In the Matter of Religion

I am not religious. I think I point it out here quite often just to make sure nobody misunderstands me – I AM NOT RELIGIOUS. Got that? Good.

So, given my said lack of interest in religion it would seem odd that I am very bothered by some things that I have recently read. There is one blog where the writer (who I really, really like by the way) was recently pregnant with twins. One of the babies died in utero, and she was faced with having to carry her now dead son while her daughter continued to grow until a point when she could deliver. She wrote something to the effect that she was glad that she didn’t believe in god, because she would have marched straight to the nearest crossroads and sold her soul after this whole thing happened. This didn’t bother me. In fact, I could feel her pain, and definitely could see her point.

What did bother me was another blog where the writer has been very sick for quite some time. She writes about prayer, and believing in God and asking for God to answer her prayers ad nauseam. I found it…tiresome? Fake? Annoying? I don’t know exactly. But when she prayed for a very expensive massage chair and someone bought her one, well, she thanked the holy spirit and God and all of his great creations for listening to her prayers and answering them. THIS…bothered me.

I am wondering why scenario one doesn’t bother me and scenario two makes me want to punch that lady? What difference does it make to me if someone believes that God gave them something that they have been wanting? What harm has that done to me? It has made them happy and supported their beliefs, and yet, it annoys me.

I wonder how someone believes that God would care about giving someone a recliner when there are people walking around with dead babies inside of them. But then, if God is all things to all people, hell…I don’t know – big loop, insert confusion.

In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now if I just throw some of my political views on the table, I can alienate pretty much everyone out there.

Revival

We went to a concert last night – by Cowboy Mouth. It was a week-night, so we were really living on the edge. Out past midnight when you have to go to work the next day? Doesn’t happen here very often. But, it was a band that I have heard a few songs from and liked, we were going with some great friends we don’t see often enough, and another friend of ours LOVES this band, so I knew it would be a good time…even if we were out late.

Sitting in the audience I was in awe at the following this band had, the energy they could drag out of the audience, the fun they had. During one song, Hurricane Party, everyone threw Tootsie Rolls on the stage. During another one, Everybody Loves Jill, everyone held up red spoons and then when they sang the words “With her red spoon” they threw the spoons at the band. It was like a Rocky Horror cult following. And the greatest part was the lead singer. He plays the drums and sings, and has more energy than a 5 year old on Halloween night (after eating the candy). He yells and screams, and preaches in a way. He has a way of getting pretty much everyone involved in what is going on. And if you don’t want to get involved? He will literally come yell at your ass and make you participate. It had the potential to be annoying, yet wasn’t at all.

Toward the end of the concert I looked out onto the crowd of people – maybe a few hundred, as it was a fairly small bar-type hall they were playing in – I got the feeling that I had been there before. It wasn’t the place that felt familiar (although it was) or the people (although they were). It was the way people were acting. The response they were giving this band. It brought me back to my days in the Pentecostal church… people with there hands in the air, waving them back and forth…eyes closed, concentrating on the words in the songs…listening to the words, drinking everything in.

It was – for lack of any better explanation or words – a religious experience for many of those people. These people were so committed to this band, so connected to the music, so happy to ‘belong’ – that they just let themselves go and didn’t focus on anything but what they were seeing and hearing. Strangely though – it didn’t make me feel like this was special or fantastic. It simply re-iterated what I have felt for many years: Church is simply a social experience, a pep rally for folks that need to feel like they belong to something greater than themselves.