I am one of those people who, though I don’t like religion, I enjoy all the History and Nat. Geo channel specials on religion. Some time ago when I was younger I saw a special on PBS about the Shroud of Turin. It was thrilling to consider the idea that there is something out there that would provide a glimpse into what Jesus may have looked like.

Recently cnn had an article on a scientist that recreated the Turin Shroud (bandwidtch exceeded at time of post) with one of his students. I found the article interesting and then I recalled a thought I had back when I was watching the PBS special. “Faith is the belief in things unseen”

Whether this turns out to be a fake or real will never impact me and my faith, if it did I couldn’t call what I had faith at all. Doubting Thomas may have had trouble believing until he had seen, John 20.29 -Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

I know it may sound crazy to some to believe in something that can’t be seen, to rely on words from ages long ago and to have a belief that someone 2000 years ago is the one who will save the world. But I am willing to take the chance, this faith feels right to me – in my heart, head and spirit.

Recently in a trip back to my home state to see my fraternal grandparents and my parents, I was looking forward to a pleasant time although I know my parents are not supportive of my and my partner, they truly believe that she has brainwashed me – but that is for another story.

The weekend went well except for one hiccup, when my father started espousing his religious view that church and state would be fine together. After a few minutes of this I hit the limit to what I could listen to without speaking up. I finally had to stand up against this dominionism because it is wrong and the direction it goes in is dangerous.

I brought this up to him because he was comparing how xtian nations compare against non-xtian nations. Yes he conveniently forgets our history – Internment camps for Japanese, Crusades, the continued oppression of American Indians and other “christian” reasons for oppressing groups. I also mentioned that if we didn’t separate the church from the state we WOULD have – it would be no different than a Taliban nation.

Oh, that just jacked him up! His eyes went wide and he probably looked at me like I was the devil in disguise. He sputtered about how I was getting off topic and immediately shut the conversation down.

I have tried to tell my father that I am not interested in his dominionist views, but somehow he doesn’t seem to want to listen until that weekend. Finally it sunk in that he can’t send creation magazines or other christian based emails to me.

Finally I feel that I have shrugged off the chain of oppressive religion. Religion wasn’t meant for that, it was initially meant as a community to bond together under the same banner of faith in Jesus. But 2000 years later it has been twisted as a way to oppress people, fight against authority if it isn’t “christian” authority and cry out as a victim of hate when religion is already covered by the law.

The basic core of Christianity still exists – to believe in Jesus as the son of God who was sent to fulfill a destiny to die for the sin of the human race. And those who believe in Jesus and what he did will not perish by God’s hand but have eternal life. That is the core of Christianity! Anything added onto that is man-made.

My faith still exists but my religion no longer exists, instead I am stripped to the raw part of Christianity and I can look to God without having a colored view of him through a lens of religion.

I have to say that every time I hear about prayer in school, xtians getting all worked up over a bible verse they put up in a school that they had to take down or whining about Christmas decorations I wonder just where they want to take us, but it doesn’t take me long to realize that I only need to look to the east and the Taliban influenced countries. Our future with xtians running the government is the present for many Muslims living in Taliban controlled areas.