Do me a favor

A few years ago I was hunting with some buddies (hunting wild turkeys is not a team sport. You spend a great deal of time sitting very still trying not to make any sound. You get to talk to your friends, later). During this trip I had an epiphany. Very early on a Sunday morning whilst sitting under a small tree between two great big bushes looking at an open meadow at daybreak. The first rays were being diffused by a thin fog that seemed to be hovering three feet off the ground. Absolutely perfect.

I was thinking (which in and of itself is a dodgy endeavor) that it was even quieter than a church. I came to me that later that morning my friend Bill would be sitting in the third pew on the left, as usual, and would be a little upset with me that I did not attend. I really don't think Bill would ever, voluntarily, miss Sunday morning services. He was really big on the necessity of a “spiritual guide” in the form of the pastor. Of course, I thought the pastor was a nice man; a little too dependent on ritual maybe but, I thought, that was an occupational hazard. The pastor knew the Bible through and through, but some of his ideas outside the church were well beyond brainless. The pastor was a little too adamant that the Bible was the “revealed Word of God” and not, as I believe, the collected works of some very inspired, spiritual, and all too human writers trying to get a grip on a new set of worthwhile ideas. Then, a small ray of enlightenment...

God created man, man created religion.

You can debate the theology and whether or not the various prophets of the world were truly inspired or enlightened, but, in the end, the ritual, pomp, and procedures were established by man to impress the throng not The Almighty. Every time someone tells me that a particular set of beliefs constitute the “true path to God”, I can't help but think some very un-Christ-like thoughts.

So, please, do me a favor. Keep your religion to yourself (and I'll never write about it again).