But I guess I'm still going to hell

I'm a Christian, or an Evangelical Lutheran to be precise. And even though I don't believe in God, it still means a lot to me;

I was raised to be a Christian; As a little kid my mother put me in a church day care. I knew about Jesus, I knew how to pray and I knew how to sing several psalms before I even knew how to write my own name. My mother also made me to go to Sunday School even though she's not religious at all. I made a play dough Jesus!

In comprehensive school my both class teachers were extremely religious, and they also happened to be married to each other. The wife taught us for the first two years and she did her very best to teach us the Bible. We even had to watch this weird Bible story cartoon called Superbook.


Apparently there are two modern kids and a robot in the Bible.

The man taught us for the last four years. He was actually Pentecostalist but that certainly didn't prevent him from reading us the Bible every morning. And when other kids had music lessons, we simply sang psalms. And I'm not kidding. I even have a psalm singing certificate. It proves that I can sing at least 55 psalms. How cool is that?

During the last years in comprehensive school we also had this big national Bible contest. It was basically just a simple examination about the Bible stories and of course I scored highly. I won an illustrated book about Jesus and I still have it:


My favorite book of all time?

I also went to confirmation camp when I was 15 years old, but that's not anything particular in Finland. All teens go trough it unless they're like lazy or pagans. I don't have any good memories from my camp. I was forced to be around kids that usually bullied me at school and they liked to humiliate me. It could have been even worst so I consider myself lucky.

I don't know anyone who believes in God. It's just not common around here. But almost every one I know is still a member of the church. It seems that even though we lack faith in God, we have faith in Christianity. And I'm a member of the church because I want to be in touch with the church. Not too often, though...

I want to get married in a church. I feel that if you get married in a magistrate it's just a legal deal between two people. You could sign a piece of paper as well. Of course it's good to make such deal when you share property and have kids and stuff. But I rather accentuate love instead of law, so I want to get married with the whole "I do" stuff.

And I want my children to be baptized. I have seen two christenings so far and I think it's a really beautiful ceremony and a lot more than just giving a name to a baby. I'm a godmother myself and even though I'm quite a bad one, it doesn't mean that I don't appreciate it. And I want my children to have godparents too. And by letting my children to be baptized I also allow them to be tied to the church until they're like 15 years old.

And I want my children to be raised to Christianity. I'm just worried that they don't teach Christianity at schools anymore and I have to do it myself. I would feel totally hypocrite because I think it should be taught only by people who genuinely have faith in God. Otherwise it would be like lying. Anyway. I would really like my kids to know all the Jesus stuff but it's totally up to them if they wanna buy it or not.

I know that this post doesn't really have a point. But I have been pondering these things a lot lately. J.R. started it by confessing that he's not a member of the church. It made me realize how much my Christianity actually means to me. I'm not ready to cut out church, not entirely. And I often watch Heaven TV7 with Hannes. It's a bible channel with only religious TV-shows. And because of that we often also talk about religion anyway.

(And sometimes we do even more than just talk and watch TV. They held this big religious festival in Leppävaara. It was for Pietists but open to every other Christian group as well. And I asked Hannes to come with me. We visited a night café that was arranged for the young. They had live music and some good coffee. It was nothing weird actually. We just hang out.)