Time often alters an individual's values regarding faith.  From time to time, I have placed my
thoughts on paper as a means of reaching a measure of self-awareness – a sort of self-inventory.  

Currently, I am very much involved with life and, like most, I am still searching for
understanding.  Up until 1984, I was a very active church member.  Since then, however, I have
become very disenchanted with all organized religions.  I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic.  I
need faith as much as anyone else, but I cannot accept the validity of separate faiths that
supposedly lead to salvation but who are always in constant conflict with one another.   They
may have served a purpose in their time, but I believe that their time has passed.

Modern technology is shrinking the world we live in and the more our world shrinks, the more
we must expand our minds to meet and confront the ideological parasites who keep developing
and reinforcing the infirmities in today's existing faiths.

We must find a way to live in harmony with one another as with all living things on our earth.   
For this to happen, faith must be directed toward a composite, and ultimately, a universal faith. 
If we fanatically adhere to separate gods and separate religions, we knowingly and wilfully
divorce ourselves from all who are not of our faith.  This is what has been compounding the
problems in our shrinking world.  In short, humankind must start questioning faiths that do not
allow individual interpretation.  Any religion that obstructs intellectual progress by seducing and
subjugating human conscience is wrong.

I firmly believe that the many gods we believe in are one God made up of the total spiritual force
of all living things throughout the universe.  Being a part of life, we are a part of that spiritual
force and, as such a part of one God.

Humans are the most miraculous phenomena that exist on our earth.  As humans, we are able to
create and change the environment we live in; we have the power to reason and the ability to
communicate our intentions; we have transformed the use of our physical senses from survival to
where we now use them for pleasure and to refine our intellect as well.  And whether we
acknowledge it or not, we are responsible for the good we do, the bad we do, and perhaps worse,
what we don't do.

Mortal life is a physical extension of my inner spirit.  The hand that I am writing with is an
extension of my mind which, through my existing conscience, is an extension of my spirit.  The
quality of my existing conscience is something I develop through my personal physical and
intellectual experiences to life.  The quality of my conscience will affect the quality of my spirit,
but, like matter, my spirit can never be destroyed.  It is not a physical part of me but it occupies
the physical time and space I live in.  When I die, my physical existence will end, but my spirit
will survive.  It will survive in whatever form my living conscience shaped it.

The moral part of our existance influences and shapes the immortal part of our existance.  We
should not go through life in an intellectually deprived or depraved state, because it may very
well become our eternity.  It is never too late to strive for more meaningful goals in life.   One
brief moment of accomplishment or joy can justify a lifetime of failure.  We must continually
appraise the state of our existence in order to reach higher levels of understanding.  We cannot do
this if we are forfeiting our right to question and to search for true meaning in the name of a God
we believe in or the prescribed faiths we follow.  

We must embrace all of mankind if we are going to become a viable part of its total.  We must
develop sensitivity and conscience toward all people so we can fully understand them without
physically and emotionally suffering all of their tragic experiences.  We can only develop this
sensitivity through love.

Love is the most powerful building force of life.  With it, we can develop more conscience,
sensitivity, understanding and spirituality.  

Hate is a counterforce; it grows like a weed, spreads like a weed, and dies like a weed.  Love and
hate are always in conflict.  They make the world evolve.  The love we have will survive us; the
hate we cultivate will dissipate.  Love is a continuance; hate is an ending.

Our tendency to cultivate hate is great during periods of deprevation, subjugation, and
enslavement.  God did not invent war, genocide or revolution.  It is the undoing of humankind. 
If we are going to play with the balances of nature and develop technologies that threaten the
world we live in, we should take full responsibility for it.  We should not credit fate or our gods
for things that we have total control over.  The world must always be better with us in it than out
of it. 

Our future can be challenging and full of many beautiful and new discoveries or it can be an
ominously degrading labor of senseless futility.  We must always be wary of the egotistically old
who have self-seeking destinites to fulfill and not enough time to fulfill them.  War is an
accelerator.  Is is the old who instigate wars; it is the young who die in them.  To find the
salvation we're searching for there is only one true destiny, when mortality and immortality
become universally one.

Though I am far from discovering the secrets of life or the forces responsible for the miracles of
creation, I am convinced that my infinitesimal gift of mortality gives me the right and the
opportunity to search for it.  This, in part, was what I believe Jesus Christ was trying to teach the
world.  I believe that the true purpose for His ministry on earth was to teach universal faith.  He
used the Old Testament as a vehicle to introduce His concept.  We, in turn, took His name and
transforced it into a new faith and His teachings into hundreds of different divisive and
prescribed denominations.  We didn't stop there; we took the grotesque image of His murder on
the cross and made it the symbol of his ministry.

I place little importance on the biblical account of His "Immaculate Conception."  I am certain
that Jesus Christ would be the first to acknowledge that all children conceived in love are
immaculate.  He ministered during a time when humankind had a desperate need for self-worth
and love.  He would have a more difficult time trying to teach us during this enlightended age,
yet our needs are far greater.

Though I have been trying desperately to interpret the teachings of Christ, I fully realize that I
would have a difficult time trying to convince followers of prescribed Christian faiths taht I am
as much in awe and wonder of His ministry on earth as they are.  Theyw ould doubt because I do
not accept the prescribed edict of our Christian faiths to follow blindly.  This, unfortunately, is
true of non-Christian faiths as well.

I contend that Jesus Christ was not trying to establish a new religion, but a new concept of
understanding that was basic and universal.  He encouraged those who doubted, to question.  He
advocated faith through love, tolerance and understanding, not through blind submission.  He
proved that there was a spiritual dimension to life and tried to put us on to the road of discovery. 
He placed an enormous amount of importance in mortal existance yet he tried to make us aware
of the infinitely larger dimension of our spirutal existence.  He proved, beyond any shadow of a
doubt, that the range of humankind's submicroscopic mind is larger and spirtually more infinite
than the universe it survives in.

I am convinced that the quality of my immortal existence will be influenced by the qualify of my
mortal existence.  I am further convinced that because many have encapsulated their minds in
prescribed faiths, that they have been impairing their ability to learn and to discover.  There are
many new dimensions far beyond the mortalt intellectual ones we exist in today.  They are there
and waiting to be discovered, but we can't discover them if we follow like blind sheep behind
blind shepherds who follow blind paths to glory.

Joseph Vosbikian