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22/04/06
by Neale I decided to do something a little different for this weeks Religion page. (Mostly because I couldn't think of another chapter...) At first I thought something involving The Passion of the Christ might be good to do:  But then realised it might be a bit out of date. So then I thought of doing something involving Tom Cruise and Scientology:  But that's been done to death. So then I thought back to why I started this Religion page in the first place. Basically having my God-fearing girlfriend run off with one on my friends did not do Christianity any favours in my book. I was already pretty unbelieving, and having been dragged to her Fundamentalist church a few times, I saw religion in a new light. Now Craig is a Christian, so what I'm about to say probably won't go down too well with him. But I'm not looking to get into a big debate about what is or isn't right. He believes one thing, I believe another. No big deal. Now in that church I saw some pretty eye-opening things. People speaking in tongues. Others standing up an awful lot to say things like 'praise Jesus'. And hands in the air while singing. Oh yes, a happy clappy church boys and girls. One thing stood out to me though. These people were being very open and unrestrained. It's something you don't see a lot of in Britain. We're all very closed and restrained by nature. But here they were letting their feelings for God/Jesus manifest in a completely open way. That wasn't what I had a problem with. No, my problem was with something much bigger. Religions are cults. *ducks* I don't know why it took me so long to realise that, but seeing it up close like I did really hit it home. Now when we think of cults it's generally a bad thing. But as I said, I'm not wanting to get into a what's right or wrong debate here, just putting across my general feelings. A cult in my mind is a group of people worshipping/following a certain belief. They are usually called cults because it is 'not the norm', but if I started up my own group now and called it, say, Christianity, and then went about telling everyone someone they couldn't see had created the world and everything on it in 7 days, people would think I was loopy. Just because these religions have been around for awhile they have gained quite a following and so are accepted. My own feeling is that religions were created in order to control society. And hey, that worked for a pretty long time. Unfortunately, society has lost a lot of faith. People don't follow what God says, they follow what Chantelle does. And that means that this is today's Bible:  ... Actually this God fellow doesn't seem so bad afterall... |