Due to some of the recent discussions of religion on the estrip, I have decided to write a bit about my own religious views.

I'll begin with something my mother once told me. It went something like
"I don't need a roof over my head to believe what I believe" in reference to going to church.

I grew up attending church. Or Sunday school at the very least. I have to confess that a great deal of my superficially religious nature had to do with the activities at the church, rather than the religion itself. My Sunday school teacher was a wealthy woman who used to set up an assortment of activities that peaked my interest. Picnics, trips to Darien Lake (what is that religious week that they have? Kingdom Bound?) We went to Toronto to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat.

It wasn't until about tenth grade when, in my social studies class, we started to study world religions from an educational position. It was at this point that I started listening. I started quietly questioning what they were teaching me.

Throughout the years I have become very interested in religion, but from a more open minded, historical and didactic point of view. I took a course in the Bible in college and got an A. I have probably watched every program that has ever been on the History channel about religion. But my curiosity has always been in the historical rather than the religious. To be precise, the evolution of religion to what it has become today, and the theories and gospels that have been dropped along the way.

I read in a book of fiction recently (one of the slew of post - DaVinci Code religious conspiracy theory books) something that I actually found as an interesting theory. At the risk of an argument, I will summarize.

The theory went as follows: Jesus was an ordinary man who had a religious inspiration about the way to live life. It was a beautiful and inspirational way to live without judgment of others, and love for one and all. When Jesus died, he was not resurrected to walk the earth in the flesh. The resurrection of Jesus was intended to develop into the rebirth of his principles into the traditions of his followers. It was the state of the world, and the requirement for a more authoritative message that prompted for the ascension of Jesus as the Son of God, in order to generate Christianity as force to challenge the pagan religion of the Romans as well as Judaism.

Now I'm not saying that this is in fact my belief, but I will say that this speculation touches me more than the contradictory and ever evolving verses of what has become the bible. The bible is an amazing volume of poignant and moral (and not so moral) stories that serve as a guideline for living a life of love and peace. But the idea of taking said Bible and following it as if it were law is quite absurd to me. I am very much in the conviction that religion is an individual experience, not one of sheep following sheep blindly without question.

Okay on that note I'm going to stop, as I could probably go on forever, and I've probably made enough enemies for the day.