So yesterday was my 15th birthday…

… and it was pretty damn brilliant. I crawled out of bed at quarter-past-ten in the morning thinking “Damn, it’s Sunday and I could’ve slept till well past half-past-ten in the morning.”

It turned out to be a good thing I woke up early, because after being greeted by a round of “Happy Birthday”s from the family, dad asked me if I wanted to head to a book warehouse nearby that was selling every single book for under $5. I said something along the lines of “Y’OKAY!” and we drove down to the place.

It was heaven.

I spent ages circling the place, taking a good look at the books placed randomly on tables hoping to see something good. I think I walked out of there with 22 books in a box.

While I was going through the books back at home, a knock on the door let me know that the first of my guests had come for my “birthday party”. I use the term “birthday party” lightly, though, because I didn’t really plan anything. I’m completely incapable of planning anything on my own, which is why I was extremely grateful to a wonderful friend who went to the effort of helping me come up with an invite list, printed out invites, and got the word to some friends who we don’t see frequently enough to hand an invite to.

This wonderful friend also catered, with the help of other wonderful friends. They baked a cake, and cupcakes and chocolate eclairs, and also made pasta and baked potato dishes; none of which I was expecting.

After everyone had trickeld in and sung happy birthday, we got to opening presents.
They got me an iPod Nano Chromatic.
A flippin’ Nano. Chromatic.
It’s green and shiny and I specifically told them not to get me anything expensive because I’d feel guilty but funnily enough I don’t feel guilty at all.
I’m stoked, and grateful.
And I think my friends are amazing.
They also got me speakers to go with it, a hilarious poster on E-COW-NOMICS and an unprecedented amount of junk food that I’m determined to share with everyone who chipped in to get all this for me.

So, since I hadn’t really planned anything, we spent noon till five in the afternoon just hanging out, talking, laughing, swearing and making vulgar jokes as any large group of teenagers is obliged to do. It was mostly hilarious, and good fun.

I didn’t specify a time frame for the party, so at about 6.30, people started leaving until finally around 7PM, it was just friend “C”, friend “K” and I left. We had one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of.

I can’t remember exactly how it started, but the three of us were talking about showers. I mentioned I was a morning-showerer, while C and K said they were night-showerers. Then K mentioned that she takes three showers every friday due to reasons that are completely justified but would take too long for me to describe. That lead us to the water-saving discussion, which lead to global warming. After I talked about the appaling shower systems in Sri Lankan homes that I thought were great right until I moved to Australia at age 8 and realised there was something better, we got to the “we’re so lucky to live in Australia” point of the conversation. We talked about world vision, and charities, and the conditions we imagine that people in Africa have to endure. This led to my bringing up the fact that equality could never really exist, if we want to continue living the way we do. I once heard that if every single person in the world drove a car, the atmosphere literally could not handle it. Our lifestyle depends on the existence of an underclass.

After friend C pointed out that maybe we could have laws to regulate these things, we got to a discussion on the loopholes in our criminal justice system, and we all agreed that we’d never choose criminal law as a career path because we’d have to make ethical compromises. Ultimately, this all led up to a religious debate.

C is a Buddhist, K is a Catholic and I talk about being a Christian here. Despite having such different beliefs, the three of us spent ours just talking about what it is we believe and why, and rather than putting each other down or judging each other because of it, we could just accept it and enjoy the conversation.

I genuinely think that I’m a better person now than I was two days ago purely because of this conversation.
We talked about each of our concepts of heaven and hell, C told us about why she believed in reincarnation and K talked us through her interpretation of the Bible. We talked about how we think life should be spent, and what life after death would be like. We talked seriously about the idea of ghosts and spirits and human souls. We talked about our idea of God, or a higher power. We talked about why we believed these things, and we realised that while we believed different things, our reasoning was the same.

There was a lot more to the conversation, and I explained thoughts to these girls that until that point, I’d never been able to put to words. All I can say is, rather than just accepting other people’s beliefs, I’m going to try and understand them more from now on.

Good friends, good conversation, good food, good gifts; I’m hoping the rest of my 15th year will be as good as this first day.

My 15 year old views on religion.

And I don’t mean I’m going to discuss the religious beliefs I’ve held on to for 15 years. I mean to discuss my religious views as a 15 year old teenager. (“15 year old teenager”? It’s silly because it’s redundant.)

Well, I suppose that title’s not entirely true. I’ve got two days to wait till I turn 15. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that most readers wouldn’t take a 14 year old seriously, but somehow the magical age of 15 might give me some credibility.

With the birthday coming up, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been doing with this blog. Granted, I’ve only been using it for about 5 months, but over the last 100-and-whatever posts, I’ve never really touched on religion. Considering that the purpose of this blog was to track my growth, religion doesn’t seem like something I should overlook. It’s a big topic, so you’ll have to forgive the wall of text.

Here it comes: I’m Christian.

With four siblings, my dad came from a family of seven. My dad’s side of the family is Catholic, and my grandma is one of the most religious people I’ve ever met. Because of this, my brother (who’s 14 months older than me) and I were baptised as soon as we were born, given Christian names (that I’m far too paranoid to reveal online), went to Sunday school on weekends and went to Catholic schools for the first few years of our lives.

With four siblings, mum also came from a family of seven. Conversely, everyone on mum’s side of the family holds firm Buddhist beliefs. So, for the first few years of my life, I went to temple with mum’s side of the family and learned all about their beliefs and traditions, and celebrated their views.

Despite the strong beliefs held by his family, dad went into the military for 15 years and, as far as I can tell, is now an atheist.
Despite the strong beliefs held by her family, mum doesn’t strike me as a very religious person either, though she’s more spiritual than my dad.
I don’t think I know my parents well enough to discuss their religious views, so I won’t go any further with that.

The point is that I was brought up with exposure to two different religions, and because some of the people I cared about most had such strikingly different beliefs, I was always taught to respect people’s views, whether or not they corresponded with my own. While I went to Church and Sunday school regularly as a bub and did bible study in Catholic school till I was 10 to make dad’s family happy, and joined the family on trips to the temple and learned about Buddhism to make mum’s family happy, my parents managed to make it clear that I was free to make up my own mind on the subject.

Of course, when I still lived in Sri Lanka with the whole family, I didn’t really give a fluff about religion. My huge family believed different things, but they all got along, so what did it really matter? I knew I believed in God, but I didn’t spend that much time thinking about it. What 5 year old does? (I was too preoccupied by the amazing Windows 95 computer we had. It was so High-Tech!)

I moved to Australia when I was 7, and religion just wasn’t that big a part of my life. Because my extended family wasn’t around to influence the decision, we stopped going to church. While I did go to a Christian school and did Religious Education for another three years, it wasn’t that big a part of our curriculum. I was just trying to get my head around multiplication tables and the solar system.

Whoa. I’m sorry, but I have to make a quick sidenote. Right as I was typing this, we experienced an earth tremor. In Melbourne. Everything shook. It was scary. I had to stop typing to share a “WHAT WAS THAT?!” moment with my family. Unbelievable.

After moving to a public school five years ago, I cut myself off from doing any religious activity.
Still, the older I got, the more I thought about it, and the more important it seemed to be.

While I’ve got no doubt I still have a whole lot of growing up to do, now that I’m 14 years and 363 days old, I think I have a decent enough grasp on my beliefs to be able to communicate them to others.

I am a Christian.

Not because it was “shoved down my throat” when I was a kid, not because my family forced me into it, but because I choose to be.
As far as I understand it, a Christian is someone who chooses to follow the teachings of Christ. Even though I’ve never sat down and worked my way through the bible (though it is on my to-do list), I think I know it well enough to see that Jesus’s message was a peaceful one. Even though I’ll agree that a lot of the bible is either brutal or completely out-dated, messages from the new testament like “Love your neighbour as you love yourself”, or “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” have always stuck with me. I think most of my morals are based on his teachings.

I’m not suggesting that you have to be Christian to have good morals. I know plenty of people who have very strong principles, but aren’t in the least religious. I consider myself a Christian because I believe that God exists.

Not necessarily the long-white-beard-and-flowing-robes picture of God we have, but I genuinely believe in a father, a creator, a… being beyond our comprehension? I don’t have the words. I suppose I just believe that there’s more to life than just us. A greater plan.

That doesn’t automatically make me a homophobic anti-abortionist, condemning people to hell.

As far as I can tell, the bible preached a message of peace. I fully intend to at least try and treat everyone equally, regardless of age, race, gender or sexual orientation. We have no way of being certain what it is that God wants us to do, but I can’t imagine that being biased towards people different to ourselves was it. Why waste time judging each other and trying to guess what God’s thinking? The way I see it, we should just spend our lives by treating each other as well as we can, and making life as positive for each other as possible, and just leave making judgements to God.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matt. 7:21-23)

It’s 11.42PM, and I’m probably going to read this post later and realise that it makes no sense whatsoever.
Thank you for bearing with me.