Soul Searching

I'm feeling under the weather today. I stayed home from church with the family. I've come to the realization that church was never really my thing. Even telling myself over and over that it was the way I had to live my life, wasn't enough. Because deep down, I think I always knew that the religion I'd been taught since I took my first breath wasn't necessarily the truth. Why did I keep going with it all these years? Who knows. It's a number of reasons. For one, if you teach a child anything from the time they're born, are they really going to question it? If the kid trusts their parents, they're going to believe that what they say is true. You could tell them that they actually came from a plant in the ground, and if enough people agree with you and tell them the same thing, chances are the kid is going to believe it. Is that right? Not my place to say.
I never felt like I was in the same loop with all my fellow church-goers either. They always talked about all these amazing "God experiences" and how they felt "God was leading" them to do something, and I kept thinking, "Where's my story like that?" Never did I tell anyone about those doubts because if I questioned it, I'd get guilted. My parents would say, "Jesus knows what you're thinking." Well if he does, then why doesn't he actually help me? Because I'd never been good at the whole Practice-What-You-Preach thing either. Probably because I wasn't good at the preaching part. When people would ask me questions about my "faith," I kind of just stumbled around and spit out some Sunday School answers. If you think about it, anyone can rattle off some textbook answers and things that all the other Church people say, but 99% of the time, none of them really feel what they say. They don't listen to it or take the time to think about it. It all comes back to them hearing something so many times, that they just take it as truth.
I can't explain how it all happened, because it was really a painful experience, but more and more everyday, I keep thinking that the whole church/religion part of my life was a lie. I said a lot of things I didn't really mean, and attended a lot of events and services that I never really got anything out of. In a way, I sort of feel like I've wasted so much of my time already that I'll never get back. Honestly, the whole afterlife-Heaven-and-Hell thing doesn't really make any sense. No one actually knows what will happen when we close our eyes for good. Not a single person. Because if we did know, what would be the point of being here? So the way I see it, why should we spend our time worshipping someone or something and living our lives according to all these rules, if we have absolutely no way to know if it will actually bring us a pleasant afterlife, or any afterlife at all? Why shouldn't we just live our lives...here comes the cliché saying...like we're dying. We truly have no idea whether we'll wake up tomorrow, or if we'll even live to take another breath. I could theoretically keel over right now and never type another letter. That's how little we know about our futures.
Which is why I don't want to waste anymore time believing in something that really doesn't benefit me in any way shape or form. I'll take care of myself, and do my absolute best, but if I die tonight, I want to know that I didn't waste any more time than I already have.
Speaking of wasting time...I have a lovely Statistics assignment calling my name from the dark depths of the textbook I shoved it in on Friday. Oh goody.
Class rings and shiny things,