I can't remember where I was...Here we go.
I have had a few crises in faith over the years and am now trying to figure out where I am. We don't attend church much if at all and I don't miss it. We are going to start going back because I want the kids to have exposure to something to keep the cults off of them in college. I want their minds to have a healthy skepticism and be unafraid to challenge anyone who tries to pigeon hole their beliefs.
I have always struggled with the whole concept of evangelism. Maybe it is because it was never really stressed in the church I grew up in (they just wanted your soul, not everybody elses). I never felt like converting anyone. I tried to find some kind of "burden on my soul" for people close to me over the years and I just can't seem to swing it. I guess I view people's relationship with God to be too personal for my two cents or conversely I hold my own beliefs too closely to care to share them with anyone else.
Mission trips have never impressed me too much as a spiritual exercise either. I admire people going to help other people, but I just question how much starving folks care about the message when all they can think about is the cup of rice. My old partner at work was a jerk and very full of himself. He cared more about what people thought about evolution than anything else. I think it is because he read a few books about creationism and wanted to convert everyone to it. He was going on about this other deputy who was a Good Christian(as opposed to the bad kind) and had used his own savings to fly to Afghanistan and while there pay for some guy's surgery. I was impressed by the act and have met this guy and he seems nice. All I think about in this situation is that this guy works in Immokalee where some of the poorest people in the country live and he wants to fly to Afghanistan to help people? He could have quietly helped a dozen folks in Immokalee for what it cost him, but I guess it wasn't splashy enough. The Methodist Church in Ball Ground that we went to kept trying to get people together for trips to Mexico. One example of a good deed they kept bringing up was that they built this old lady a porch. I kept thinking, why in the hell are all you people going to Mexico to build porches? Mexicans know how to build a porch.
I am not trying to be negative. I am just trying to illustrate some of the reasons I don't feel as if I belong in any of the churches I can think of or have recently visited. Mega churches scare me to death. T.V. churches and churchmen scare me because they scared my mother and grandmother.
It would be easier to illustrate my beliefs if I said what I don't believe in. Here goes...
I don't believe I know enough about the 6 billion people on earth to know what works for everyone or what is right for everyone.
I don't believe religion should have any influence on government and that religious institutions should have to pay taxes. (I know this will never happen)
I don't believe every word in the Bible came straight out of God's mouth.
That was a little heavy so here are some things I do believe in...
God
Heaven(although I have no idea what it would be like, the closest definition of both heaven and hell that I have had explained to me and that makes any sense to me follows...Heaven is closeness to God and hell is distance from God)
Hell...there just has to be a Hell. There is no justice on earth. There has to be punishment for the wicked. I admire atheist countries justice system more than ours. In China, a death sentence is carried out in weeks not decades. I wish we could cane people.
I am religioned out for now.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Religion...briefly
I wanted to briefly throw in a few things about religion before I have to run Zach to Football. I have never been one to love a church. Growing up we would try to make it to Salem on First Sundays, but more often than not we would miss it. We would usually make it to most of revival week and when younger this was fun because you would sit in the hot church for the initial singing and preaching (about 30 minutes) and could then run around outside until the festivities inside died down (this could take anywhere from 1 hour on a slow night to nearly 3 hours).
As one neared the Age Of Accountability this church became less and less attractive. The Age of Accountability is reached when all the hellfire preaching and pressure from the congregation sinks into your skull and you actually think you are going to go to hell in the next second if you don't do something immediately. I have seen this, tragically, in children as young as 7 or 8 and in older people up into their 40s. With older people the congregation generally would have to convince them that whatever spiritual struggles they had been through and whatever church they had been to up until that point was not enough and their damnation was ensured unless they repented in the approved fashion. This generally worked best if they married into the church (e.g.-my father) as most newly married people cherish the idea of eternity with their spouse and generally want to get along with the crazy in-laws. People older than 40 aren't usually sought after and have too much pride as a rule to humble themselves appropriately before strangers.
Mercifully for me I passed through this age in one brutal week at revival through many altar callings and hours of prayer. I will always be thankful to this church and love it for the good music and the fact that it is where I first reached God. The only way it worked for me then was that I eventually entered into a place where everyone around me was forgotten and I reached out knowing I was accepted. I don't know how I knew or even how I got there, but I knew. I was 12 at the time and we were about to move to Waleska so it was a time of change in every sense of the word.
I started to become dissatisfied with the church because the impetus on individual salvation led me to think my work was done and also led me to become very judgemental of every other faith. I am not overstating things to say that in this church Catholicism(or for that matter Methodism) were as likely to lead to damnation as Budhism or Islam. These faiths were no better than atheism in many eyes (mine included for too many years) and even First Baptists were viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism(first at what, we wondered, with their indoor baptismal pools and fake wine and AC and indoor plumbing).
I didn't really begin to change my views until I got married to a strong willed woman (that's putting it kindly) who had seen much more of the world than I had and knew there were good people everywhere. She was also mortified when my Opera singing aunt tried to drag her to the front of the church for an altar calling one time. My wife thought they were going to pray for someone else and when she realized what was going on she was none too pleased. The arrogance of these people to assume they knew anything of her or what she had been through without even really talking to her is what inflamed her. We left immediately and never went back until my mother's funeral. We attended a small methodist church for awhile and really liked it until it started getting bigger and had all these committees. We literally had about 25 committees and only about 150 regularly attending parishioners. I will continue later as Zach is going to be late.
As one neared the Age Of Accountability this church became less and less attractive. The Age of Accountability is reached when all the hellfire preaching and pressure from the congregation sinks into your skull and you actually think you are going to go to hell in the next second if you don't do something immediately. I have seen this, tragically, in children as young as 7 or 8 and in older people up into their 40s. With older people the congregation generally would have to convince them that whatever spiritual struggles they had been through and whatever church they had been to up until that point was not enough and their damnation was ensured unless they repented in the approved fashion. This generally worked best if they married into the church (e.g.-my father) as most newly married people cherish the idea of eternity with their spouse and generally want to get along with the crazy in-laws. People older than 40 aren't usually sought after and have too much pride as a rule to humble themselves appropriately before strangers.
Mercifully for me I passed through this age in one brutal week at revival through many altar callings and hours of prayer. I will always be thankful to this church and love it for the good music and the fact that it is where I first reached God. The only way it worked for me then was that I eventually entered into a place where everyone around me was forgotten and I reached out knowing I was accepted. I don't know how I knew or even how I got there, but I knew. I was 12 at the time and we were about to move to Waleska so it was a time of change in every sense of the word.
I started to become dissatisfied with the church because the impetus on individual salvation led me to think my work was done and also led me to become very judgemental of every other faith. I am not overstating things to say that in this church Catholicism(or for that matter Methodism) were as likely to lead to damnation as Budhism or Islam. These faiths were no better than atheism in many eyes (mine included for too many years) and even First Baptists were viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism(first at what, we wondered, with their indoor baptismal pools and fake wine and AC and indoor plumbing).
I didn't really begin to change my views until I got married to a strong willed woman (that's putting it kindly) who had seen much more of the world than I had and knew there were good people everywhere. She was also mortified when my Opera singing aunt tried to drag her to the front of the church for an altar calling one time. My wife thought they were going to pray for someone else and when she realized what was going on she was none too pleased. The arrogance of these people to assume they knew anything of her or what she had been through without even really talking to her is what inflamed her. We left immediately and never went back until my mother's funeral. We attended a small methodist church for awhile and really liked it until it started getting bigger and had all these committees. We literally had about 25 committees and only about 150 regularly attending parishioners. I will continue later as Zach is going to be late.
It's been a while
I haven't posted anything in a while because I get lazy. I have also been working a good bit of OT. Next pay period will be tough because I will have one stretch of 8 straight 12.5 hour days. We have a Sergeant's test coming up at work and I don't know what to do about it. I am eligible and would probably pass it if I decided to take it. It would be about a 10% raise and the earlier you get that in your career the better. It would also mean that I would be dealing with other people's problems. If I go the Sergeant route on the corrections side of things I feel like I would be stuck for a while. I am close now to a transfer to the Immokalee facility which is near the house and I should be first in line to train to go on road patrol for the next agency sponsored road academy.
I think I will take the test and at least give myself more options down the road. If I get the promotion I will be able to work less overtime and spend more time at home. I am unlikely to be high on the promotion rankings because I have always been a line housing officer with no booking or back office experience. I don't know a lot about the policies that don't relate to housing and I don't agree with all the policies that do relate to housing.
I will try and post more now that I remember my password.
Nicole is in her last week teaching summer school. Zach is in the summer conditioning program for Freshman Football and goes to a camp in Tampa at the end of the month. Chloe talks our ears off all day long and is very excited about starting kindergarten at Nicole's school. I bought the college and pro football previews and tried to get a trip together with this guy from work to go to Jacksonville, but he backed out once we saw the ticket prices. I called Roger and set the trip up, but it will end up costing me $1400 and a trip to Disney to be named later. I had to throw in the trip to Disney because Nicole was curious as to how we could afford a nice Georgia Football trip and not afford the trip to Disney she had been wanting for Chloe's sake(we may go to Seaworld instead because that is all Chloe can talk about).
I am still losing weight, but the easy pounds are long gone. I average about 2.5 lbs. a week and my new short term goal is to be steady under 200 and then I get to go to this French Bakery in East Naples(with real French people inside(the wife is a MILF)) and eat whatever I want. I used to go and get their chocolate croissants in my fatter days, but I am now holding out for a Napolean. I am steady now between 203-207 after a morning run so I am about 2-3 weeks from bakery heaven.
That's about all for now, I hope everyone is well
I think I will take the test and at least give myself more options down the road. If I get the promotion I will be able to work less overtime and spend more time at home. I am unlikely to be high on the promotion rankings because I have always been a line housing officer with no booking or back office experience. I don't know a lot about the policies that don't relate to housing and I don't agree with all the policies that do relate to housing.
I will try and post more now that I remember my password.
Nicole is in her last week teaching summer school. Zach is in the summer conditioning program for Freshman Football and goes to a camp in Tampa at the end of the month. Chloe talks our ears off all day long and is very excited about starting kindergarten at Nicole's school. I bought the college and pro football previews and tried to get a trip together with this guy from work to go to Jacksonville, but he backed out once we saw the ticket prices. I called Roger and set the trip up, but it will end up costing me $1400 and a trip to Disney to be named later. I had to throw in the trip to Disney because Nicole was curious as to how we could afford a nice Georgia Football trip and not afford the trip to Disney she had been wanting for Chloe's sake(we may go to Seaworld instead because that is all Chloe can talk about).
I am still losing weight, but the easy pounds are long gone. I average about 2.5 lbs. a week and my new short term goal is to be steady under 200 and then I get to go to this French Bakery in East Naples(with real French people inside(the wife is a MILF)) and eat whatever I want. I used to go and get their chocolate croissants in my fatter days, but I am now holding out for a Napolean. I am steady now between 203-207 after a morning run so I am about 2-3 weeks from bakery heaven.
That's about all for now, I hope everyone is well
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