Y'know, I was raised in a household with religion, and still firmly believe in God and Heaven and all that other good stuff. There were, however, some occurrences that have shaped my ideas about organized religion.
The first was when I was but a wee nappy-wetter. It seems the preacher in the local Church of the Nazarine was holding forth on how that Kennedy fellow was a Catholic, and that any God-fearing Protestant Christian could therefore not vote for him. My parents stood up in the middle of the sermon, picked up their three kids, and walked out, never to return.
The next brush with organized religion was when a high-school girlfriend invited me to one of her church's teen functions. The preacher went on and on about how we must accept the Gospel on Faith, and how too much science is a Very Bad Thing. Afterwards, I asked him point-blank if that meant that being religious meant you could not think. End of that relationship (her loss).
Another girlfriend, another church. My girlfriends's younger sister was missing, and we were looking through the church for her. I heard some noises coming from a broom closet, and opened the door. I caught one of the lay fathers attempting to undress her sister in there. It took the cops ten minutes to get there, by which time they also needed an ambulance for that molesting weasel. The cops fortunately declined to arrest me on assault charges. It was a good thing I found them; her father carries guns.
Final wake-up call: an old friend whose ne'er-do-well husband had split took her little infant daughter to church, and left her with their daycare people. Now, my friend has skin that bruises if you breathe heavily on her, and her daughter got Mommy's delicate skin. When the busybodies found some bruises on the little girl's arms and legs, they called the police. It took eight months of court appearances for her to get her daughter back (and the bruises when she came back were worse than when she left). I've never trusted organized religion since. And now, my brother-in-law and beloved (ahem) sister have decided that my faith is not deep enough, and that I need to be Born Again. I assured them that once was quite enough trauma for one lifetime, thank you very much.
No loss, that. We simply don't invite them to family functions any more. You would think they might catch on sooner or later and tone the rhetoric down a notch or two, but they are what Grandma Opal used to call "burning brightly," and are firmly convinced the rest of the world needs saving. In many cases, they may be correct, but I occasionally remind them that it may be wonderful that they have re-discovered God, but that it should probably have occurred to them that some of us didn't need to re-discover God because we had never lost Him in the first place. As of yet, the subtlety of my observation seems to have been lost on my somewhat overzealous relatives.
Our Very Good Friend Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once observed that religion is "the opiate of the masses." I take this to mean that religion is used by said masses to ameliorate some of the pain of daily life. Used in moderation, this can actually be a positive thing. It is only when a substance is abused that negative aspects overcome the positive. As it is with medicine, so is it with religion. There really is such a thing as "too much of a good thing." Of course, there is the opposite, too. There are those who don't believe in anything. Not even themselves. We call these people "cynics," and to quote wildly one Oscar Wilde, they know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing, The value of nothing is, of course, zero, but that's a different bit of philosophy for another day. What I'm getting at is that those who have no values should not try to look down on those who do, as it makes them seem silly, petty, and small.
Me, I've always wondered why some people believe that God only lives in one building on one street in one town on one hour of one day of the week. If we believe what we've been taught about God being both omnipresent and omniscient ("Can God make a rock He cannot lift?"), then is he not available for communion at every location at every hour of every day? I can be thankful driving down the street at 2:30 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, and it should be just as acceptable as at 10:30 AM on a Sunday morning. The cynic in me points out that the social pressure to attend formal services is probably just the Good Reverend trying to get more money in the collection plate.
Which brings us to another modern religion: the Lottery. It seems that recent studies have shown that most folks here in the US have given up on saving enough for retirement, know that Social Security is going to go bottoms-up Real Soon Now, and are grimly hoping that they can win the Lottery and somehow make up for not planning ahead. As the odds of winning any Lottery are about that of being struck by lightning twice in succession, they may have a bit of a wait for that particular miracle. Nonetheless, they grimly go down to the shop twice a week to pitch their dollar down the wishing well, and hope their dreams will come true. If that isn't the closest thing I've seen to religion that doesn't have an actual God involved, I'm at a loss to think of another. Of course, there are those who use one religion to bolster the other. Submitted for your approval, one Manny Moskowitz, who for thirty-five years has prayed every week in Temple for God to let him win the Lottery. Finally, on one fine Sabbath, Manny hears the voice of God. "Okay, Manny, I'll let you win, but you have to meet me halfway -- go out and BUY A TICKET!"
The first was when I was but a wee nappy-wetter. It seems the preacher in the local Church of the Nazarine was holding forth on how that Kennedy fellow was a Catholic, and that any God-fearing Protestant Christian could therefore not vote for him. My parents stood up in the middle of the sermon, picked up their three kids, and walked out, never to return.
The next brush with organized religion was when a high-school girlfriend invited me to one of her church's teen functions. The preacher went on and on about how we must accept the Gospel on Faith, and how too much science is a Very Bad Thing. Afterwards, I asked him point-blank if that meant that being religious meant you could not think. End of that relationship (her loss).
Another girlfriend, another church. My girlfriends's younger sister was missing, and we were looking through the church for her. I heard some noises coming from a broom closet, and opened the door. I caught one of the lay fathers attempting to undress her sister in there. It took the cops ten minutes to get there, by which time they also needed an ambulance for that molesting weasel. The cops fortunately declined to arrest me on assault charges. It was a good thing I found them; her father carries guns.
Final wake-up call: an old friend whose ne'er-do-well husband had split took her little infant daughter to church, and left her with their daycare people. Now, my friend has skin that bruises if you breathe heavily on her, and her daughter got Mommy's delicate skin. When the busybodies found some bruises on the little girl's arms and legs, they called the police. It took eight months of court appearances for her to get her daughter back (and the bruises when she came back were worse than when she left). I've never trusted organized religion since. And now, my brother-in-law and beloved (ahem) sister have decided that my faith is not deep enough, and that I need to be Born Again. I assured them that once was quite enough trauma for one lifetime, thank you very much.
No loss, that. We simply don't invite them to family functions any more. You would think they might catch on sooner or later and tone the rhetoric down a notch or two, but they are what Grandma Opal used to call "burning brightly," and are firmly convinced the rest of the world needs saving. In many cases, they may be correct, but I occasionally remind them that it may be wonderful that they have re-discovered God, but that it should probably have occurred to them that some of us didn't need to re-discover God because we had never lost Him in the first place. As of yet, the subtlety of my observation seems to have been lost on my somewhat overzealous relatives.
Our Very Good Friend Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once observed that religion is "the opiate of the masses." I take this to mean that religion is used by said masses to ameliorate some of the pain of daily life. Used in moderation, this can actually be a positive thing. It is only when a substance is abused that negative aspects overcome the positive. As it is with medicine, so is it with religion. There really is such a thing as "too much of a good thing." Of course, there is the opposite, too. There are those who don't believe in anything. Not even themselves. We call these people "cynics," and to quote wildly one Oscar Wilde, they know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing, The value of nothing is, of course, zero, but that's a different bit of philosophy for another day. What I'm getting at is that those who have no values should not try to look down on those who do, as it makes them seem silly, petty, and small.
Me, I've always wondered why some people believe that God only lives in one building on one street in one town on one hour of one day of the week. If we believe what we've been taught about God being both omnipresent and omniscient ("Can God make a rock He cannot lift?"), then is he not available for communion at every location at every hour of every day? I can be thankful driving down the street at 2:30 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, and it should be just as acceptable as at 10:30 AM on a Sunday morning. The cynic in me points out that the social pressure to attend formal services is probably just the Good Reverend trying to get more money in the collection plate.
Which brings us to another modern religion: the Lottery. It seems that recent studies have shown that most folks here in the US have given up on saving enough for retirement, know that Social Security is going to go bottoms-up Real Soon Now, and are grimly hoping that they can win the Lottery and somehow make up for not planning ahead. As the odds of winning any Lottery are about that of being struck by lightning twice in succession, they may have a bit of a wait for that particular miracle. Nonetheless, they grimly go down to the shop twice a week to pitch their dollar down the wishing well, and hope their dreams will come true. If that isn't the closest thing I've seen to religion that doesn't have an actual God involved, I'm at a loss to think of another. Of course, there are those who use one religion to bolster the other. Submitted for your approval, one Manny Moskowitz, who for thirty-five years has prayed every week in Temple for God to let him win the Lottery. Finally, on one fine Sabbath, Manny hears the voice of God. "Okay, Manny, I'll let you win, but you have to meet me halfway -- go out and BUY A TICKET!"