, di sila masyadong demanding. Kung napapabuti sila, naging mabuting tao sila, di okay din religion nila.”
And thus ending the awkwardness…
