two stories about religeon
Okay, this is an usual topic for me. Not exactly having a religeon puts me in the 'you didn't vote you can't complain category' so I decided to do something constructive. Let's see what happens.
As many of you know I am the son of a preacher man, and for the record that song was a lie. I was in the public eye alot, to the point where my father would say, 'here's a black sabbath album, enjoy it but if someone from the church asks you're listening to queen.' Whoever you are, you have to work really hard to hate queen. Mom was actually more conservative a christian then dad was. But I go on, I had to do alot of activities at the church, some of them were rather I wanted to or not. It was a small church and there weren't alot of other 9 year olds running around. One of these was a tubing trip in the mountains. Since I was so young I got a two man tube to share with my mother. This is before I learned to swim btw. At one point the current was to strong and I had no way to attatch myself to another raft or a passing object and we were seperated from the group. The currents are also leading us close to the low hanging trees which were near the 'beware of falling snakes' signs. As you can imagine, I was panicing. Mom kept trying to reassure me, 'it's okay. let's prey' and then she procedes to close her eyes and say outloud things like, 'oh god, please help us get back to the other group.' 'and please help us stay calm while this gets sorted out.' I remember screaming at her, 'why don't you actually do something useful?' On the drive home I remember sitting there thinking about what I said. I figured a real christian with real faith would have believed that god would have lowered his hand and put us back on the other track, or at least made a tree fall and given us something to cling onto so we could get out of the river. I didn't think for one second that either of those things would have happened. After having religeon jammed down my throat my whole life I realized I didn't actually believe it. I didn't trust god to solve my problems and for a nine year old, that's a big deal. Mom blames herself for me being agnostic. I can't seem to make her understand that it wasn't the tubing trip that messed me up, it was just the catalyst to me coming to that conclusion that I would have come to eventually.
Well, that's depressing enough, so, I'd like to talk about my first religeous experience.
My first semester at ECU I was taking a class in drug and alcohol abuse. Since my psych credits wouldn't transfere into my major I decided to use them for my minor, which actually put me most of the way through it. One of our assignments was to attend a support group. I chouse narcotics anonymous because it was close to campus. The only thing that really bothered me was that it took place in a church. I recanted the epesode of south park where Stan's father goes to AA and is told that alcoholism is a disease and that if you don't accept jesus christ as your personal savior you're going to relapse. I decided to do my usual routine of putting people off so I showed up wearing black shorts with chains I got at hot topic (they broke three weeks later and it was the last thing I bought there so leave me alone) my boots that resemble those worn by william murderface from metalocalypse and a black tshirt. What suprised me most was that the man who was leading the meeting came in, set up his things and the first words out of his mouth were, "i'm ______ and i'm an addict" That floored me. I'd always seen these things run by stodgy government workers or old people with long hair and burkenstocks. I listened to all the people and when it came my turn to introduce myself I simply said, "I'm Mike, I'm a drug and alcohol abuse student and I'm here to learn." I was so worried people would think I was looking down on them but a few people actually applauded. During the meeting I felt a sensation of community and a kind of openness that I had never felt before. These people honestly cared about each other. It was explained to me that when the rules of AA said, 'give yoruself to a higher power.' they weren't talking about god, though some people took it to mean that, they were talking about the group. You give yourself to the group. Several people after the meeting came up to me and hugged me. This is more a NA then an AA tradition of hugging. I'm not sure why. I spoke to the director afterward. We talked a little about my classes and ECU. I told him I was worried people would have taken my presence there the wrong way. He looked right at me and said, 'We need people like you to help people like us and I hope you learned something tonight." He walked away after that. I found a wall out of sight from anyone outside the church, fell to my knees and wept openly. I can honestly say I have never experienced anything like that before. As I walked home blasting oliander on my rio (this was before the rio broke) I eventually came to the conclusion that this is what religeon is supposed to feel like.
Some things are happening in my life that may cause me to give religeon another chance. I felt like I had to get some of this down on paper (take that however you want) to explain where my views of religeon come from. And I rarely tell stories from before high school because that's a part of my life I'd rather pretend never happened, but it did. What these two experiences taught me is that a religeon isn't just a 'my god is right and good things will happen to me if I do something." It's a set of values that you personally believe in. It's not an excuse, it's not a crutch, and it's not a competition.
thank you
HPMike
As many of you know I am the son of a preacher man, and for the record that song was a lie. I was in the public eye alot, to the point where my father would say, 'here's a black sabbath album, enjoy it but if someone from the church asks you're listening to queen.' Whoever you are, you have to work really hard to hate queen. Mom was actually more conservative a christian then dad was. But I go on, I had to do alot of activities at the church, some of them were rather I wanted to or not. It was a small church and there weren't alot of other 9 year olds running around. One of these was a tubing trip in the mountains. Since I was so young I got a two man tube to share with my mother. This is before I learned to swim btw. At one point the current was to strong and I had no way to attatch myself to another raft or a passing object and we were seperated from the group. The currents are also leading us close to the low hanging trees which were near the 'beware of falling snakes' signs. As you can imagine, I was panicing. Mom kept trying to reassure me, 'it's okay. let's prey' and then she procedes to close her eyes and say outloud things like, 'oh god, please help us get back to the other group.' 'and please help us stay calm while this gets sorted out.' I remember screaming at her, 'why don't you actually do something useful?' On the drive home I remember sitting there thinking about what I said. I figured a real christian with real faith would have believed that god would have lowered his hand and put us back on the other track, or at least made a tree fall and given us something to cling onto so we could get out of the river. I didn't think for one second that either of those things would have happened. After having religeon jammed down my throat my whole life I realized I didn't actually believe it. I didn't trust god to solve my problems and for a nine year old, that's a big deal. Mom blames herself for me being agnostic. I can't seem to make her understand that it wasn't the tubing trip that messed me up, it was just the catalyst to me coming to that conclusion that I would have come to eventually.
Well, that's depressing enough, so, I'd like to talk about my first religeous experience.
My first semester at ECU I was taking a class in drug and alcohol abuse. Since my psych credits wouldn't transfere into my major I decided to use them for my minor, which actually put me most of the way through it. One of our assignments was to attend a support group. I chouse narcotics anonymous because it was close to campus. The only thing that really bothered me was that it took place in a church. I recanted the epesode of south park where Stan's father goes to AA and is told that alcoholism is a disease and that if you don't accept jesus christ as your personal savior you're going to relapse. I decided to do my usual routine of putting people off so I showed up wearing black shorts with chains I got at hot topic (they broke three weeks later and it was the last thing I bought there so leave me alone) my boots that resemble those worn by william murderface from metalocalypse and a black tshirt. What suprised me most was that the man who was leading the meeting came in, set up his things and the first words out of his mouth were, "i'm ______ and i'm an addict" That floored me. I'd always seen these things run by stodgy government workers or old people with long hair and burkenstocks. I listened to all the people and when it came my turn to introduce myself I simply said, "I'm Mike, I'm a drug and alcohol abuse student and I'm here to learn." I was so worried people would think I was looking down on them but a few people actually applauded. During the meeting I felt a sensation of community and a kind of openness that I had never felt before. These people honestly cared about each other. It was explained to me that when the rules of AA said, 'give yoruself to a higher power.' they weren't talking about god, though some people took it to mean that, they were talking about the group. You give yourself to the group. Several people after the meeting came up to me and hugged me. This is more a NA then an AA tradition of hugging. I'm not sure why. I spoke to the director afterward. We talked a little about my classes and ECU. I told him I was worried people would have taken my presence there the wrong way. He looked right at me and said, 'We need people like you to help people like us and I hope you learned something tonight." He walked away after that. I found a wall out of sight from anyone outside the church, fell to my knees and wept openly. I can honestly say I have never experienced anything like that before. As I walked home blasting oliander on my rio (this was before the rio broke) I eventually came to the conclusion that this is what religeon is supposed to feel like.
Some things are happening in my life that may cause me to give religeon another chance. I felt like I had to get some of this down on paper (take that however you want) to explain where my views of religeon come from. And I rarely tell stories from before high school because that's a part of my life I'd rather pretend never happened, but it did. What these two experiences taught me is that a religeon isn't just a 'my god is right and good things will happen to me if I do something." It's a set of values that you personally believe in. It's not an excuse, it's not a crutch, and it's not a competition.
thank you
HPMike