The following page is an attempt to outline my belief system. I've
been asked several times: "Neko, what religion are you?" To which
I have answered, "I'm a Nekochanian." It's the truth, granted, but
that's not particularily informative, is it? But then, that was
always in chat, online.
Off line (because I hate to use the term 'real life'), I get similar
questions. Usually it starts as, "Hey Becky, you're a Christian,
what's your take on this situation?" To which I answer, "I'm not a
Christian, but I think..." Of course, telling others of what I'm not
has been a source of uncomfortable silences as they try to dance
around what I insinuate.
At any rate, I'm going to try to outline my beliefs, and how they
came about.
It is very important for me to stress the fact that this page is in
NO way an attempt to convert. In fact, as you read on, you'll dis-
cover the reason that I stress this. This is merely a forum in which
I can answer the question of my beliefs, hopefully without offending
anyone. If you do take offence to what's on this page, I am truely
sorry, but I am only trying to be true to myself.
Any comments or questions can be e-mailed to me. (The address is at
the bottom of the page.)
Growing up, I was not really exposed to organized religion. My
parents did not go to church, and I'm young enough that there was
no longer prayer in school by the time I was old enough to attend
Junior Kindergarden.
My friend invited me to go to a Baptist summer camp with her one
year. I agreed. We had a lot of fun that summer. Her mom was the
craft leader (and a good one at that!). One thing I remember was
the Bible study. We'd all get together and sing religious camp songs
and read a verse or two from the Bible. Then we'd discuss our
feelings on the subject, after which the Bible study leader would
give his interpretation.... with which we all agreed.
Around that same time, my mom started attending a United church. She
always brought me with her, and I'd go down to Sunday School with my
cousins. I was always a little bitter that my brothers weren't forced
to go, but I was young, and there wasn't much I could do about it.
Then one night, I was absolutely terrified to stay in my bedroom all
by myself. I was afraid of monsters and the like. My dad, probably
in an attemp to actually get some sleep that night, told me that I
didn't have to be afraid, because there was always someone who was
with me. This got me curious. I asked, "Who?" He then proceeded
to tell me about God and how He was always watching over me, and that
He loves me very much and would never let anything happen to me. That
God was my Father just like my biological dad is.
Then dad went off to bed, leaving me to ponder this. I was still
quite young at this point. I interpreted the fact that I didn't
really feel any better with this new knowledge as confusion. I
figured I just didn't understand the whole concept, and that someday,
when I'm older, I'd figure it out. That was what allowed me to get
to sleep that night... not the fact that God was watching over me, but
the fact that my mind was too occupied thinking about the concept of
God to be worried about invisible monsters.
I spent many years going to that camp, eventually as a leader; and
attending that Church, in which I taught the sunday school for about
a year. I grew up, still not quite understanding the whole 'God'
thing, just like that night dad told me about Him.
Finally, it happened. I was at camp and I felt the overwhelming need
to accept Jesus into my heart as my saviour. And so I did it. Looking
back, I don't know what I was thinking. I had just spent a good nine
or ten years thinking about God and not understanding the concept, and
now, in the space of one week, I thought I knew what there was to know.
I figured I knew what Christianity was all about, and that that was my
path.
I came home from camp that week singing hymns and being nice to everyone,
and telling others of my newfound faith. Needless to say, most of the
people I told were less than impressed. They thought I was trying to
convert them. I lost many friends that year. That's when I realised
that maybe Christianity _wasn't_ the path for everyone, as I had
originally thought. This confused me terribly.
Confused or not, I was still a Christian, and I still had a life to
lead. Occationally I'd sit down and really ponder about things like
that, but I was determined not to let it get me down.
One thing I believed while being a Christian, was that I had a pretty
good life. Sure, there were rough spots, but I thought that was normal,
because, after all, it _was_ normal for me. With this in mind, I
figured there were a lot more people out there who needed God's help
more than I did. So when I prayed it was only to thank God for what
He had given me, to ask forgiveness for my sins, and basically just
to say 'hello'. I thought it might be refreshing for someone to talk
to God with out asking Him for something. I think we all know what it's
like when someone only talks to you when they need a ride to school,
or to borrow money, etc.
Then it happened. One saturday night, with my parents out of town,
my boyfriend came over. He decided that since I was breathing, that
that meant he could have sex with me. In short, date rape. That
night has to be the only time I've ever been extremely violent. I
ended up kicking him out of the house, quite litterally.
That night I cried a lot. I prayed to God and asked Him to forgive
my ex-boyfriend for what he did. Finally, after a while of thinking
I was able to forgive my ex. We have even talked on the phone on
occation, but the conversation was usually forced, and awkward.
Around this time, I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with my
religion. It was like a wearing a shirt that doesn't quite fit
right on you shoulders. A little restricting. So I set out to
find a different aspect of Christianity that I could better
identify with.
That's when I met a man who called himself Belial. Ironically,
we met in alt.fan.sailor-moon. In one post, he had mentioned that
he was a fairly religious individual. That caused me to write him
an e-mail asking about his religion, which turned out to be
Seperatist Christianity. The basics of it was that you're still a
Christian, but you don't go to church (unless you want to), but you
interpret the Bible the way you understand it. You accept other
people as friends regardless of their religious beliefs. This is what
drew me to it. I thought this was the one thing that was lacking in
the faith I had. The fact that others who believed the same things as
I did thought that my closest friends were evil for not agreeing.
So, I became a Seperatist Christian. That lasted for a while, until
again, I discovered that that didn't sit quite right with me. This
caused me to reexamine my religion. I tried to figure out what was
in my religion that I didn't quite believe.
It turned out that the part that I didn't believe was not the things
we did to show our faith, but it was the faith itself. Nothing I did
and nothing others did could convince me that there is a God. I
didn't even realise that I thought this the entire time I was a
Christian. Not until many non-Christians asked me and my fellow
Christians how we knew there was a God. I had no answer for that
question. In my opinion "I just KNOW" is NOT an answer. It's like
asking a musician how they interpreted a piece and they tell you, "I
just FELT it." That 'answer' contains no useful information at all.
Well, as you can imagine, I had some rough times after discovering
this. Basically, I became a Christian and lost friends. Then I
stopped being a Christian (although, one may argue that I really
wasn't one to begin with...) and risked losing family, and my new
friends.
So I kept my change of faith relatively quiet. I began to slowly
seperate myself from the church, until at one point I stopped going
completely. It was so gradual that no one outside the family even
noticed, and those in the family didn't find it jarring, although
the occational question came up as to why I kept skipping church.
I would just tell them that Sunday was the only day of the week I
could sleep in. That was enough for them, I guess.
It was tough for a while. I felt very lost. I tried out many
different religions, trying to find one that fit me. I looked at
Buddhism, Atheism, Wicca, and Pagan beliefs. I even took another
good look at Christianity. While they all had their own appeal, I
still couldn't find the right one for me. Then I realised, the only
way I'm going to find a religion that I agree with 100% is if I make
it up myself. Belial did it, why can't I?
And so, I sat myself down and really thought about what I believe.
Over the course of many months, and in fact, I'm still adding to it,
ironing out details, etc, I've formed a coherent outline of my
beliefs.
Nekochanism is based on two key points, and the rest expands from
that. Both are of equal importance, so the question arose as to
which order I put them in here. I solved that by putting the one
that was responsible for the name of this belief system first.
1. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
This includes loving yourself and being true to yourself.
I believe that in order to love others, you must first love yourself.
Also, if you love yourself then you should be able to love almost
everyone else too. I say 'almost' because there are exceptions to
every rule. I can't think of any of hand, but I'm sure some exist.
The second point there was 'being true to yourself'. This is very
important. I would rather you tell me exactly what you think of me,
because to do otherwise would be a great insult to me. I value the
opinions of others on all matters, because who am I to say I am the
judge of anything?
This part of my belief is what inspired the name of this belief
system. Around late August, 1997, I was introduced by a good
friend to TalkCity, a chat network. My friend took me to a chat
room called #ReflectingPool, which is a place to share ideas about
spirituality and religion. I went through a few nick names before
I settled on the nic 'Neko'. It means 'cat' in Japanese. I won't
get into this here, but the longer I used this nic, the more I thought
it described me pretty well. It described the REAL me, as opposed to
the me I was showing the world offline.
So, in keeping with the 'believing in myself' concept, and the fact
that most religions are named after whoever, or what ever they believe
in most, I named my newfound religion 'Nekochanism'
2. EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON
This is the second key point to my belief system. I believe that
everything happens for a reason. We may not always know, or need to
know what that reason is, but it's there.
I came upon this belief just by observing life. I noticed that some
things may have appeared to be meaningless, but later on it turned out
that there was a meaning. There was a reason for it. Then I got to
thinking, "when I saw this happen, I thought there was no reason to it,
now that time has passed, I see that there really was a reason. Maybe
everything has a reason but that it just hasn't been revealed yet."
I take great comfort in this.
OTHER IMPORTANT IDEAS:
I don't think that the existance of God, or of any Higher Being can
be proven either way. I don't think that humans are in any position
to be making such judgments. I choose to believe that there is no
God (or Satan).
Which leads us to the afterlife. In keeping with the no God or Satan
idea, I also don't believe in Heaven or Hell. I believe that when we
die, we're dead. That's it.
To address a question I get a lot, namely "what if you're wrong, and
there is a God, and when you die you stand before His judgement. What
will you do then?"
Well, it's simple, really. I'm trying to live my life the best that
I possibly can. I find it very important to be true to myself, and
believing that there is a God is not in keeping with that. So, if
indeed I DO find myself before God, I am fully prepared to accept
responsability for my actions. If I went through life worshipping
something I did not believe in I would not be so confident being
judged at the end. I'd rather be judged for being me and be sent
into eternal damnation rather than be punished for being something
I'm not. I call that accepting the concequences for my actions.
I find it ironic how it works out, too...
Drop me an e-mail if you have any questions, comments, flames, etc... mailbombs would be a bad idea though. ^_^