This I believe

This I believed

...to be the irrefutable Truth. The singularity of truths. The one Truth. The one true thing, on which hangs precariously the eternal survival of all manspiritkind.

And that Truth is this: outside of Jehovah, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, aka The Trinity, there is no hope. No hope of a heaven. No hope of an escape from a hell. No hope of peace of mind. No hope of joy.

No-hope-of-joy.

No joyful hope that one might someday overflow with a blissful sense of well-being as he gazes into the eyes of his happy children; who are in turn staring into the eyes of their happy children; who are in their grandfather’s arms.

None. Whatsoever.

Nor is there hope that one might look into the eyes of his mate and lover and feel that sense of oneness which binds two people’s souls together, if not forever, at least for this bit of earth-bound eternity they do have together. No hope that one might stare into a sunrise and feel the warmth on her face; without, at best, a nagging sense of guilt which poisons each moment of the unbeliever’s life.

Cut to present:

I drug this concept along with me, not unlike a rotting corpse, since before time immemorial; its condemning murmur resonating its way to my miniature ears, already perked as I floated peacefully in my mother’s warm, loving amniotic utopia. As I grew, I willingly refused the keys which would unlock the shackles that bound this concept to my ankle (bound to my ankle because, though out of fear I willingly submitted to dragging it around, I was never able to actually shoulder the burden.) And on the rare occasion when my mind would ask Why?... I nervously shushed it and hoped Jehovah wasn’t paying attention.

But then, relatively suddenly, I had two boys who would soon be asking me questions; and I was forced to ruminate on what turned out to be an increasingly difficult concept: the idea that, without a Deity to answer to, there is no compelling reason for a person to live one's life in a moral, ethical, fair, compassionate manner. This, of course, led me directly to the next problem: there are many moral, ethical, fair, compassionate people in every culture in every corner of the world (presumably.) And since relatively few of these far-flung peoples are Christians, might it be possible that it’s not the Deity, but the belief in the Deity? In fact, not even the belief in the deity itself, but the belief in the consequences of pissing off the deity, which provokes the goodness and suppresses the less-charitable animal instincts of our human nature.

Yes! There it was. Plain as day. Though we don’t share the deities, we do share the belief; and when all is said and done, it’s the belief, the faith (to borrow their term), which grabs us all by the shoulders and turns us toward the front of the class and says Stand up straight….or else. The Boogie-man syndrome. "Don't you even think about getting out of that bed, young man, or else..."

It’s a dubious idea, undeniably, that if you took any random million babies from, say, Iran, or Myanmar, or Laos (if there are a million Laotians), and you plunked those babies down in comfy little American cribs in a comfy little Judeo-Christian town in, say, Mississippi, that anything more than a minute fraction of those million babies would grow up to be anything but Judeo-Christian type folks.

This I believe.........(but it's still open to revision ;o))

GRRRRR!

How laughably inept is the priest or pastor or imam or, even more pathetic, the religious apologist or federal attorney or anyone else who claims that some other religion, some “cult,” or following or group...is bogus.
Who’s religion was not at some point a cult? Who’s following wasn’t, in its infancy, sneered at by whatever entrenched religion happened to be prevalent at the time?
Herein lies the inherent antisocial collective neurosis of religion: The one true God has spoken, and he says that our religion is the only religion which he accepts; all others are false religions and must, in the end, be eradicated.

It's a global world! (overheard at the banquet)

“It’s a global world,” says the starched lady in front of us, “and we’ve got to do our part.”
“Excuse me?" says the old man sitting two seats over. "What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘We’ve got to do our part.’”
“No, no, the thing before that,” he points at the sky and spins his finger around. “That ‘Global’ thing.”
“It’s a global world?”
He turns his head slightly sideways, squints, grunts. "Thought that’s what you said.”
The three of them sit there and look sidelong at one another for an uncomfortable long time until the lady sitting between smiles at starchy, lays a familiar hand on the old guy's shoulder and grins at him with her eyes and says, “I’ll explain it to him later, Mrs.-- oop, sorry, Mizz Bow-aired?"
“Buard! Chairperson Buard, thank you.”
“Buh-wahrd?”
"Bwuh! Bward!"
The old guy leans over to his buddy and says, "Rhymes with lard."

Fireside

The wrinkled old chief sits crosslegged, glowing reddish orange from the heap of mesquite coals. He says: “You landed in small boats and you looked around and gasped and wept and said Praise be to your Great Spirit. You told us that this, truly, is your Jehovah’s own Promised Land, which he has given to you. You said ‘He has brought us here to multiply and make this beautiful land our own and sing His praises, amen.’

“We told you: 'The land, she does not belong to us, nor to you. Go. Or stay. As you wish, but in peace. We will be brothers. Like your King David and his friend Jonathon in your holy book.'

We pronounced holy oaths and exchanged meat and skins and corn for whiskey and beads and smallpox. And then you, our new brothers, began marching to the west. You marched 3000 miles. The old man holds out one long hardened arm and pointed toward the sunset, his other fingers hang loosely. “You came through the impenetrable forests, across those eternal plains, clawing your way inch by inch across the merciless mountains. You buried your emaciated dead along the trails as you picked your way through our sacred deserts.

“And when you finally dipped your weary and broken feet in the western sea, the one you call Pacific, you said: ‘Ah, it is good and it is beautiful and desirable, we must put up fences or these savages will take our land and murder our wives and children and steal our horses and cattle.’ And once you had fenced off all that was livable, you said: ‘Now we must have an army, for these savages are great in number and they will surely come and murder and rape and pillage and take from us what Jehovah has promised us.’