Applause for the Wallflower

I wonder sometimes if Myles and I are right for each other. Everything we believe, our views, our families are just the absolute opposite. His belief in God and Christianity; his right wing tendencies; his very very very conservative/religious family. I like the person I am, the views I hold, and the beliefs my family has enstilled in me. I was thinking about it the other day...about how Myles and I are so willing to be together through so much, but in the real factors that decide a life with another, we disagree on everything.

He's at an Army school right now and with the holiday season coming up, I've been thinking a lot about how I'll spend the holidays with my family when I'm older and have a family all my own. And it dawned on me. I go to church for myself. I go because I needed to know what it was like to discover the truth for myself--to know that my family didn't believe for a reason. The personal experience of actually attending, being open-minded to the acceptance of religion into my life really made me realize how much more I believe in and see their contradictions and hypocracy than the religion and faith itself. As a parent, I know it will be my responsibility to teach my children morality and right from wrong, but that is not for an institution to decide, to teach them. I believe that a parent should guide and when they are old enough, they must decide for themselves what they believe it right for them, to live the lifestyle they choose, whether liberal, conservative, religious or not, happy or sad, straight or gay. I have no right, no matter whether or not I'd been the one to bring them into the world and cared for them, interfer in my child's life and their own individual rights as a person, as a human, to decide who he or she wants to become. To me, that it what raising my child in a religious setting would be. The fact that so many hypocracies are presented to worshipers who don't even recognize them...the belief in Pro-Life and the contradiction of Pro-War and Anti-Gun Control--even the promotion of World Peace while not even attempting to hide the contempt for other religions and prejudice for other races. How could I, as a responsibile parent to my future children, allow myself to introduce them to a world that knows nothing but fear and a false sense of protection in something that simply allows someone to fall asleep easier at night?

I show no contempt for the people I have met in church. These people, as hypocritical I believe them to be, are some of the nicest and welcoming people I've met. I don't believe it is them that I have to distrust--it is the institution of the Church I have to distrust. I believe it in my best interest to say this: Without those few months of my personal trials and my search to find faith, I would not have become the strong-set person I am now, so in essence, I am thankful for this. But I know now that my beliefs are set and my family was right all along. I guess we are not as different as I once believed.