Religion

I've been giving a lot of thought to religion lately. As Karl Marx said at one point "religion is the opium of the people" because it gives some comfort in the face of difficult circumstances.

And surely he's right. People would rather rely on a higher power and look for some kind of divine intervention than have to think for themselves.

My dad passed away last week. He was a good guy. Never sought attention, fame, or glory. His own brothers-in-law had no idea he invented the things he did, because he didn't brag about it.

He constantly taught and mentored. He gave of himself. And yet he was stricken with this disease and lost the essence of what he was, and died relatively young.

Meanwhile, you have people like the orange menace in the White House who have lied, cheated, stolen, lived on vanity and sought fame, never giving back to anyone. And people like him don't suffer through things like this.

So you talk to religious folks and they talk about god working in mysterious ways, or there being some grand plan, or there's scripture that explains it.

Fuck that.

That's just noise. If that's your religion. If that's how your god works, then you are being ridiculous. There's no mercy in that. There's no thinking that god is trying to do anything good for humanity that he supposedly created. And if the Bible is to be believed, and god cast out sin with the story of Noah, then why do good people die and narcissists live on? Seems backward to me.

And then there's the second piece to my puzzle. My dad was surely not religious. He was born to a Jewish mother and never had religion growing up. Then, as an adult, he looked for a religion that worked for him. We went to a fair number of churches and he found that they were all about profit, rather that prophet.

At one point, just to prove a point, my dad became an ordained minister from some church. All it took was a few bucks and he mailed away for a certificate. No training. No religion required. If memory serves, the only thing they encouraged him to do was set up his own church ministry and contribute to them.

That was the end for him. He never again considered religion as meaningful. Now, I said that he got engaged with things because his sons did. And that's true.

When it was time for me to go to high school, my parents decided the best education for me was catholic high school. So I went there. And to save a few bucks on the tuition, we started attending sunday services and making a minimum donation to the church.

In a way, my dad went *for me* and not for himself. He never believed nor cared. And he actually never went back as I entered my senior year.

So it's an enormous joke that's being perpetrated here at the end.

You see, my mom has several fairly religious siblings. And she asked one who's a minister at an evangelical church to hold a service.

It annoys me to no end. But I suppose ultimately the joke is on him, my dad would actually laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Now I just need to think of the right words to say if I'm asked. Snarky but truthful.