The Main Idea

I have no problems with God. I have a very good relationship with Her, myself. So it stands ironic that I have a problem with a lot of people who believe in God, and I hope as you read this, maybe you'll not be one of them.

A lot of people who say that they have faith, that God will take care of them, that they'll be with Jesus when they die, or, worst of all, that they'll go happily into the rapture knowing they'll be salvaged, are really deluding themselves. I mean on a horrifying scale of delusion. They shy away from all responsibility in the world for any of their actions or inaction, leaving it up to the Higher power to make sure everything gets sorted out in the end.

That's even a sin to you people, you know. It's called sloth. Doing nothing when you should be doing something. I'm sure that God doesn't want you to sit around and trust that he'll make your problems go away, simply because you said you'd believe anything he says.

Now, I know that's a tremendous generalization. There are more people in the world who take that kind of message to heart and do spend their waking hours promoting peace and prosperity. But if you are, ask yourself this: Would you still be doing that if nobody was watching? You may answer yes, but here's a follow-up experiment. Go ahead and renounce your faith, and then continue to be a good person. Can you do that? If you truly were a good person not because God was watching you, but because you earnestly want those that are less fortunate to BE fortunate, then I hardly think you'd be punished for that. If you were, then is Heaven really the place you want to be when you die, filled with hypocrites who remained faithful only to save themselves from hell?

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There's probably nothing more boring in Final Fantasy XI than the dreaded merit party. See, after obtaining level 75, you're not done leveling, really. You can still earn experience points and spend them on stats, abilities, spells, and a range of other augments to further enhance yourself. The problem is, you're back to the EXP grind, which takes hours upon hours of monotonous killing. The boredom can be alleviated by meriting with friends, or by exclaiming to your friend how much everyone else sucks and how great you are (It's not my fault I'm awesome), but all in all, it's exhausting.

And I STILL have hours and hours to go before I've finished enhancing myself stat wise. There's gear to get too. Sometimes it seems like there is no goal, the bar keeps getting raised, and we're all mice chasing after a wedge of cheese attached to a fishing pole glued onto our heads.

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My cat is in the animal hospital today. The vet says it could be kidney failure, and my mother could not be more depressing about it if she tried. I'm torn up, so does she really need to remind me how fatal kidney failure is and how sad she's become of it? This is my cat too, and he's the only thing in the world that actually depends on me.

If I died, people would be upset, sure, but the world would keep spinning. It wouldn't even trip over its shoelaces. My cat, Checkers, is the only one that would need someone else to take care of him. He'd need to change his entire life. That means something to someone who's gone his whole life feeling like he doesn't even warrant a blip on the cosmic radar.