Faith

I have a friend in the south of England who is currently going through his third session of chemotherapy for abdominal cancer. My friend is a Christian. He really believes. He has faith.

My Buddy is super-smart, in fact he is a medical doctor and one of the top world recognized specialists in leukemia research. He has an extremely analytical mind. Yet he still believes in talking snakes, spontaneous combustion of bushes, completely virgin women getting pregnant, and reanimation after your body has had a couple of days in the warm climate of the middle east to rot. Go figure.

Yesterday a couple of old geezers rang the doorbell. Before they even opened their mouths I knew they were religious fanatic Christians. I immediately explained that I didn’t want them hassling me with their religious beliefs. We had a nice rational conversation about roll down shutters for windows. Then just as they were leaving they tried one more time to get me to take their brochure. Just like bulldogs, but kind of nice even so.

I really don’t get it. I was raised as a Christian. I was baptized, went to bible school, got confirmed, and wore the long black dress and helped the pastor in the services on Sunday. The pastor didn’t even try anything perverted or weird with me. But he sure liked to swig down the holy wine, getting himself in the proper mood before the Sunday services. Later in life I was re-born. I attended the services complete with the good looking young pastor playing the guitar and singing. It was nice.

After my father died in my late 20’s I was sure that some form of life after death existed. Not the simpleton Christian kind with angels flying around from cloud to cloud strumming their harps. More of an enormously wise and kind, super intelligence.

At age 60 I now have incurable leukemia.

As I have gotten older and have seen a bit of the world, I have gotten more honest and willing to speak my mind. I think that organized religion is one of the most horrible and evil things ever to afflict homo sapiens. It has been responsible for more suffering and wars than anything I can think of.

Several of my older relatives (who are now dead) were somewhat distressed as they approached death because they had “lost their faith.” Not me. I am delighted that I am approaching this last chapter with a completely open mind and analytically. Honestly. Lets face it: Mother Teresa admitted to Pope John Paul that she hadn’t believed in any of that religious crap for many, many years. But she still did wonderful things for humanity.

I’ll bet that down deep Barack Obama doesn’t believe many of those fairy tales either. I think I have some really fine company in this final journey.

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