Question Everything, Including Authority
My ex-husband and I were both raised Catholic. So we know what it’s like to sit through those Catholic masses with all their rituals and prayers, repeated over and over each week. In the Catholic mass, there’s a part when the priest says “body of Christ” and the parishoners are supposed to repeat it and make the sign of the cross. Well, apparently when my ex-husband was a little kid, he thought the priest was saying “foddy-a-fice” rather than “body of Christ” (notice how the two rhyme). Eventually, he figured out what the priest was really saying, but in the meantime, for years, he said “foddy-a-fice”.
Cute story, and that’s not why I tell it. I tell it because it’s a good example of how children (who later become adults) often blindly follow what they are told. Questioning the way things are, or why things are the way they are, is discouraged in general- in churches, in families, in schools, and in society as a whole. Many of our religious beliefs go unexamined. As do our beliefs about relationships, marriage, and sexuality.
I did notice, when I was a kid, that several things in the Catholic church seemed “off” to me. One of the things I could never understand was that, if it was supposed to be such “good news” that God existed and that Jesus, his son, had been sent to save people, why did everyone in church seem so depressed all the time? If they really believed what they were being told, wouldn’t they have been happier?
And what about the Holy Trininty, explained to us as “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”? Why was it that we lived in a patriarchal society and God just happened to be male, as did his only offspring, Jesus. Don’t you think that’s a bit much of a coincidence?!
The Holy Trinity really does exist, although it’s a bit different than I was originally taught. “The Father” (God) is neither male nor female. God IS. Jesus was no doubt a man that walked on the earth. A very advanced soul. And he was no more God’s son than you and I are all his sons and daughters. We are all “the Son”. And the “Holy Spirit” is simply the true essence of God, or Source, that pure energy flowing through each of us. We are God. God is us.
I invite you, too, to question every aspect of your life. From your religion to your spirituality to the way you conduct your relationships and your sex lives. (And anything else you feel like questioning, for that matter!) Why do you believe and act the way you do? Is it because someone told you that’s the way it is done? In that place of deep inner knowing, does it all make sense to you? Or are there parts that don’t- and never did- now that you come to think of it, resonate? I invite you to base your lives on what feels “right” to you, not on what someone else told you is “right”.