When the God Rocker thing didn’t work out, Katy decided to go in a completely different direction.  Her pseudo-lesbian song, combined with lots of boob shots, has put Katy Perry on the cover of Blender magazine as well as on the pages of gossip blogs everywhere.

So what are we to learn from this transformation?  Boobs trump God?  Image is everything?  A catchy beat can make you a star?

One thing we do know is that no matter how much Perry wears them, high waisted booty shorts are never finding a place in our wardrobe.

I was raised to believe that there was a god, one god, and that Jesus Christ was his son. I accepted him into my ‘heart’ and was baptized at an early age. Then I was taught that anyone who didn’t move forward with those two procedures was going to go to Hell; even if they were a good person. Oh, Hell. The fiery pit where bad people burn with the devil.

I once believed this place was real and I could quote scriptures from The Bible as my own little way of reassuring myself that I wasn’t gonna be one of those bad people going to that bad place. I prayed when things weren’t going my way and I prayed when things were going my way. Come to think of it, I spent more time chatting it up with God when I was young than I did my friends.

I knew nothing about earning money, but I knew you were a selfish person if you didn’t give at least 10% of your income to God and your church. I knew that Halloween was for Satan and witches, that Jewish people believed in the same God that I did but were still going to Hell, and that Pulp Fiction was a very, VERY demonic movie that I was never allowed to see.

When I entered adolescence, I started to embrace my Christianity in new ways. I listened to rock bands who screamed lyrics you couldn’t understand…but they were Christian, so it was okay. I wore punky clothes and was straight edge. A straight edge jerk, judging everyone I knew who did drugs or drank or — god forbid — had sex.

I attended three different churches growing up and met all sorts of Christians. Good ones, bad ones, and everything in between. But, as most Christians will be quick to remind you, Christianity is about Christ-not Christians. So let’s forget about the massive churches who have Starbucks booths in their lobbies. Lets forget about the way a person can so eloquently damn another person to Hell, but with compassion. Lets talk about Christ, according to The Bible.

No matter how liberal you’d like to be with your beliefs, that book is still pretty clear about the fact that believing in this guy, Jesus, is the way to save your soul. And the only way. Crazily enough, that was okay with me…until I started meeting people who weren’t Christian. Good people who were more devoted to their respective religions than I ever was started to stand out to me in a crowd. The message of Christ — of peace and love — started to speak much louder than the rules and regulations of religion.

Slowly, but surely, I stopped believing in everything but the peace, love, and golden rule concepts. I started to believe that no religion was absolutely wrong or absolutely right. I started to accept the fact that The Bible was written by humans and no matter how divine their passages may have been, humans are still humans. Eventually, I found myself where I stand today.

I stand in a place where I do not believe in Heaven or Hell. And even if those places did exist, I certainly don’t believe in worshipping a god who would send good people to a torturous place just because they didn’t ‘accept Jesus into their heart’. I believe that there may be something greater than us; in fact, I believe that there probably is. But that doesn’t mean I believe in a god. I just believe that we’re humans and we don’t know the answers. Even if we all collectively contributed our religious experiences to a new religious book, I still do not believe we’d get it right. I do not believe we’re capable of this.

I know that religion means a lot to a lot of people. I am not trying to make a laughing matter of it — particularly not after the years I spent devoted to it. However, I’m much happier now in this place in my life where I can live with an open mind and not have to have even one friend in my social circle who I feel like I need to ‘save’. I’m much happier here with a Pulp Fiction poster on the wall in my living room. I’m much happier having met the guys in the Christian rock bands I once worshipped and having seen that they do cocaine, they have sex with groupies; they are not flawless. I much happier with Halloween.

I don’t believe in absolutes anymore, except for the absolute that that lifestyle was wrong for me.

[Photo courtesy of daretoshare.org.]