When Jesus is trending
Religion is cool again, and I don’t like it.
It wasn’t that long ago that you had to hide your faith in front of your friends and colleagues so that you weren’t seen as a homophobic, sexist, and hateful bigot. Nowadays, religion has taken over social media. Every time I go on Instagram, people are talking about the life of Jesus Christ. I thought Jesus was supposed to be a mystery, like a birthday genie, but somehow, even the most morally corrupt person you know has “God First ✝️” in their Instagram profile.
It makes me wonder, is it time to convert to atheism?
Because here’s the thing: saying you’re religious when everyone’s religious makes you not-so-special. It doesn’t matter how many Bible verses you know or how many times you’ve listened to “Jesus is King.” It doesn’t even matter that you spent four hours hiking on Christmas Eve to see the Christ the Redeemer statue because you knew He wouldn’t grant your Christmas wish unless you worked for it. When religion is cool, no one cares about your religious beliefs. No one thinks you’re unique for having the Bible App on your phone (at this point, I’m pretty sure even Satan has it downloaded just for fun).
Photo: r/pics
I’m putting this out there because I like drama. It makes me feel alive. If we’re all religious, what are we going to do at dinner parties? Not to mention, being religious gives me an edge over both religious and non-religious people. When men would stare at me in the streets of Brazil, signing the cross with my hand was enough to scare them off. Faith allows me to take bigger risks because the presence of God overrides all statistics. Statistically, most businesses fail, but the odds of a universe having the right conditions to support life is 1 in 10²²⁹. Miracles happen every day. Even though statistics inform us of what’s normal, the universe is anything but.
When it comes to the man vs. bear debate, faith says that I’m protected no matter what. Put me in a forest with Satan’s son, and I’ll take him to church. Kanye said, “When you remove the fear of God, you create the possibility of the fear of everything else. If you instill the fear of God, you eliminate the fear of anything else.” Occam’s razor encourages us to pick the simplest explanation. God simplifies everything else. I don’t have to worry about death because the only one who can take me out is watching over me right now.
You can tell how old a person is by how many fears they have. If nothing else, religion gives you a way to overcome fear by giving you something bigger to believe in. There is safety in being a servant of God, but then again, what’s a God to a non-believer? In the case of my six-year-old self, He was an imaginary friend, one that I couldn’t tell anyone about because no one around me believed in Him. Now, He’s cool again. I’m not sure if I can relate. But hey, at least we can still offend people by calling things gay.
