I wanted to blog on this real quick before it gets stale. To honor my parents, I went to church today… it was utterly painful. My parents live in another state, so it has been fairly easy to avoid church on major holidays for several years. To be in an Easter service for the first time since I am a confirmed* atheist was fascinating. We attended one of the small-sized Methodist churches in my area, as I have several times, but this was the first time in this church. They had removed most of the decorations from the sanctuary to symbolize the day Jesus died as well as covering the cross with a black sheet. Then after some singing and Bible scripture recitation, with the organ music swelling, they brought everything back in and pulled the cloth from the cross on the wall… RESURRECTION!
Then the pastor proceeded to weave this tale about how the women that went to the tomb looking for Jesus were looking in the wrong place. He tried to create these clever ideas to indicate that they should have never expected him there. Duh! He’s the son of God… why would his broken body be lying in a tomb? But then again, why didn’t he rise where everyone would see vs. in cover of night?? Wouldn’t that have solidified the event once and for all? But it was odd because he painted the picture of how implausible all this was as if to say, “… and because it’s so completely implausible makes it that much more miraculous!” He confirmed for me that it’s all simple-minded mythology created by early man with virtually no understanding of the natural world. That makes SO much more sense. Think about it.
Anyway, I won’t belabor this as it was tiresome enough sitting through it…
The one bright spot is that as we are riding in the car, out of the blue my wife says, “I can’t believe people believe that crap.” To which I said, “I know… it’s all very weird.” Then we proceeded to have a light conversation about how wasteful and counterproductive it is to believe that god has a plan, and that everything happens for a reason, and all the silly shit that religious people believe. We never really talked a lot about religion before we married, but we have come along to our current state of non-belief at about the same pace. It’s really interesting, because we rarely talk about it, but when it comes up, we always seem to be in the same place. I love her very much and having put religion (mostly) behind us has freed us up to concentrate on much more productive, earthly pursuits. If we only have to attend church every few years while our parents are still with us, then so be it. Worst case, it’s a nice refresher on why we don’t attend church.
Good luck to you on your quest for meaning and happiness. You might try this as a starting point.
*If you haven’t been keeping up, I finally woke up within the past year and realized that I don’t believe one shred of the supernatural mumbo-jumbo that has been spoon fed to me since I was born. As far as my confirmation, after doubting for years and then studying non-belief by reading many of the excellent sources available, I became convinced… and that pretty much confirmed it.
Atheism, Love, Religion
bible, church, easter, family, holiday, insane, jesus, marriage, resurrection, wacky
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