Since I've been making brainless rants from a personal point of view, I apologize again for making any comments offensive. To answer your question, yes, I've read the entire bible over a couple of times. I've attended an Islamic workshop, my parents are Buddhist, and one of my good friends is a Shamanist.
My last two questions to you, hungrypossam, is if there were no bible for you to follow, would you not have morals of your own and know not to harm because you can be harmed?
This is all very personal. But I think it's time I shared why God means so much to me, in full.
I spent so much time last year drinking, and I had so many beer and wine bottle trophies in the apartment, it boggled my friends. I stated that my BGR relationships were far from any sort of innocence. I was the one who asked guys I liked out, and I couldn't be bothered listening to them talk. I preferred to just get physical.
The kinds of media I watched were not just violence in itself. I had friends who were into necrophilia, who liked watching decapitation sex. I hung out with those friends, because we bonded over this - we were fascinated with the human body. We wondered what life was and we agreed society was stupid - so we spent alot of time exploring what a normal mundane life would not be. We tried everything together. They really got into anime, while I started watching any movie with social commentary.
I liked it because it questioned the world and it mirrored how I felt. My favourite movies were Battle Royale and All about Lily Chou Chou. Anything by Shunji Iwai. Because they commented on society, and I hated society and everyone about me with a passion. My anger at my parents had never subsided - I blamed them for putting me in Asia for so many years in a culture that I felt stifled everything. All I could see, and this was my point of view, was that everyone was just a bunch of paranoid idiots trying to get a better job and better life - which to them meant a grey office building they turned up to every Monday in tight fitting white shirts.
Whenever I met them we would fight, because my father ordered me around all the time with his own set of moral values - and they always stuff like "work hard and get a good job and get a stable life". I would swear at him - who cares about his stable life and his stupid job. I took revenge on him anytime and everyway I can, and I even took his toothbrush and stuck it down the toiletbowl, and then put it back on his mantle.
You see, his values included "being good to his family" but I saw that he had been cruel to my half sister all his life. He never talked to her. And he never explained WHY to anything. They were just...his values. And of course, why should I give a shit to his values?
He would hit me if my room looked like a mess, and I was angry because his own room was a mess. I was angry because he had a mistress, he came home at 2 or 3am and yet he still said he loved his family. One day he'd hit me and one day he'd pat me on the head, I felt like a dog. I thought that if my father could cheat, so could I too. So one weekend I spent the night at my ex-boyfriend's house .... the fight my parents and I had thereafter....... it was so violent Dad nearly called the police.
My exboyfriend - he made a living selling illegal DVDs in Singapore. Now if you're caught doing that, its a long, very long jail term. I thought what I knew then was love. Yet, somehow thinking of marrying him sickened me. I saw him shout at his parents and even threaten to hit them, and all I thought was that: that's cool. He can fight against my parents that way too. But eventually we broke up, because I had to move to Australia and I thought I had "more choices there".
Then I moved to Australia, and I liked it. I wanted to live there. But I could see no point to my degree at all. All those media theories, I thought they were bullcrap, as if my research could ever mean anything at all in the long term. I even planned that if I wanted to work in the media, I would want to work in something like a Shunji Iwai film. I wanted to make a documentary of family or sexual dysfunction.
I didn't even like going to uni, I called it an expensive day care centre. I didn't even attend any tutorials, and when I wasn't playing online games (I submitted work just to pass uni) I was at a bar, or at my friend's place drinking. We drank together, that guy and I. He was an international student too, and I would just go to his place and we'd watch some kinds of movies together, get drunk. We got along well because he was like me 1) Singaporean, 2) major family problems. His mother abandoned him at birth. They were from this band really popular in Singapore in the past, called Speedway. He was adopted by a Singaporean family, and lets face it, this guy was Eurasian, he looks like a white boy. So he spent his entire life in Asia ostracized. I knew exactly how he felt.
He took a Baileys every night because it was "mother's milk". That guy, was so fat. So fat, that he hated going out of doors. He told me that he loved food, wasn't gonna give him up. Dying on food was the best thing that could ever happen to him. The world was just f%^&* up, that was what we could accept. All we can do is just sit and complain about it.
One day I met one girl, an INTP in uni, we were in the same project groups for 3 subjects out of 4!
She's a Christian girl, I told her directly I hated Christians. She was the first one that didn't ever tell me anything about God or church. To date, we're still best friends. I hated her at first night, but she thought I was an INTP and the next thing you knew it, we were fiercely arguing. It broke the ice, and we became friends.
Shes a very intelligent and beautiful girl, the kind that everyone envies. I gotta say that I was actually impressed by her, I actually thought she was hot ... (Today I can't believe I thought of her in such disrespect once, our friendship means so much to me to date) I scrutinized her, and I noticed she never sweared. She was very elegant, a great photographer, looked great in trench coats, just silent, mysterious and really cool. I on the other hand, was always loud, rude and crude.. and I felt...cheap. I wanted to be like her. And I always had problems! She never seemed to have any - and I thought she was so cool because of that. She was so wise, and I couldnt understand why.
One day I told her. You can't be Christian man. They're all stupid. They like Finding Nemo and Disney lame shit shows. And all she did was just reply: well I'm not like that am I. So I told her, if every Christians like you, then maybe more of the world will believe.
I got kinda addicted to World of Warcraft when it first came out - i like violent video games. But my laptop was down, and as I am pretty wealthy (now don't be shocked), the min I wanted to play World of Warcraft, I decided I wanted to buy a computer that very day. But I had uni, and I had to go to tutorial cause I skipped 3 (international students are supposed to have 85% attendance rate). Now I just went to class, and it was so boring. I turned to this punk next to me and said " I need a new computer".
The punk turned back to me and he said "Hey. I build them". I said...what?
So we discussed during class. He showed me a website with all sorts of computer parts. He said we could go after uni - he told me to grab $1300 and we'd go to East Malvern, a suburb pretty far out from Melbourne city. And so that happened. I told that guy if he messed up, he built me a new computer. And he agreed.
Now it was on the long tram ride that I noticed something different about this guy. He was a punk, but he didnt swear much. He was calm, cool and quiet. He was like ... the angel Gabriel or something, despite how he looked. I could almost picture a sword in his hand, except he wouldn't swing it cause he was "dangerous but gentle". Not unlike the INTP girl I mentioned. I began to wonder why he reminded me of that girl so much, so I actually asked him: You're a Christian right. And he looked surprised. He was like...yea. And he said: I'm from Planetshakers church. ever heard of it. I said no, but it sounds punky. He was like: yup. we play rock music.
Now I wasnt very interested so he didn't talk about it again. We fixed up the computer for 3 hours at his house (yes i went to a stranger's house! i was that reckless) and that night, I took home my new computer. I spent the next 2 weeks enjoying it, but it ran into a blue screen error.
So I called up that guy and he came over to fix it. Now the funny part was, I was abit drunk before he came in. So when he did come in, I just started ranting. And then I started telling him about my INTP female friend. And then I said: She...she's like perfect. I can't explain. And the only clever Christian i know. Then that guy, who was fixing my comp just laughed and said: Go to church!
and i was fricking drunk! i typed on MSN to the INTP girl: Hey I'll go to church with you it sounds fun. And she said: what? are you sure?
I was like: uh huh.
She was like: but...you're the antichrist.
I was: no i'm not (and i gave alot of reasons why i was a good moral citizen! i cant remember what i said)
She was like: but you have to wake early tomorrow ok.
And then when I woke up the next morning, I couldn't believe it when she called me and told me to get ready. So I went with her to a church along Carlton (I'll keep the identity confidential) And I tell you I watched way too much Shunji Iwai. I kept imagining someone was gonna bomb that church. I looked about. Nice stain glass windows.. we can use it in a movie with blood spattered all over it...
Let's just say that after that, my INTP friend introduced me to her group of friends and I got really irritated (and surprised she would hang out with a group of people like that). But we were sitting near the front so I couldn't leave church, plus I still had abit of a hangover.
The message from Ecclesiastes:
"Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises....
All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow."
I got really really angry hearing this, I had to say I drank even more than night. I didn't want to think about it anymore. I said no more of this church bullshit. The next week, I went on a date with one of my classmates from uni.
We went to a bar, and drank. Then we ended up going to his hostel room, and he offered me a cigarette. I realized it wasn't just a cigarette, it was weed. I was about to smoke it, when I remembered it gave you really bad breath. We were really drunk, he more than me, and I was still kinda sober. And then he just asked me if I thought he was hot. And you know what...I knew what was coming next but.. somehow... the sermon mentioned something vaguely about us being worth more to God than to men. I didn't quite believe it then, but I just thought that hey - I'm worth more than some sex doll. So I actually turned him down quite flatly. You know what, we ended up spending the rest of the night watching Dave Chapelle, nothing else.
Next week, and I felt like an old time low. I stayed on the 5th floor back then, and I actually took the lift to the 10th floor of my apartment to see if I could jump off. Someone had killed himself in that exact spot last year, so I looked about the top floor. I looked down from there .... then I remembered the article I wrote in the past about this one girl who killed herself cos she had been bullied. Then I actually sneered and thought: shit I gotta die in a way I don't look like a pile of meat. I gotta make sure I'm really dead. And then I thought right there and then: if I do die, what's the point. I'll never think again. I may as well live to experience some new things.
I had experienced all sorts of...interesting relationships...some of which I will not talk about because...few humans have tried it, I'll put it simply. And my last date felt so empty, even though my uni friend was a pretty handsome guy. i was so tired of everything, and most of all, i was tired of myself. i told lies all the time. i was always afraid of everything - looking good meant the world to me, yet i always pretended to be confident and posh. i was always in black tank tops or halters back then. (and never the glasses!) my religion, quite literally, was Shunji Iwai, everything he said I took as the truth. And all I could see from his movies was that the world sucks, the end. That's what all his movies are about. No other answers.
but since church was the interesting experience to me, (but it made me think and i hated it) i said i'd give it one more shot.
Now...that church sermon..... omg. it wasnt even a charismatic church. but... in the bible study group i was in... there was one elderly man sitting near me... i couldnt look at him. i couldnt look into his eyes. he was... he felt like an angel..and i tell you angels carry swords. they're powerful, but gentle. and i couldnt believe it, i was looking down at the floorboards. i had no idea why, but i could feel something about him - so clean and such light that i felt like he could see everything i had ever done. he paid me no attention most of the time, he was happily chatting to others. yet i was afraid he could see everything i really was. when he did turn to greet me i actually stammered and i couldnt think of what to say.
all i wanted to do, i decided when i got home, was to come clean. my own actions made my ownself feel small and detestable. i felt like i couldnt confess to anyone what i had done before.
so next week, the INTP girl and me had to finish a project. we worked late in the night till 3am at school, then we went to my place so we could both shower and she could stay over for one night. but...i just came to her and said: hey. and i looked down on the ground. my cheeks were burning.
i said.. you know... ecclesiastes. wisdom is meaningless. pleasures are meaningless. advancement is meaningless. work is meaningless. ashes to ashes and dust to dust. its all true. and we sat and talked till the morning. she was the first person i ever told about my life. i had never had a best friend before, and it took me a long time to even say... i think.. i have alot of pride. and then we started talking about God. I said i wish i knew he was real. She said yea i dont even know if i'll get into heaven. that was our conversation.
the next day, the girls from Carlton called me and asked me if i wanted to plan the morning exercise for a church camp coming up. I really had nothing else to do in July, so i went cause i was curious what people did on church camp. the problem was... no one told me the morning exercise was actually a DANCE!
Now i tell you, when i went to church camp i still acted like a... I sat next to the only cute guy i could find in the bus and i was like.. flirting with him. (he just thought i was being friendly, he's a nice guy and today, we're good lan gaming friends) when we went for camp i didnt want to be part of the activities, it was there that i cursed and swore and called it lame shits. But no matter what I did, no one refuted me, and I was shocked by that. So I felt embarassed, and I gave up swearing.
And here's the story, as it was on my blog:
The solution
I was wondering why we're focusing on the Christian God instead of the idea of God in general, as I am not a Christian, but I guess I should just write myself out of this debate since that's the only one that anyone is going to bother looking at 
). Kinda irrational to blame the child for the father's mistake, if you ask me. But it's somewhat insightful on how the children of the future often deal with the problems of their parent's mistakes. So "Africans" are Caanan's descendents. Though some speculate that there were never any racial distinctual features put onto Noah's children or great grand children--- and the guy "lived" for 950 years....think there was ample enough time for descriptions of his sons, however old he was. And HOW is there any racial difference if his children's children came from HIM. So irrational lol
condemn homosexuals. And people try to. However, 
<--- consider the possibility that right now you're not the only one who's feeling this emotion...
