my statement of faith as of 2010/03/31 at 08:21

MY STATEMENT OF FAITH
as of 2010/03/31 at 08:21

I don't believe in a vengeful God who
1. would kill men, women and children;
2. would punish someone by hurting his/her children;
3. would forsake me.

I believe in God who
1. protects men, women and especially children;
2. punishes those who hurt children especially;
3. remembers me in the good and the bad;
4. helps me in those difficult times;
5. laughs at the silly jokes from a child, cries and worries when we do, feels our pains, heals our wounds, holds us when we fall or can't stand up anymore;
6. asks so little, but gives us so much;
7. has many human names and guides us all to his home through different paths (religions and common faiths);
8. will heal my son Gary and look after my other two boys.

disgusting

I grew up Catholic. Nowadays I wouldn't call myself such. Anyway It's disgusting what the Catholic Church has done for generations -- paying off victims of sexual abuse and/or molestation -- especially since the new pope took charge. There's something that makes me distrust him, sort of evil. It feels that this whole sexual abuse spectre is the white elephant sitting in the corner getting bigger day by day till the room explodes.



How can a priest (or any other title given to the pastor) use his power to abuse children? Regardless of the name, sex, religion, traditions and any other possible excuse, a PEDOPHILE is a PEDOPHILE and must be put in prison. Let's see how the PEDOPHILE feels when he gets molested in jail as he is taught that children are one of the protected groups even by the worst criminals.


Catholic Church abuse allegations ripple across the globe
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1364

Vatican defends pope in US lawsuit
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100330/ap_on_re_eu/eu_the_vatican_s_defense

as bias as it may be, still very stupid

a TV response of the suicide bombings yesterday in Moscow (http://project05952381.blogspot.com/2010/03/double-suicide-bombings-kill-37-on.html)

'BLACK WIDOWS': FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBERS CARRIED OUT RUSSIAN SUBWAY ATTACKS

double suicide bombings kill 37 on Moscow subway

When will this nonsense ever stop?
This is just plain stupid!

Double suicide bombings kill 37 on Moscow subway
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_subway_blast

pornography in social networks

It still surprises how easily men and women in social networks for adults only can freely share pictures of themselves naked, comment on one another, flirt with each other explicitly and even have sex with these strangers regardless of sexual orientation including homosexual acts for fun, pleasure and/or mere experimentation.

A good example is my friend Rose who has had sex once or more times with at least twenty (20) different men whom she had met in several of these sites. Perhaps she'd kill me when or if she reads this. Then again she might just let me get away with this. After all, I'm not using her full name and it it could simply refer to any other girl named Rose doing the same.

Now I'm not going to play the role of a saint or sorts. When it comes to sex, I enjoy pornographic material and have even worked on an adult website about seven years ago. I recognize that pornography and many sexual behaviors that I engage in as an addiction from a psychopathological point of view or at least sinful -- the total opposite of what it means to be Christian. Perhaps befriending homosexuals, transsexuals and transgenders might fall in this list. Said the latter, what am I doing on this blog writing about religion and faith? Am I such a filthy hypocrite or simply stupid? I'll let you decide for now and I'll find out later. Anyway I know that I'm trying to set myself straight even if it means exposing myself as the broken person who I've become through out the years.

Morgan

Last year about this time, I met Morgan -- a California girl who had become homeless after arriving at NYC. She wasn't a junkie or anything like that. Sometimes things in life don't go as expected like been robbed everything including money and identification as in her case. We simply lost touch of one another. Last I heard, she was offered a job. I hope she's fine and not using the subway any more as shelter or a place to sleep at night.

Obamacare & Abortion

Will the Abortion Executive Order Do Its Job?

crazy Christian country

Now this crazy. Isn't this like Christian country?

Church Fights Back After Arizona Town Bans Home Bible Study
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,589385,00.html

ok something borrowed, brutally honest

"Write down what you believe about who God is and what God wants you to do with your life. You don’t have to show it to anyone, but you do have to be honest—brutally honest. Then, stick it in a drawer. Pull it out in a year, and see if you believe the same things. It is a great discipline, and a pretty revealing one; because our faith does change over time; often in marvelous, relevant ways!"
- Rev. Dr. Scott Black Johnston
Senior Pastor, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church (http://www.fapc.org/)

a picture that says it all

I found this picture I found somewhere that says it all.

religion after 9/11

from Global Tolerance (http://www.globaltolerance.com/, interview with CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Centre Television, http://www.cbc.ca/television/)

church as a social club & the Christian poser

in response to http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/22680

A church -- regardless of the religious background -- can be seen as a social club where different peoples can share their personal and unique as well as common "journey of faith" (an expression commonly used by Rev. Dr. Scott Black Johnston from FAPC; http://www.fapc.org/). Therefore the individuals who go to a specific church building or who are part of a specific congregation and/or religious group practice a common religious and/or denominational background and traditions hence knowing what to do and expect in such environment.

In comparison to a social club, a church building should house individuals both searching for God's grace and trying to emulate God helping those in need. The problem comes when individuals act like Christians in church, but continue being everything but in their daily lives. Going to church and/or posing as a Christian for others to contemplate and/or simply bragging to be a Christian doesn't make a given individual a Christian.

I can't say that I'm not in the latter category. I've fallen in it many times and continuously ask myself if I'm a real Christian or a mere poser. Maybe I'm just excessively curious about human behavior and how it's affected by religious beliefs (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Krishna, Buddhism, etc). Am I poser?

interesting video, 03/07/2010

The Christian-Muslim Summit
http://www.nationalcathedral.org/webcasts/summit2010.shtml

light snow in NYC, what a ridicule

It's snowing lightly in NYC. Nonetheless some people are walking around with umbrellas covering their precious heads and/or their pretty boy/girl hair styles as if it was a torrential rain or as if these loosely few snow flakes were to kill them. These people look ridiculous, but are willing and ready to give you thousands of reasons for their behavior.

Many out-of-towners laugh at these so-called tough New Yorkers who barely know the definition of a real snow storm with temperatures in the single digits or lower and snow accumulations of over three feet.

Well all one can do is bear the nonsense of these New York dwellers (not real New Yorkers) and try to be a good and patient Christian to them.

fire Bible banned from school - tangle.com

Some times the so-called Freedom of Speech goes a bit too far.

Lenten in NYC

It's hard to be a good Christian in New York City during Lenten or any other time of the year. You bump into idiots all and every day. How can you love or at least respect others when they're just too stupid to be nice? At the same time, a subculture emerges from church goers where friendships can be developed, but the whole city doesn't follow this subculture. In all I guess that living in New York is the ultimate religious test.

lo-fi joke, for those who were born in the late 1960's and 1970's

LE CULTE DU CASSETTE (THE CASSETTE CULT)
Low Noise, Type I
* lo-fi joke, for those who were born in the late 1960's and 1970's

Well what got into me to change the name of this blog from "Shopping for Faith" to "Le Culte du Cassette" (The Cassette Cult)? There's a joke in all this. Read it all or just jump to reason five (5) and not read the whole boring explanation.

1. It's a lo-fi joke for those who were born in the late 1960's and 1970's who might get it right away. Back when we were younger (1980's), most of us used cassettes to listen to our favorite records from whichever music genre (in my case, all forms of hard rock like punk and thrash).

2. To some of us back then, music genres were like subcultures, like a religion -- from choosing your friends (not limited by sex, race or religion) to what you wore (in my case, jeans and a black MC jacket).

3. Nowadays there's a retro community (1970-80's music, clothes, cars, guitars, etc) who still sees music as a deciding factor in human relationships, in the same way, that members of a church (religion, denomination, faith, beliefs, traditions, building, etc) become a subculture as we befriend other members of the same church.

4. Since some religious groups (also definable as subcultures) are considered cults for being deviant from the mainstream practice of Christianity, the new name is a mockery of this whole experience, human condition, situation and/or schism. Now is this a mockery of God? No, it's rather a mockery on man-made religion (practices) and oneself.

5. Then again I simply wanted to change the name from "Shopping for Faith" to something more relevant like enjoying religion and faith as most of us enjoy and love music (even in outdated, low fidelity technology). After all I already shopped for a spiritual home (a church) and I found one with several people whom I've become good friends with.