Church of Me

I’m not a religious girl. Never have been. Oh sure, I was a church-goer at one point but that's cause I was a kid and I didn’t have a choice.

My parents weren’t particularly religious. Dad was raised Catholic but the only time I saw him in church someone was either getting married or buried. Mom was raised Protestant – Congregationalist to be exact. She was only slightly more religious than Dad. She took us to church every Sunday for a while. I think some of the older sisters were actually confirmed but I don’t ever remember making the jump from Sunday School to upstairs (that’s where the actual churching took place).

I went back to church several years ago. I started attending a local church just as it was being rocked by a semi-scandal and that was enough for me. My feelings about religion confirmed again. I guess you could say the thing that bothers me most about religion is people.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the comfort and solace that people find in religion and it’s trappings: community, camaraderie, kinship. I have a good many friends that are religious and their faith informs their actions and rises them up. I’m not talking about them. No, I’m happy that they have found a place of fellowship and trust. A place that gives them joy.

Good people, leading good lives. They act as beacons of tolerance, of acceptance, of love.

Not them. No.

I’m talking about the lunatics.

Those that use religion as a weapon.

Those that use religion to justify hate.

Those that use religion to carry out murder.

Those that use religion to carry out social justice.

The intolerant.

The superior.

The god warriors

Those who claim to know what God wants and who he favors.

Ah, no you don’t.

Cause if the hate and vitriol spewed is coming directly from God or Jesus or Yahweh or Mohammed then they can all, collectively, bite my shiny metal ass. Cause they all suck. Hard.

The Jesus that I studied. Yeah him. He was tolerance and love. He was a bit of a hard-ass on some things but the overall message that I got: love and tolerance; helping and sharing; open hearts and minds.

I live a good and decent life. I’m fair and honest. I don’t lie or steal. I don’t take credit for things I haven’t done. I don’t hurt people. I help strangers and friends.

I could, very easily, not be that way. It’s in me. I know it is.

But it is not the me I choose to be. I need no higher power to inform my actions; only me. I have to live in me and if I choose another path, I’ll still have to live with myself and I can be kind of bitch. So yeah. I’m good with who I’ve chosen to be. I answer to me.

Those people. They are not religious. They are evil.

The worst kind of evil. Evil that disguises itself as righteousness. But evil nonetheless.

And they're giving religion a bad name.

Christian’s are bearing the brunt of my wrath since that’s my history. It’s what I was born into and semi-raised in. Make no mistake, I have no tolerance for their counter parts in Judaism or Islam either.