My cable is still out, so I had to watch the news this morning through snow on the only channel our TV would get sans an antenna; I listened to some Meet-the-Press type show in which the campaign managers of the Clinton and Obama camps argued amongst themselves in a most childish way about who said what to whom and when. What I truly love is the fact that - even though they're competing for a nomination - they seem to forget that they're on the same team. I find this disturbing because while I'm an avid Obama supporter, I don't dislike Hillary; if she were to get the nomination, I would vote for her and do some campaigning, just not with the same enthusiasm. I will do just about anything to avoid four years of McCain, who honestly terrifies me in his ignorance of economic concerns and his rabid enthusiasm for the war in Iraq. His age should concern us all; I can't see how having a senior citizen for a president in such a rapidly expanding technological world benefits anyone, even the crackpot Christians who love anyone who is conservative simply because they are or their church endorses him.
The older I get, the more skeptical (if not openly jaded) I become about my own religious upbringing. When I was a child living in West Virginia, we attended a southern baptist church out in the sticks, and I have no clear good memories of this experience. I was baptized in that church, and attended a million youth group things, and I remember we went to services on Sunday morning, evening, and Wednesday nights, where the preacher would scream and shout and praise God about things for which I could have no real comprehension. We had tent revivals and picnics, and all the while subscribed to the belief that women were subservient to men, should never be allowed to wear short hair, pants/shorts (only skirts or coulottes-these bizarre wide-leg long shorts affairs that simulated a knee-length skirt), listen to any secular music, watch rated-R movies, or drink any alcohol under any circumstances. When we went on youth group trips, boys and girls were not even allowed to sit together on the bus, and when we went to the falls to go swimming and rafting, the boys were dropped off over a mile away so that no one would see someone of the opposite sex in his/her swimming attire. My parents took me to see a visiting preacher during a revival who lectured so heavily on rock music (I recall at the time that KISS was the satan-worshipping flavor of the day) and how it was corrupting us and we would all surely go to hell that I went home and forfeited my KISS albums given to me by a cousin (I recall that I had Alive, Alive II, and Destroyer), and Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan record. I was eight.
It seemed hypocritical to me that my parents allowed me to have these records at the time, permitted the wearing of jeans and shorts whilst not at church functions, and otherwise ignored the crackpot nature of the church we so enthusiastically attended. How can they allow me to do all these things that will surely send me to hell unless it isn't true? Whether or not we went to church was never an option, and I feel resentful as an adult that these uneducated country hicks were permitted to indoctrinate me (or permitted to try, at any rate). Even when I was very young I suspected that what they were filling my head with wasn't true - it didn't seem rational even to an eight-year-old me - and I remember trying to reconcile how a loving God who offers us eternal happiness in Heaven because he loves us so much he sent his son to die for us could so easily write us off to Hell for every single possible infraction of rules, particularly when the bible says we are all equally sinful in the eyes of God. I can't reconcile that as an adult with years of obsessive education in my head and I find that most religions puzzle me entirely at this point.
This isn't to say I don't believe in the concept of God, or at least a sense of higher power than myself because I am not arrogant enough to assume that the universe isn't infinitely complicated and that I am a microscopic dust mite atop an only slightly larger mite. One only has to see a baby born to believe in god, I think, or at least some approximation thereof. I haven't thought about that church in a long time, but every once in a while, when I hear the conservative politicians talk about "moral values" or what have you, I bristle, and it's not because I disagree with them or because they are not on my political team. I bristle because I am reminded of the smiling-faced, seemingly happy people every Sunday at church who only wanted to control my mind because it made them feel better. I sit with incredulity when I consider how destructive religion is in the world - how many people have died and sacrificed and killed in the names of their gods since the beginning of time all over the world. It is truly something I cannot comprehend; yes, there are things I believe in that I feel are worth standing up for and that is a long list, but religious belief systems based on books written by men and translated thousands of times through centuries to meet the needs of rulers and kings and emperors are not among them.
The eight-year-old me who feared going to hell for listening to KISS for even a moment resents this deeply. I find it more than a little amusing that in the 1990's, when KISS made their grand reappearance for the world and I responded with great enthusiasm at my second chance, I watched them play live on MTV and thought to myself: "these guys really suck." Not only are they basically talentless fools with a stellar marketing idea of theatrical spectacle to sell millions of records, but their music is so utterly innocuous, even for the 1970's, that I couldn't help but laugh. God might have sent me to hell for listening to KISS, but it would have been far more likely for my poor taste in music and not for worshipping Satan.
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