Another sleepless night.

So it is 3:30 AM and I am still awake sitting here ready to type, and I am wondering what it was that I was hoping to get out of my last post. I have debated deleting it, and making myself comfortable and probably all of you comfortable again, but it won't help. It won't change how I am feeling, how I have felt, and it certainly won't erase the past or your memory of it-and so it stays. It stays to remind me that I need to realize that I am one of those Heretics who, crazy as it may sound, wants change rather than status quo. I am Martin Luther-writing about what I feel to be an injustice, yet wanting to stay with my familiar religious faith, and finding that others may not agree with that decision after reading what I have written. I wonder if anyone thought that he had enough faith? I wonder why he wasn't satisfied with the answers he was given? I can hear certain family telling me that it was because he was selfish, and that he wanted the answer to be what he found and so he found it that way. I sense others would agree with him and his decisions. Either way I just wanted to thank those of you who had the strength to comment and chose to. I have read many blogs talking about the lack of support or the hiding of abuse within a religion, and the fact that it is wrong. These blog posts are what gave me the courage to take a stand and say how I feel in the first place. Interestingly though no one ever connects the abuse of women and children to religious concepts that encourage it or that enable women to be seen as inferior no matter how old they are. It happens in a great many religions, but the connections are never made. I would hope that the fog will someday be lifted and that women will see the discrepancy and the hypocrisy. As for me, I look at the example of Christ and his treatment of women as the pinnacle of what it should be. It is the only example I believe to be accurate and unflawed and I view his lifes work through the New Testament as written and through no one elses translation or interpretation of it. Religion can be used to justify any number of atrocities and usually is. Sadly, the brunt of abuse usually falls on those in the least position to defend themselves-i.e. women and children. I find that scary, and I hope that many of you do as well. I am not preaching against religion, but I am warning against blind obedience. I know that blind faith is valued by a great number of people, but when that faith is in anything but the Savior it is unfounded. Faith in an individual other than the Savior can only exist correctly if it is earned, and to establish that faith actions should be weighed. That is my opinion.