In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[reporting from Haiti]

What is religion? Some see it as faith. Some see it as ignorance. Some see it as salvation. Some see it as a refuge. Others see it as a union that gives us that security that we are not alone in this world. We all have our own definition of religion. Coming from a gay man, I guess that definition may be suspect as alteration or even seen as invalid at it would be utter contradiction for a sinner to tell the righteous or anyone else for the fact of that matter, what God’s institution truly is and what it was designed to be. I must admit, being raised in a conventional, conservative catholic family, I was "brainwashed", for lack of a better word, to think in the same way. But during my transition from my 9th to my 10th year alive on this planet, when I started to feel attracted to other men, growing older to realize that I was indeed one of those the Church shuns, I realized that absolutely nothing is what it seems and that absolutely no book should ever be judged by its cover. On top of that, I am a scientist, studying engineering and architecture, the former being a science that completely contradicts our origins than what the Bible says. Yet, even then, I still see God’s Hand in what I’m studying, in every experiment that I perform, in every equation I concoct, in every formula that I learn. So now, as a Catholic gay scientist man, I ask of you, what is religion? What is the definition of faith? Why is that we believe in a being that is more powerful than us, yet that none of us can honestly we have any proof that He exists? Every miracle that happens in the Bible, science tries to disprove it as a miracle, stating that any human being can perform these same wonders with complex equations and formulas, disproving the existence of a higher being. But what is science? To quote one of my favorite authors, science "shatters God’s world into smaller pieces in quest of meaning…and all it finds is more questions." Right then and there, we witness more of God’s awesome power, the fact that we will never be able to learn all of life’s secrets. Even those secrets that we learn, we never learn them fully. As much and as hard as we try, scientists haven’t even begun to touch the tip of the iceberg that is our universe. Now, they attribute all sorts of reasons as to why this happens: money, time, sex life (yeah, right!) and then some. But they will never admit to the ultimate and real reason: that higher power that will never truly give all His secrets…or Her secrets, none of us really know. And that’s what drives us all to believe and to have faith in those miracles. The fact that science can never reach that upper echelon of divinity is what still keeps what little faith exists in the world. Fact is, science may be able to prove a lot and teach a lot, but it can never teach us how to use such power, it can never teach us morality and acknowledging that we are not alone in this world, that we have to take into account that our actions may have consequences on those that surround us, even on our loved ones whether we want to or not. This is where religion, faith and God come in. Men are too corrupt to be able to be convincing enough to prevent an evil, to show its immorality. Only God and some of his servants can truly show us that path. And those that succeed, even though rare, show us that miracles are possible, only if we believe. I mean, God can only expect so much of us. We’re merely humans, right? And what are humans, but "a brotherhood of imperfect, simple souls wanting only to be a voice of compassion in a world spinning out of control"…Is this truly what God saw His world becoming? Some say that God doesn’t exist because there’s so much suffering. But picture this: if you have a child and he rides a bike, you have the power to prevent him from doing so and getting hurt. But if you let him go and he gets hurt, he learns from his mistakes. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn. It’s not who we are, but what we do, that defines us. And once that definition is initiated, we grow closer to the divine, not only God-willing, but also self-willingly. If we can do this much, then this world can truly be a better place for every single one of us.