The stuff of legend really.
And complete and total enigmatic paradoxes to boot.
The very thing they all seem to be going for at their core, making sense out of our existence, is most often provided for in terms of simply surviving it...because meaning will come later.
For the most part, you name a religion, any religion, anywhere, believing in any god, or no god at all, with whatever outcome, and that is what it boils down to. The question of what does this life really matter, is most often answered in some form of, it matters in getting us to the next. That's it. All will be revealed in the life to come. ...just make sure you get to the next one.
The problem for the majority of human beings, and it is a real problem if you are one who has been influenced by any of our many world religions (here's a hint...you have), is that what we really want out of life, is to live.
I want to live.
I want to actually be alive.
I want to live a life that feels alive.
I want to be the kind of alive that actually sparks the desire to live real and alive lives in everyone else I come into contact with.
So religion, I'm calling your bluff. I'm not interested in simply surviving until the next, better existence comes along.
...but I'm also not writing you off. What you have become is not who you once were. The walls you have built up, the moats you have dug deep, the blood on your hands and on your souls, and the lives that you hold locked deeply in your many and varied dungeons, are not who you once meant to be. What you started out as was a way of making sense in the chaos. Who you meant to be was a torch through the dark and cold spaces. What you meant to establish was a place of refuge, of rest through the fog and storms.
What you settled for was made up answers when you were at a loss for real ones. What you settled for was insulation from this world rather than affecting it. What you settled for was protecting your territories and safely shoring up your foundations rather than being a welcoming, embracing haven. What you settled for was spilling the blood of those who opposed you rather than serving and feeding and caring and loving them.
...but that is not who you meant to be. I do not even believe that that is who you really want to be. I just don't know that you now know how to be anything else.
...but I want to live. Because of this, I choose to follow the One who was raised above every religion, even the religions that claim to bare His name. I will follow the One who claimed to know what life is really all about, the One who showed us all a new way to be fully alive, the One who proved that He was worth following when He stood up and walked out of His own grave on Easter morning. No one else can claim this. No one else has shown through many and convincing proofs that the only way to live, is to not be afraid of death.
So I will follow Him...stumbling, failing, sometimes rebelling, with all of my doubts, with all of my fears, with all of the baggage that you have laid on my back, the heavy burdens that I have so much difficulty shedding; I will follow Him...and I will learn to live.
I will also continue to engage with you in your many and varied forms. I will look for that which you once meant to be. I will dig for it, I will search for it, and when I find it I will hold it high in your midst and say, "See here! This is what you were meant to be! This is who you once sought to be!" And I will show you that if one such as myself can be fully alive following after the One who is the giver of all life, then there is still much hope for you.
Because I don't want to be fully alive all on my own; I want to live in a fully alive world. I am convinced this has already begun.
