Apologia 2019 A.D.

We don’t like apologizing because more often than not, we are admitting that we are guilty when we say sorry. But the word apology was derived from the greek word “Apologia” which means – a formal written defence of one’s opinions or conduct. For those of you who believe that there is nothing more to life than eat, sleep and sex, this blog may not be for you. But if you are ready to expand the apple of your eye and see what lies beyond the horizon, then take your sandals off. We are about to go on a Journey, you and me.

New Divide

There is a word that makes you cringe the moment you see it. You feel alienated and want to run the other direction. That word is Religion. All Gods are the same, there is no God, there is or there isn’t a God – These are some of the common ideas or concept in secularism. All inclusive, all affirming brothers and sisters. The moment you talk about God, you are a freak because why would you want to divide the utopia we live in? Why do you want to divide people based on religion?

I have lived my whole life hiding my faith. There is a difficulty scale in coming out – Bisexual, gay/lesbian, murder, rapist and Christian. The moment you come forward and say you are a christian, you can see the people in your life part away like the Red Sea. Oh, he is the gospel guy, they say. He is that religious nut, they say. I learnt that socializing meant that I have to be secular. You can’t say you are christian and enjoy watching Game of thrones….or any other series for that matter. The moment you put that word next to your name, you are set apart from the rest of the crowd.

I felt stupid being away from the crowd. Somehow, this all affirming and all inclusive secular society had somehow made me feel alienated. Only because I believed in something that they thought was boring and slow. People do not want to talk about God because they feel that religion is of no use. It causes violence, it causes people to be different and yet the secular utopia is plagued with more chaos than peace. The idea is that when you say you are religious, you are pictured in a tunic, holding holy water in your hand and a cross above your head. Suddenly that is not the way you would want to show up at a party.

The people who claim religion divides the nations, that the concept of God is so fragmented that it is causing wars, are the same people who do not accept any one who is slightly different than them to hitch hike with them. They do not want to talk about God because that is a boring subject.

If a religion doesn’t let you hold hands, eat what you want, tell you to hurt your neighbours, live in a condescending way because you are chosen ones, I am sorry. That is not religion. That is a cult.

Religion isn’t a public washroom with doors, it is home. The sooner you realize that, the better our lives would be.

Breaking Bad

Anywhere you go in the world, you will find a religion that is new to you. Football is a religion, cricket is a religion. Fashion is a religion. Anything that brings you inner happiness is religion. A certain movie star might be your religion. Food can be your religion. Anything that makes you do the same thing over and over again to re-affirm your bond to a particular substance or a person is called religion.

Aztecs believed in the Sun God, that you need to sacrifice a human for the sun to complete its journey across the sky. Several hundred years later, we know for a fact that sacrificing a human being is wrong and that it was unacceptable to do it in the name of religion. There is a fine line between worshipping God and being God-like, and sadly in most religions that line is blurry. Either they have been told to ignore that line or completely forgot to teach a generation that there is one.

You can perform your rituals all lifetime long, make your offerings, mark your forehead, wear a thread across your body or a cross around your neck but if you are not behaving God-like, your religion has failed you. Your God is still powerful but your religion has failed you.

Do not lose faith in God because of normal human beings who cannot be God-like in their behaviour and yet boastful that they are part of chosen ones. You see blood shed for centuries in the name of God. I am sorry, it was in the name of religion. They had no idea what God stood for and what God is like. You give them two sports jerseys, they will still pick up the sword and slash others, burn people upside down a cross, become suicide bombers and terrorists. They were those kind of men. Religion is powerful, if you don’t know enough about your religion, then don’t follow it with such pride. The last thing you want to do is offend someone and walk over them, blinded by your religion.

There is a difference between people who worship the religion and people who worship God. Atheists, there is your bone.

Modern Family

About 4 billion people on the planet believe in the concept of one God. All of them trace back to the days of Abraham and Moses. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Hinduism is an expression of admiration to the world we live in, they have so many Gods that you might not be able to count. You are not far than a mile away from a temple, no matter where you are in India. In this day and age, it really doesn’t matter which religion you belong to. Some people say it is all the same. They believe in Mohammed, Jesus and every other God persona equally. My aunt has a photo of Saraswathi, the Goddess of knowledge, music and art alongside a bearded armenian shepherd who is supposedly an image of Jesus.

It pisses me to such extent when people say all are the same. We are all part of the family. Let me tell you something, You are welcome to my father’s house as a friend. You are allowed to stay. You are allowed to eat. What’s mine is yours but, if you bring your father and make him sit next to mine, give me a hug and say we have the same father, I will not accept. I invited you as a friend, not to make my family dysfunctional. Make up your mind and choose one. I will eat Biryani that was made for Ramzan because I think it is Biryani and Biryani is good. That doesn’t mean I think Islam is resonating with me as much as Christianity does. Get out of that habit of playing it so safe that somehow in your mind there is a WWE roster in heavens with all the religious figures and having them all would benefit your life. God is not a collectible.

I understand that your situation is in the most dire of them all that you need all the Gods. But If you really believe God is going to answer your prayers, if either one of them can help, why isn’t praying to one enough? It is like saying, I might have mutiple love interests, whoever solves my problem is going to end up with me.

No. Be faithful to one. Stick with them until the very end or break off and become an atheist. I know right? You thought I was going to ask you to choose Jesus because I am Christian. Nah, I would rather have us stranded at sea as atheists than be on a boat made out of all religious papers bound together as one.

Blind spot

In India, If you say that you are Christian – the first question people ask you is “Are you trying to convert me?” You are not a hexadecimal for me to convert. I often wondered if I would have chosen a different religion if I was born in a different faith. I wanted to know if my life would have been different. For starters, I would have a better dating option because the single women who pursue God in Christ would mostly or completely shut down any relationship advances. You cannot flirt with a christian girl whom you like without feeling like a hypocrite or a devil incarnate; if you introduce yourself as a christian that is. So, DO NOT tell me that I follow christ because I was born into a christian family.

Then why? Why Christ? Well, I have always loved the concept of Son of God. I loved walking with my dad to our house because random strangers would give me attention because my dad was kind of a big shot in his own right in that small village. Also, Lion King, Hercules if you are old enough to have seen 2D cartoon movies. Somewhere down the line, this infactuation was replaced by games. I stopped going to church because I didn’t see the point. I saw some of the worst people in my life in my church. Plastic and fake people. So I stopped going. That idea of Christ that I grew up as a kid was irritating to say the least. I knew that there was God somewhere but I didn’t want to be a part of the circus or that’s what I called it.

I became radically agnostic. Happiness is all that mattered. If I could make a person happy, I would go to whatever lengths. I had to learn through days of suicidal thoughts and loneliness that I cannot save a person. I fell into the same pit that I was trying to save them from. Happiness seemed to be a luxuary at that point. I didn’t deserve what I went through and that made me turn into a person I was not supposed to be. There are people in my life who know my story who don’t deserve to know me like that. But it was survival, I had to speak to someone. Anyone. Live to fight another day.

On December 21st 2018, All my options were exhausted. I wanted to die, I mean there is no point in trying to move on when you are stuck. It still makes me laugh that some people suggested me to “move on” as if that thought hasn’t crossed my mind. My office had a free therapist. I decided to reach out to them. But I remembered that scene from the Lion King, when Simba looks down on the river and sees his dad’s face. I knew therapist was the last option but I felt I had one more option left and that was God.

I am not telling you all of this because I want you to be a Christian. If you are happy on drugs, sex or alcohol, movie or music, sports or religion. stick with that. If you are already rich worshipping your deity, stick with that. I am under no obligation to tell you my way of being happy is better than yours. You do you. Because my God can never be threatened by anything so there is no reason to panic or get as many people on board to give a head count.

My God didn’t come to this world to make sad people happy or poor people rich. He came to make the dead people live. And that is what he did to me. A suicidal young fat man with a broken heart – and I heard a promise spoken over my name. For many reasons I am not going to tell you what it is until it comes to pass. My love for my God is my own. My journey and my behaviour and my struggle is my own. I am not sharing this experience because I love my religion, I am doing so because I don’t want to be selfish.

I see people, dead souls walking around putting perfumes so that their friends cannot smell the stench of their dead being. I don’t want to be the guy who knew a bomb is going to explode and get down before time runs out, all the while pretending to have not known anything at all. I refuse to be selfish. I am happy if you find God in your life, I am more than happy if it is Christ. I am happy too if you don’t want to take part in it. My job in my religion is not to convert you. It is to let you know that there is a choice, that there is a person who can turn you around. If I took my Bible and fed you all the verses and say REPENT! it won’t be called a choice. I am happy with or without you being on the same boat as I am. I am happy because my God doesn’t own the boat, he owns the oceans.

This is us

Now, recently someone asked me the evidence for God. I don’t speak for other Gods, I only speak for mine. I cannot give you evidence without making it sound like bragging but isn’t the world divided by the Birth of Christ? B.C. in your calendar literally means before Christ.

Secular world tells that Jesus was a man, a prodigy, and influential speaker who attracted many followers for a cause. The number for followers who came behind him at that time was 56 times less than Greta Thunberg on twitter. So much for the Son of God. He had twelve disciples, one betrayed him. One died 14 kms away from where I am writing this blog. There is one thing that everyone forgets.

Jesus died on a spotlight of the high mountain called Golgotha, meaning the hill of skulls. Now, Imagine being a follower of Christ and you see him dead on a cross. If it was me, I would be furious. How dare you mass hyponotise us? How dare you say you are God when you are dead like every other guy? How can you feed a bunch of lies? The other people make fun of me because of you. I saw the miracles, I saw all of it. What if it was all a scam? What if the blind man was pretending to blind? See, Jesus never asked for money. He didn’t build a monastery for his religion (Jesus was born into Judaism). Jesus didn’t ask you to give sacrifice for him. Why did he do it? He didn’t write the Bible, bragging about him and his powers. He had ample amount of time to do so.

Jesus died on that cross and was risen from the dead after three days.

I as a Christian live between those three days. I have to hear people say “Where is your God?” I have to see my friend pass away in cancer. I have to sit in the MRI room not knowing if my dad will be alive the next day. I have seen miracles, I have seen my family go from absolute poverty to being able to afford to help other people. I have seen healing, I have seen myself let go of suicidal thoughts. But where is God they ask? Where is the son of God? To the world, he is just a figurine. An idea. A prophet. As a christian, I wish I had evidence, a garment or a shroud, a bone, a DNA to show you that he was God. But I am living inbetween those days where Jesus is dead and it will take three days for him to rise again.

Do you believe in resurruction? Yes. I do. Because I had felt it. Those of you who are in depression will know what it is to have a living body and a dead soul.

I can give you a theological, paradoxical, axioms over axioms, metaphorical thesis of God and it will take you fourteen days to understand what I provided you as evidence. I will place you in a moral loop that goes on and on with no beginning and end. But I am not a moron. I admit that I cannot give you a physical evidence of Jesus christ.

Before you smirk, He didn’t die on that mountain. So here is my account of the third day. Here is your evidence.

The religion was attacked by pagans, Jerusalem was attacked and the temple burnt, the religious scrolls burnt. Our religion had corrupt priests, ethnic wars and still we get up to go to church and sing like fools. We do not have new rituals, sacrifices or idols and still we send men up to North Korea to preach the gospel. I know Jesus is alive because, the Bible is still relevant.

Few months ago, A hillsong song writer quit. (Hillsong is a Christian band for those of you who don’t know.) Most people said, “well, if a person worshiping Jesus for so long said it’s not working, maybe it doesn’t work.”

Yesterday Kanye West, published an album called “Jesus is king.”

Tell me which other God makes fleezy celebrities his song maker knowing what he had been like before?

Go listen to the songs on spotify. Acoustic evidence.

What Kanye did was shocking even for me because he had no reason to do it. He had money, for all I know he was making songs about drugs and sex. He said he won’t be perfoming any of his old songs.  His family is the most televised family in history of mankind. For him to come out on stage and do that. That is the most courageous thing a man can do while walking with Christ after living a life of questionable behaviour.

My God doesn’t take advantage of your traumatic situation to make himself visible. Science cannot pshycoanalyse and say that it as an identity mechanism. My God is a living God, he sees people as they are. Help will be given to those who need it.

Any other religion has stayed the same over the years. The people have been the same. But not us. We evolve. I can see a new band of Christians getting up. A new generation walking in Christ. If you want evidence, there it is.

From where I was born, my people cannot believe for the life of them that I had written a book entirely in english. It was a gift that was given to me because my mother believed in Christ. My brother is one of the 12 people in the entire nation who became a meterological scientist a couple of years back. It came out of hardwork and God because we were fresh out of luck. None of my ancestors had the smarts, or literary knowledge, it took one prayer at a time to make all that you see in my instagram to be possible. I am a biology student, don’t give me that genetic punnet square crap. I have done the math, it doesn’t explain the affinity I have with reading or writing.

It is easy to bless with money or good health but it takes a living God to give you gifts that will hold you at your darkest times, when everything fails.

For so long you have asked me, where is his grave? where is his bones? How can an ocean part? How can you believe in Christ when your whole life is a mess? How can you say that you are a christian when you have such glaring flaws? Well, My God is not dead for you to see his grave or his bones. My life is a mess but God is working on it. I don’t always say the right thing or do the right thing but I am learning how to. I do not have glaring flaws, I was made to create a survival guide. You can’t trick me anymore. He is alive and he will take care of everything I need.

Take what you want to but this is my coming out story.

My name is Didraj Meshach and I follow Jesus.

 

 

 

(P.S – Happy Diwali and send me the sweets because they are sweets and sweets are good.)

Disclaimer - Images taken from various sources belong to the respective artists.