Religion and me...cont.

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.