Multiple Logins To FB Within The Hour Means I'm Depressed

There is so much that I've been confronted with as I got home from Europe.  I was thinking about posting some run through of my experience in Europe.  I also wondered whether I should talk about the significance in the differences of faith practices of Europe and America.  Or perhaps something about Taize.  But none of that is pressing in importance, none of that is at the forefront.... only the misery of my situation.  Only the unbearable burden that I've been called to carry, with no way out.  The burden of being me.  

You see, in the end depression only amounts to dissatisfaction with the self.  I don't care if every psycologist in the world disagrees with me.  I don't know anything about psychology either, but I know my condition.  Something I've carried with me since a very young age.  

This is one of those times; When God seems so distant its as though he's not even there.  Where you feel like inside yourself, you could go the distance, you could take a trip to the edge, and the consequences could not matter less.  When you wish that all the pain of living would just eclipse behind some large, emerging solution that you could see on the distance, marching toward you, to your aid like a hundred thousand soldiers all commissioned to just you.  

There's nothing proferred my way that falls into any such description though.  I only think about this issue with my church.  How my world came crashing down in an instant.  How I was crushed, subjected to ridicule, lied to, publicly disdained and then how I marched up to play the drums after the most disrespectful experience of my life, so I could be a nice guy.  I've been thinking about other things too.  I've been thinking about how there has been large inconsistencies in my employment history, only 1 and 1/2 years at best, of lasting with a given work place.  Either I didn't want them, usually they didn't want me, and kept me on with a time limit.  A few times I just left because I knew I'd end up leaving some other way too.  The shit of it is that my resume had one 4-5 year commitment on it, standing apart as a beacon of consistency apart from all the other questionable employment histories, and that was my home church.  It said; Faithfully serving there since 2007. Now that's gone.

Some people would say, "you should've left anyway.  It's a toxic place, you're time was up.. blah blah blah..."  To be honest they drop off those words without the full weight of the knowledge of going home afterwards and still being me.  So I ask you, dear readers, what do I do to improve my condition? How can I change the very fiber of who I am? How can I be anyone, anything else? A whipping boy for these men in power.  A slimy, squeezable, plush toy for sycophantic psychotic shadowy black hats who promise nothing and speak lies but suck power and life from people who love them.  

What's even more, I knew all this about my church long ago.  I wanted to leave... to leave quietly without making any waves, with no one getting hurt, no bridges getting burned.  But God told me to stay, and that was the worst commitment ever, to deal with fake people, the lowest form of people I could conjure up in my obscure and bizarre imagination.  I listened to God, but the reward was found in the listening, it didn't come after, which was punishment for  a life lived transparently.  To say what I feel.  To hold integrity in my right hand.  To never lie, or twist or spin the truth.  To take the full weight and blow of the reality of me within me, and give that to others because it was all part of the package deal.  To know me, means to know all of me.  My thoughts, my heart, how I feel about you, what I like, what I don't like, and everything that I think about the world.  When I thought this life style of honesty, openness and transparency was a virtue.. now I don't know if I could recommend it to anyone.  All that's left is me.

Rostand's Cyrnao de Bergerac says it best: 

Or, - [to be] double-faced and sly - 
Run with the hare, while hunting with the hounds; 
And, oily-tongued, to win the oil of praise, 
Flatter the great man to his very nose? 
No, thank you! Steal soft from lap to lap, 
- A little great man in a circle small, 
Or navigate, with madrigals for sails, 
Blown gently windward by old ladies' sighs? 
No, thank you! Bribe kindly editors 
To spread abroad my verses? No thank you! 
Or try to be elected as the pope 
Of tavern-councils held by imbeciles? 
No, thank you! Toil to gain reputation 
By one small sonnet, 'stead of making many? 
No, thank you! Or flatter sorry bunglers? 
Be terrorized by every prating paper? 
Say ceaselessly, 'Oh, had I but the chance 
Of a fair notice in the "Mercury"!' 
Thank you, no! Grow pale, fear, calculate? 
Prefer to make a visit to a rhyme? 
Seek introductions, draw petitions up? 
No, thank you! and no! and no again! But - sing? 
Dream, laugh, go lightly, solitary, free, 
With eyes that look straight forward - fearless voice! 
...For 'yes' or 'no' show fight, or turn a rhyme! 
- To work without one thought of gain or fame, 
To realize that journey to the moon! 
Never to pen a line that has not sprung 
Straight from the heart within. Embracing then 
Modesty, say to oneself, 'Good my friend, 
Be thou content with flowers, - fruit, - nay, leaves, 
But pluck them from no garden but thine own!' 
And then, if glory come by chance your way, 
To pay no tribute unto Caesar, none, 
But keep the merit all your own! In short, 
Disdaining tendrils of the parasite, 
To be content, if neither oak nor elm - 

Not to mount high, perchance, but mount alone!  

Judgment Day This Saturday, And What That Means For Your Weekend

In Matthew 24, perhaps Jesus' most well known eschatological passage (or passage concerning the end of days), we find an interesting verse in light of the coming prediction of the Earth's destruction scheduled for this Saturday. 


Matthew 24:20
"But pray that your flight will not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath."


Sorry Jesus, turns out that our flight will be on the Sabbath.


Just a little joke, but I'd like to examine the entirety of this weekend's situation in how it relates to the church, and those outside the church.  And while it may sound crazy, I'd like to examine the possibility of Mr. Camping's predictions for this weekend actually being true.


Jesus has promised to return to this world. (Matt. 24:30)  He's promised that His return will undoubtedly be in the light of VERY uncomfortable times.  Times marked by tribulation, floods, famine and war.  All of which seem to be assembling now.  It's hard to ignore.  Our time has been bookmarked by a huge tsunami, followed by a mile wide tornado, being concluded by the Mississippi flooding at record-breaking levels.  The middle-east is in mayhem (which is barely news, I'd honestly be more interested if Her Majesty's Royal Navy was involved in some struggle) but the presence of world violence is among us.  If anything, this is a sample situation of the end times at best.


The most pressing question I have received over and over from friends, coworkers etc. has been whether I really  believe that the end of the world will occur.  They haven't asked about Harold Camping, they haven't asked about what my church believes, or inquired about scholarly positions on Mr. Camping, but they have mostly asked for my personal thoughts on the matter.  They've asked what I'm convinced of.  Most times, I have suspected a question beneath the question, which is probably something like this; "How much time do I have before I'm reckoned with the King of the Universe?"


At the very least, Harold Camping has stirred the general awareness of most everyone around me, that they are mortal, that they are certainly NOT the masters of their own fate, and that the possibility exists that all may not be right with God.  


Allow me to break away from the feeling of anxiety creeping up your throat.  I'd like to say that I'm most wary of the preachers and religious leaders who deliver a consistent and streamlined message of comfort.  And I will say this unapologetically:
If you are not reconciled with God, through the person of Jesus Christ, by the faith in your heart testifying that He is Lord and God, then the last thing on this God-given earth I would like to give you is a message of comfort.  I maintain, no matter how unpopular it makes me, that you should be very uncomfortable.
Why you ask?
Because all these few events have done -- the tsunami, floods, war, tornadoes and earthquakes-- all they have done is remind you of your mortality.  And I will remind you of this; Were you less mortal before these events than you are right now?  Do you understand what I mean?
There has been a few disasters that have ravaged this country, a prediction of a direct act of God pointed toward a sinful and evil mankind, and now, all of the sudden, death is knocking at our door as if we were fine and safe in our sheltered American lives before.  I promise you, nothing has changed about your sinful condition, and your condition of judgment before God, besides what can be changed by His Son Jesus.
Think about how you would feel if you needed to face God on Saturday.  How would your condition suit you?  Would you be able to confidently say, I belong in Heaven, because my sins were forgiven, or would you be enslaved to the burdens of your own choice to serve yourself and man here in this earth, and then to be bound to do so in the afterlife. 
We do not serve an angry God.  
His wrath has been satisfied.
But what happened to that wrath that He had for sin at the cross?
It was scattered and made its abode among those who don't believe in Jesus. 
John 3:36 says "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
I don't believe the Father sends people to hell. I believe people make firm and committed decisions to go there.  I believe people become faced with the truth, but love their lives too much to even open a dialog with Jesus.  
I know I may sound totally fire and brimstone, but this is a sincere plea to anyone who is wondering what their fate will be like the day Jesus comes back.
If you believe in justice, if you believe in any plausibility of an existing right or wrong, if you believe that God can do more than forgive you, but change your life, now is the time.  Not tomorrow, because tomorrow is promised to NO ONE.  That's not a scare tactic.  It's a truth.  And as a preacher, called by the Lord Himself, I am not called to only comfort, or only tell of wrath, but above all else I am committed to one thing and one thing only; the truth.


To conclude....
It may not be this Saturday.  It may not be this summer.  But one day we will all stand before God and give an account of our lives.  Whether we were united to His life, by the death of His Son, or whether we were alien to Him, by our willingness to depart from Him in sin.  Our first resort is to shut Him out of our lives and be the masters of our own ships.  I would plea, in light of the ever-imminent truth of Jesus return; be made right to God.  
Most importantly, be honest with yourself. If you know deep down inside that something wrong in your heart needs to be made right.  Make it right.  It's as easy as saying I'm sorry to an all forgiving God who is waiting to restore to you the life you were meant to live; a life determined by Him, not sin.


My message to the church is simply this.  Why have we only considered the return of Jesus for this Saturday? Why have we ceased living in total anticipation of Jesus' return.  As I talked with someone in the store today, he claimed that Jesus coming back would be inconvenient because he was getting married on Saturday. 
Now I understand marriage may be the most anticipated event of someone's life, but a human marriage in all it's glory can in no way be realistically compared to the church's marriage ceremony with the Lamb.  
Have we forgotten the glory that awaits us?
Have we feared men and chosen the easy path of Jesus' ambiguous return, holding off on it's message as a distant and immaterial future event, rather than counting on it the next day.  
One thing Harold Camping has missed, is that Jesus imminent return shouldn't strike fear in to the hearts of believers as he trembles with the prospect of Jesus' return, but that it is to be, without question or doubt, the most glorious day of our existences.  To see our King face to face.  To see the fulfillments of promises made thousands of years ago.  
To live in an eternal kingdom, where glory and beauty and rest abound.  Where sin can not enter into, and where humans can dwell with God as they were meant to in the garden of Eden. To be in an environment, where it is not possible to cry, simply because no suffering or anxiety exists to cause it.
To live in the Kingdom of God, in its eternal splendor and to reign with God. To do what we were meant to do.  And to see the tormentor of our souls defeated at last, never to disturb us again.


This is the gospel, the reason for the Bible, the reason for this blog and the reason for my life.  No exceptions and no apologies.  

The Death of David Wilkerson

This is truly a sad thing.  To be frank, I don't know much about David Wilkerson.  I do know about the impact of Times Square Church.  I do know that Teen Challenge (a drug rehabilitation program also founded by Wilkerson) has changed thousands.  I know fundamentally that he was a man of God who loved the spread of the gospel, and that we are together in an eternal family which shares my grief with his.  He's also the voice behind a very moving video which is based on a sermon of his called 'A Call to Anguish'.  It can be found here and it will make you cry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5_QoVPisCI&feature=fvst

The point of this is to let you know that David Wilkerson's life had an impact in Manhattan and was wiped out, not by an accident, not by an unprecedented event that God didn't see coming, but because his time had been fulfilled.  He was a righteous man. Watch that video and you will  surely know, this Pastor loved our God.

This was written on David Wilkerson's blog the day before he died.

From the blog entitled "When All Means Fail."

"To those going through the valley and shadow of death, hear this word: Weeping will last through some dark, awful nights, and in that darkness you will soon hear the Father whisper, "I am with you,'" Beloved, God has never failed to act but in goodness and love. When all means fail-his love prevails. Hold fast to your faith. Stand fast in his Word. There is no other hope in this world."

I find it nothing short of prophetic that in this man's last hours he had written about the goodness of God despite suffering and pain, and every bit of discomfort life can bring.  I devote this blog to him, his life and his legacy and pray for the family that is grieving over their loss.  Truly this was a man of God.

Excerpt From My Paper On Spontaneous Worship

Hey all,
Below is an excerpt from my paper on spontaneous worship, hopefully with more to come.  So far its comin' out alright, but here are definitely some thoughts I'd like to share with you guys, and just some fun stuff concerning how blessed God is when His people take pleasure in Him.. enjoy!

"An emerging pattern of musical worship is being appropriately termed “spontaneous worship” because of the spontaneous elements that make it what it is.  While favored by the more charismatic movements, all denominations in God’s kingdom are susceptible to this manifestation in the musical worship of God.  If someone playing the piano as the only instrument involved in their worship, in the most traditional church in America repeats the chorus or refrain of a song in an unexpected manner, they have just participated in spontaneous worship.  Usually encouraged by God’s Holy Spirit, this style of worship is becoming more widespread as the practice of musical worship has become more accessible to the lay person.  Mostly anyone with the available talent of singing and strumming a guitar simultaneously can perform the act of musical worship, which has led to more common instruments (not ordinarily considered for the standard of “sacred music”) to become involved as well. Guitars, harmonicas, acoustic basses, djembes, bongos, pennywhistles, xylophones and in one rare case a didgeridoo have all been, in my personal experience, vehicles used by God to bless God and lead His people into His presence and a spirit of worship."

I Love Suffering

Suffering.  Being at the end of yourself.  Being on the edge of your tears.  Being full of emotion and humanity, the inner tearing away of all the makes you impure and which extracts the raw, ballistic, unapologetic you.

In the Christian faith we call it the refiner's fire.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death.
We call it a thorn in our flesh.
Agony.

I love suffering.
I love suffering not because I'm a sadist.  Not because the luxuries of life have bored me so I fulfill out of my need an existential necessity of struggle, but no.... I love the desperation and the striving and the adventure and the answer of suffering.
Can you remember the last time a scenario of your life was so difficult it made you sweat?
In Luke 22, Jesus sweat so profusely, not from a physical work out or from torture or any sort of physiological exertion, but from anticipation.

Boy there sure isn't enough of that these days.
He wasn't being tormented, he wasn't being hurt or burned, but his sweat came from a knowledge of what was to come.

I find that fascinating.

I also love suffering because it connects us with all that is in our humanity.
People in ordinary life, in the normal stride of the day dealing with a normal set of problems will place themselves on top of their worlds, I suspect, because they are actually so insecure that a pretense can only serve up a dose of painkillers to their emotional insides.  When we're connected to the truth there's something so special about that and this is what I mean in specifics:
We are human beings.
Without all the answers.
With great big tears from great big hearts.
We are vastly connected to other people.
We are extravagantly dependent on others whether we accept it and realize it or not.
We are beings that yearn for something better.
To be honest there is so much more to this, and so much more we receive from suffering that I could list little sentiments like that all night, but I'd like to keep it brief.
Suffering not only exposes the person that we rigorously tuck away on the inside but deals with that person to shape and transform the core of who we are and we leave our moments in life that we call suffering, changed.
And who doesn't want change?
Oh, I guarantee someone could read this and say, "I actually don't want change.  Things are alright, or at least I could see something better, but I've been through a lot and would like to rest here a while. Change isn't for right now."
I promise you it is.
You must change.
The world tells you you're alright.  You're not alright. You're imperfect, you've got flaws and not only that, you're scared of them in places so deep if you found them exactly you'd be lost in yourself.
Stop.  Don't turn off this blog, this is for you.
You've got to change.
And not because you're bad and God hates you.
Because part of your beautiful story includes a God that picks you up after you fall,
a good, caring and loving God
Who loves you so much.
That He won't mind.
Bringing you to your desperation.
To your anxiety.
To your exhaustion.
To the pain you carry, all for the purpose of taking it away.  Draining it from you, like a bad blood disease.
You see, suffering doesn't stand alone.  It's not just suffering and then nothing.
It's suffering and then -- something new in God.
Bigger, stronger, more flame/element resistant faith.
Things in Christ you always wanted like a bigger heart.
More compassion.
Gifts.
A knowledge of who you really are and what's really important.
This is the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, being conformed, even to His death.
Yes, I love Christ and I indeed love suffering.  His suffering.
Which is my comfort.
2 Cor. 1

Passion, Intellectualism, Detraction

I find it funny how the human mind works... things I mention often such as the need to comprehend things.  (Comprehension is a form of control and well... blah blah blah we don't need to go on to all that but I could if I wanted to.)  The human mind does feel a need to understand the non-understandable though.  I don't think things present themselves as non-understandable and people out of sheer audacity and pride try to do it anyway out of a need to prove something (although that is the case sometimes), but certain things, and most notably the ideas of God, present themselves as uniquely "self-evident" and our humanity cries out and rocks our awareness with a need to capture, to assimilate the framework, to eat the whole thing.  To understand or learn it.

Keep in mind.... our sinful minds (interestingly enough) do not cry out for a need to KNOW something that is non-understandable, mystifying or amazing.  Knowing something is different from understanding it.  I know my father.  His name is Nelson Mir, born in Queens, NY ca. 1955 and raised in Cuba until the age of 5.  I could recite the rest of his life story, but the more time I spend with the guy, the more I realize in my deepest parts of understanding that I do not understand him.  I understand a little bit.  I certainly know my father.  But I don't understand the ENTIRE THING, and this is the singular frustration of man's relationship with God, we know Him but we don't understand HIS FULLNESS.  My question is initially this: If we cannot fully understand another man, (or as in my illustration, the closest of people to us) how can we attempt to understand God, who as the Bible says authored knowledge.  That, my friends, is absurdity.  And our frustrations become poignantly inflamed when God  acts outside of our framework (this is usually a result of asking God to do such a thing in prayer.)  Suffice to say this, if I were to say that I could perfectly understand any human around me, it would be absolutely insulting, so we cannot and must not engage those attempts with God.

Now that I've set the stage, this is what I really want to talk about. Our initial interaction with God comes in full, raw experience that satisfies the mind (the conceptual) and our hearts (the emotional).  We get it; we know what we need to know and we truly know it... an abundance of information and profundity surrounds us at every turn.  Our minds are alive with the life of God empowering them to understand, Him and Himself in all things.  Our fear of the Lord begins our path to understanding!  (Prov. 9:10)

Our emotion.. whoa.. our emotion has never been so scintillated.  Our minds and hearts course with pleasure, love, joy, happiness, longing and mostly all these things come through at the same time!  It is an explosion.  Meeting the true and living God through faith in Christ is awesomely similar to a first kiss with someone you love... where the consummation of longing, loving, intrigue, passion, and sharing are exercised in symbolic action that is perfectly representative of your mutual feeling. 

Now with all that mush said and done, I hope I've left no room for intellectualism. 

 Intellectualism and emotionalism are two highly active functions of the mind, but I feel it is important to know that they are not mutually exclusive.  Perhaps this is the mistake we have made in our compartmentalizing western culture.  Is there a marriage of the two?  Do the two compliment each other or are they pitted against each other? I will say that the former example listed previously is a result of the Spirit and the latter is the flesh.

I have found that there is a place for emotionalism in my life and it is not to be discredited.  As a matter of fact, the book I'm reading right now, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero argues that emotions are extraordinarily important and should not be discredited, lest we suffocate our humanity or our soul.  Emotions are important, thank God we have them as they are a gift and God help us when they take us to dark places.  I can't explore the deep topic of emotions now, but there is a world of truth and lies that we experience through our emotions.  

The intellect is a tool, given to us by God to be more than just reactional, visceral beings. (Psalm 32:9)  Emotions join together with and inform the intellect so that we can process and experience life.  Now here's the problem; The various traditions of Christian faith found throughout most of the world have sided with either emotionalism that ridicules people who only operate only on a rigid method of understanding while mistakenly throwing out their soul as well, or rigid intellectualism who view the more emotional trends of faith as having discarded the very truth of God itself, looking only to experience to validate their views.  But where does real faith and following Jesus fall? These two depictions of following Jesus do not do justice to what God intended our walk with His Son actually meant do they?  Of course not.

Following Jesus is what it is without being confined to one of these descriptions or the other.  Our mind's eventual conformity to the mind of Christ is a cooperation, and total, uncheated engagement with the fullness of our emotions and the pleasures and benefits of rational thought.  We are allowed to go crazy in passion for God, even to the point of making fools out of ourselves and being subject to public ridicule.  Jesus is ok with that =).  We are allowed to discuss the greatest and highest being in the loftiest terms, without sacrificing our integrity or pretending to be anyone but ourselves, and Jesus is ok with that. We can sing, dance, pray in tongues, fall, cry and scream in joy, pleasure, repentance and suffering, and we can elaborate, meditate, postulate, extrapolate and explore the riches of His wonder, while knowing that He is completely beyond comprehension! And by the way, being beyond comprehension is not a bad thing, it is a great thing for this reason; When I say God is unable to be fully comprehended the operative word is fully!!  This means that we have a full life, of exploring and finding out and knowing more about GOD!!! And never being bored, or watching a rerun in the Spirit, but that every day, up until and including the day we die, we will dive deeper and deeper into the heart of God, and Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.  It will never end.

And when we meet Him face to face, a new pleasure arises.  A great unveiling of new mysteries.

Religiosity... kind of like a double rainbow - What does it mean?

Well, despite my love for the double rainbow song (and original video), there is a serious topic intended in this post.  Let's see if I can carry it out.

Religion is quickly becoming, to most people I converse with, a buzz word with no positive connotation associated with it.  More and more, the mention of the word "religion" either bites back at the person trying to use it in a positive light, which leaves them feeling downcast by the traces of shame it leaves.  It is either the quickest renounced association by Christians who are attempting a novel approach (quickly following that Christianity is not a "religion its a relationship"), and finally those who suffer from angst toward God.  There is one last remnant which still touts the term with a personal pride that thinks it remains untouched by any pain the word can bring, nevertheless, they are the most afflicted by the term of all.

But my goal here is to clear the air.  Religion, like many words in the English language has an original intended meaning, yet through cultural context, over/under/or misuse or just good old fashioned ignorance, loses that real meaning and is redefined with an inferior and much less wholesome definition.

The History of the Word
Get out your earl grey tea.. its time to get classy! Just kidding, here's what I dug up from some popular word etymology sources regarding the word religion. (This tends to get boring so I'll keep it brief)
Popularly, religion means a worship of a higher being.  This is not how the word started, however.  The origins that hold the most credibility indicate that this word means "to bind together" or put another way "to bind fast".  I find it important that the origins of this term do not necessitate worship of God or a theological structure in anyway, although general connotations in mostly every case make this connection.

Popular Use, and Where We've Wandered Away
"It's not a religion, its a relationship"

I apologize to every Christian in advance who has a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says this, this statement is about to be grotesquely mangled, and personally, I hope its never used again.  Why? Because I hate Christian bumper stickers? Wrong. I hate all bumper stickers, I also hate this phrase, but neither of those are the reasons why either. It's because this statement is grossly untrue.  You see, if you go to church (or some sort of meeting place), personally assign a set of beliefs (especially if they dictate some kind of moral code) meet with people who believe the same and do this routinely, well let me be the first person to tell you; you are following a religion.
It's true that Christianity, especially for me, goes above and beyond what I believe other people experience as "religion".  It's also true that the word religion does not do justice to the totality of life that is permeated by my conviction of the existence from God and my service to Him.  However, all things considered, I do follow a religion.  If you follow Christ, so do you.


You know its true!  We've all faced the frustration of the many existing and sometimes incompatible denominations that fit under the umbrella of Christianity.  But each of those denominations, along with each of its followers, assigns itself to a set of core beliefs that unites, or "binds together" its followers across the entire churchscape of denominations.  This is what is known as orthodoxy, which are the main tenets of Christianity that cannot be compromised if you still want to retain the name the title of Christian.
Some example of these core beliefs are as follows:
The atoning death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
The Virgin Birth.
The doctrines of the Trinity.
The sole belief in one God.
The final judgment of all people.
The return of Christ.

Part of the move away from the use of the word religion, I suspect, is the negative connotation that religion is hard, oppressive, boring, outmoded or irrelevant.  In an attempt to restore the word religion, I'd like to think that Christianity, if practiced rightly, is an exciting, joyful, fulfilling and vibrant experience.  As far as whether its irrelevant or not I would ask you to consider this; since when are the topics of your eternal destiny, your purpose on earth, the meaning of life, and the existence of an afterlife EVER irrelevant? I would conversely argue that they are always relevant and realistically, very pressing matters.  You're passionate and energetic pursuit of their answers may cause you ridicule from some of your peers, but to find the truth has potential to yield an eternal reward.

Religion and religiosity simply address the parts of your life that discuss personal practice (inward belief and outward exercise) of your beliefs toward God.  We all have them.  It could be argued that atheists and agnostics have religious convictions.  It's certain that they have beliefs toward his non-existence, which in effect constitutes some kind of belief system, and by its very nature directly affects morality and purpose.

There's more to this story but I'll stop here, I'm pretty tired of writing, but I'd like to conclude my thoughts on religion by discussing characteristics of religion, the influence of religion, and respond to the argument made popular by Christopher Hitchens which is "Whether Christianity is a plague to the world and religion a detrimental establishment rather than a helpful and benevolent one."

See ya soon, thanks for reading!