Mind your own business. 

Live your life, respect yourself and each other and mind your own business.

That sounds like a pretty easy thing to do, but most people seem to have a problem doing just that. 

They’re the kind of people that post long and excessive Facebook statuses about politics, protest issues that don’t have any impact on their personal life, and wag their finger at people they don’t really know for making choices they don’t think were “right”. 

While most of them hide in places like the internet or local elementary school PTOs, people’s religion and personal beliefs seem to find their way into everything from government to sports. Basically they sneak and slither their way into every place they don’t belong. 

But as annoying as it is to deal with these judgmental people that believe they should have a say in all things not related to them, it is their right. 

It’s their legal and personal right to be a jerk, but it’s also your legal and personal right to fight for what you believe you deserve and let them know that they are in fact jerks.  Never let anyone scare you into forfeiting that right.

While empowering those that are constantly put down is important, I can’t help but take a moment to ask judgmental, religion pedaling, non-solicited-advice-giving people, why? 

Why are other peoples’ personal decisions so important to you?

So what if gay people want to get married? Why does it matter if your neighbor doesn’t believe in God? Who are you to tell a 12 year old rape victim that she’s a bad person for wanting an abortion? 

If your God and what he stands for tells you all those things are wrong, you should live your life in a way that reflects all he deems is right. 

But never forget that your God is not my God, and mine is not his or hers. 

Our country cannot push “good Christian values” onto everyone that walks by because we are not all Christian. 

We’re Hindu, Muslim, Islamic, Buddhist, or any one of the other thousands of religions that exist beyond Christianity.

You have no right to tell gay people they are going to hell or that God doesn’t love them because you are not God. 

It isn’t your job to judge people and decide their fate. 

How is it that the joining of two people of the same gender threatens the sanctity of marriage, but your divorce doesn’t? 

And that little girl you are accusing of murder for wanting an abortion may not be ready for a child. Especially not one that bears the face of someone that has brought her so much pain and suffering. 

It isn’t up to you to decide if she should have to live with a constant living and breathing reminder of one moment that changed her life forever. 

You don’t get to dictate other peoples’ lives. Sorry (not really). That’s kind of the whole point of this freedom thing people are fighting and dying for every single day. 

Do what feels right, but understand that what is good for you isn’t necessarily the best choice for someone else. 

The thing about life is that no two are the same. 

Religion can be spoken about freely, yet we tread softly when publically mentioning it.

But, the hardest idea to grasp is that having the right to spread religious awareness is certainly not the same as pushing beliefs on others. 

While people reserve the right to practice religious freedom and to speak without restraint about any faith they choose, forcing others to listen isn’t freedom of speech; it’s harassment.  

There are over 127 major religions and seven billion people on earth with seven billion different views of God. Some love Him, some fear Him, some question His existence and some are still searching for Him.

Some will decide that God plays no role in the trials and tribulations of life, while others will find faith the moment they see their newborn child take the first breath of being. 

Whether we discover where we spiritually belong in a pew on Sunday morning or on a lonely drive with no destination, the journey to finding or forgetting God is what determines our views. We can’t be told what and who to believe in, or to even believe in anything at all.

What we learn, who we meet and the challenges we face are what we remember when we stand before Him, not the church members that knock on our front doors, or the people that stand in the quad condemning us all to hell.

And if the church goer at your front door changes your perspective, let them. Be baptized in one church, change your mind, and be baptized in another. Let what you learned in biology class make you question evolution and the powers above. 

Learning from life experiences and questioning God’s ways isn’t sin; it’s human. It’s human to change emotionally, mentally, and spiritually when physical surroundings change. It’s human to simply be curious and indecisive.

Faith only exists because there are people that believe strongly enough in it to make it a reality and a way of life. Without doubters and differences, the strength of religion would never have anything to be measured against. 

Because of that, religion without true belief is weak. 

Never practice out of habit, don’t follow just because your parents or friends do, and don’t ever think one religion is superior to another. In a time that seems to have the explanation for everything in a test tube or on a database, people believing in any God at all is a miracle in itself.