Note: If you are not familiar, I stole the title of this blog from the title of Brand New's third album. Go listen to it if you never have, it's one of the best works of this decade.
Religion. God. Faith. Morality. For some of us, it's stuff we are born with it, ingrained into our skulls by our families and the traditions of centuries, hell, millenniums of people. Church every Sunday, maybe a Wednesday thrown in there for shits and giggles, praying every night before you go to bed, and saying grace before each meal. It's something you are kinda taught since you are old enough to understand, kinda like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the rest of their posse of imaginary friends.
Somewhere along the line, though, questions come into your mind. Not quite sure of all that you've been taught and what's been told to you. Is there a God? If there was God, why would he let such bad shit happen? Is there life after death? Is there really Heaven and Hell? Logically there are easy, plain as day answers to all those questions. Yet more than anything else, for some reason, religion and the thought of God always makes you second guess.
There was a time in my life when I was a pretty religious dude. It was my senior year of high school, and I was living for a lot of wrong reasons. Basically, I was kind of an asshole, who didn't really consider other people's feelings. I thought I was a "thug", a "rapper", an all around bad ass. Really, I was empty inside and didn't know who I really was. One night, a chance encounter changed everything and I decided to go to a youth group. Next thing you know, I'm on my knees praying, and becoming Born Again. I even got baptised and made an album of Christian raps. Yeah...I still couldn't let go of that rapping shit. It would take about four more years or so before I finally quit and stopped being a goofball and channeled my talents elsewhere.
The whole God thing was working out awesome for me. I had made some good friends, people were looking at me as a source of inspiration for making such a dramatic change. I felt I had found the answers. But then things started to click in my head: I was alienating some loyal friends because I felt I had to; I was putting the church before everything because they pressured me to; I even saw rampant hypocrisy inside the church when I was trying to live righteous. I noticed a lot of it had to do with money, it's all about money in the church. So eventually I had enough and rebelled. I gained a lot of wisdom and definitely became a better person, but all that Holy Roller shit? I threw it in the trash and became a "sinner" again.
After high school the next four years of my life were dominated by drug abuse. I fell in love with cocaine and never looked back. I struggled again with my identity: who was I? What did I want out of life? I questioned alot of things about myself, and wasn't really happy. It took a pretty severe evet to wake me up for good. I turned my life around, and since 2006, for the most part, I have been on the straight and narrow. I am finally happy with myself, I know what I want out of life, I'm no longer confused or misguided. I look back on the person I was, in high school in particular, and I laugh. I was ignorant, a fool, a poser. Yeah, I lived my fair share of street life later on in life, perhaps to compensate for who I thought I should be when I was 16 and 17, but it was all for naught. Now, I'm a grown man with real ideas, real values, and a better grasp on reality.
Still, sometimes, despite everything, I feel like I'm missing something. I turn on youtube yesterday and saw another rapper has turned to religion. Loon, the former Bad Boy and Harlem World rapper, is now a strict, devout Muslim. I remember back in '99-'00, my idol, Ma$e left everything behind and became a pastor. I wanted to be just like Ma$e growing up. He was so cool, his rapping style, his swag, I idolized him. When he gave everything up to make a positive change, I wanted to do the same thing. After reading his autobiography, that was one of the things that motivated me to join the church. Wouldn't you know in '04-'05, he decided to return to rapping. But he still runs his ministry to this day, and what he does is positive and uplifting and I can't hate on that. I don't consider myself religious any more, but I do tune into his weekly sermons on his website and get an uplifting message to get me through the week.
I look back on a lot in my life and I wish some of it never happened. Some things I've said and done (mostly under the influence of drugs), haunt me to this day. But it has made me the person I am now. Sometimes I wish I never gave up on God, or religion. I wonder what my life would be like if I didn't. Wondering and dwelling on the past never got anyone anywhere, though. I am happy with myself at this point in time. Maybe some circumstances could be better, but with MYSELF, I am at peace. And I think that's more than a lot of people can say.
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