Subjective Evil

As my good friend and confidant Fox Mulder once said: I want to believe.

No, the reference is not for something supernatural...or maybe it should be considered super natural. But I want to believe that there is no such thing as evil, that human beings are born good, do good, manifest good. I want to believe that evil is by product of circumstance, and not gene that is mutated and inherited.

If you grew up religious you were taught that evil is the counter part to God's beauty and greatness. If you are not religious, evil is the face plastered among God's soldiers as they sacked Rome, desecrated temples, and conquered lands in the name of the Lord.

If you are an American, evil is a dark skinned, turban wearing asshole that flew a plane in to the towers. If you are a black American, evil is the white police man who shot Oscar Grant at the Bart Station. If you are a mexican american, evil is the politicians that call your mother illegal and tell her that despite years of back breaking service, bearing children and raising them American, paying her taxes, this is not her home and she should go back from where she came from.

To a mother, evil is the guy that raped your children and left them for dead. To the rapist's mother, evil is the father that raped her son for years and made him in to a monster. To the rapist, evil is his mother who didn't stop it.

Where does evil begin, and where does it end. It's scary to wonder where it begins, because it means that we have no way to identify. Evil takes the forms of smiles, hugs, marriages, family, politics, music, and faith.

I want to believe we were all born good.

*Disclaimer: I do not believe that anyone wearing a turban, or brown skinned is evil. I do not believe that police men and politician are evil. However, we do live in a society where people openly believe this. I hope you can take it as this: our perceptions of evil will always depend on our circumstance. Evil is subjective, hardly every objective.

A is for Apostate

I decided to join in the ABC swearing challenge. It's my first line and already I am struggling. But here goes...

A is for Apostate. Apostate, a deflector of religion. It does not have to be specific to religion, but in this case, it is. And here is why...

I was raised a catholic, and I'm Mexican  You don't have to be a Catholic to be Mexican, and you don't have to be Mexican to be a Catholic, but in my house, the two went hand in hand. And you will often hear/read my self definition as a cultural Catholic. Customs and culture intertwined with Catholicism, and I am supremely grateful to my mother for forcing me to learn the rosary by heart. Te amo mami.

But here is where my word comes in to play.

Being a Christian/Catholic, there are these values that are thrown around, displayed on American media, raped and distorted for political agendas. Christianity, Jesus, family values are words that are now used to ensure that the interest of conservative political thugs are "protected" and their enemies right's stripped. I had no idea that Christian America was under attack.  (SARCASM).

A joke was recently made, a comparison if  you will, in regards to the coming out of Tim Tebow as a Christian, and Jason Collins as a gay man. The former was seemingly criticized and told to keep his comments while the latter is hailed as a hero. And it bothers many that the American media had portrayed the two differently. Lets get something straight, we are living in United States, the land of the free worship, as long as its a Christian denomination.  Jason Collins' coming out is and will be viewed as heroism so long as the rights of the LGBT community are continually and blatantly oppressed.

And here is why I am an apostate. My beliefs, my orientation, my religion, and my culture, will never supersede the basic, inalienable rights of the citizens of this country. Those religious convictions, they were merely a building frame to the awesome that I am today. Being a good person, a righteous person comes from the relationships, experiences of the years that pass. I do not care what some archaic book says in the first half about smiting the sodomites, because there is a whole lot of bullshit in their about marrying a few and dying over blended cloth. Not to mention that I am a sinner, multiple times over. I have not always honored my mother, and I have wished for things that another person possessed. I love my God, and believes he loves us all, but have also cursed him and asked him "why!?"

So no, I am not a good catholic, I am not a good follower of the church. I am an apostate.

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