"I am the Way and the Truth and the...

... Night-Light.  No one comes to the bathroom except by me."

To say that I have a complicated relationship with Our Lord and Savior would be a gross oversimplification.  For all of those preparing to stop reading, give me a second.  It is not that I am a non-believer.  I believe in a "God Presence" very strongly.  I know, I know, that didn't sound right - don't click away yet.  Please let me explain.

Okay, let's go back to the beginning.  For those of you devout Christians whom I have already offended by restructuring your sacred scripture in order to provide a juvenile and only mildly amusing punch line, you might be interested to know that the first person to cast doubt of an all powerful Creator in my mind was one of your most talented and dedicated cheerleaders.

Her name was Marcy Hollingsworth and the year was 1984.  Marcy and her husband George used to pick me up every Sunday morning at 8:00 am so that we could get to the First Baptist Church in Perry, Oklahoma in time to have a little quality socializing (and some delicious donuts) before starting our Sunday school classes.  (Why 8:00?  Because bible study started at about 9:00 with the main service beginning at about 10:30 and going however the hell long the preacher wanted it to.)  Marcy was a Sunday school teacher as well as a volunteer at the church two days a week.  Her husband George was a Deacon.  Both of them spent the first hour of every morning in silence at the dining room table reading from, and attempting to gain a better understanding of, The Holy Bible.  Every morning.  The two of them were the most loving, caring, forgiving, and well, Christ-like people I have ever met.  They also happened to be my grandparents.

So, how could it be that such a faithful servant of the Lord helped to turn me away from Him?  Tough questions.  Questions perhaps that could only be asked out of pure curiosity and without agenda.  Questions asked by an eleven year-old.

One day after church I asked my grandmother, "Why do they call Jesus, the King of the Jews?"

She replied, "Because he was.  He was an Israelite.  That means that he was Jewish."

"Then... why aren't we Jewish?" I asked.

"Well," she said, looking over to her husband for some sort of ecclesiastical life preserver, "it's complicated.  Jesus wasn't Jewish in the religious sense, he was of Jewish heritage. You see, Jewish people don't believe in Jesus.  At least, not the way we do."

Whoa, wait a minute.  Jewish people don't believe in Jesus?  This blew my mind.  I wasn't even aware that there was a religion on the planet that didn't believe in Jesus.  I wasn't sure what the difference was between ours and the other 35 churches in this town of roughly 4,000 people, but never in my wildest dreams did I think that one of the major differences might be that some people didn't believe in the one Divine Being that you absolutely had to believe in to get to Heaven.  This sent me down a dangerous and disappointing path of purely scientific theory that would eventually find me a practicing (or non-practicing) agnostic.  No one could prove the existence of God, so how could I be a responsible person and still believe in Him?  

For a good deal of my life, as far as I was concerned, anyone who spoke of religion of any sort could automatically be discounted, if not completely dismissed.  I mean, enough with all of the miracles and the promises of eternal life, and the leap of faith crap - I began to feel sorry for people who pinned their hopes and dreams to the flimsy promise of everlasting life.  "Look at the world," I would say, "If there were a benevolent and loving savior, wouldn't I be driving a nicer car?"

These were dark times.

As I grew older, I began to make the distinction between Faith and Religion, and was ecstatic to find that for me, they could be mutually exclusive.  Except for a few funerals, a wedding here and there, and some brief Unitarian encounters, I have not been to a proper church service in well over twenty years.  I'd like to say that I would be interested in attending a church service.  Sometimes my wife and I talk about how nice it would be to go to midnight mass, although to be honest, my excitement for this is probably tied to the remembrance of "midnight movies" I attended while in junior high school.  

Sometimes I meet the most wonderful people and as we get to know each other they will mention that they are church-going folk.  Inevitably they will ask if I attend.  I always feel a little bad by saying I don't, and then I feel a little worse when I explain that I won't.  I suppose that there is something from that Baptist upbringing that still makes me feel guilty about not publicly professing my love for God and his Son.  For not witnessing to others and bringing them into the flock.  I just don't have that in me.  I can't lead people down a path that I am not certain exists.  

I am however growing more and more comfortable with the path that I am on.  My faith is based on trying to be a compassionate person, working on my judgement issues, and believing that there is some kind of sense to our existence.  What many people call God, I call the Universe.  What Christians call Jesus, I call Jesus too.  I don't happen to believe that I must profess my belief in his kinship to God as a means of entry to Heaven, but conveniently for me, I don't really believe in Heaven, either.  

What I do believe in is acceptance.  It was always the thing that appealed to me most about Jesus.  You can keep your walking on water and other assorted miracles, I liked that he took up for whores.  Because that is what would make someone different from the rest of us.  That is what would be described as an other-worldly characteristic.  Anyone who has recently defended a whore, please step forward.  No?  Me neither.

Whether or not there is an afterlife is of little consequence to me currently.  Whether or not a man has to take certain steps to gain access to it is even less intriguing.  Being a decent human being though, is a great challenge - and one that I can really get excited about.  Taking stock of this intelligent design that we are a part of and treating other people with respect is all the challenge I can handle at this point in my life.  And since God will never give me more than I can handle, I'll just keep working on what I've got in front of me.