I’ve spent a lot of years flapping my gumbs about religion, Christianity in particular. I’ve claimed I’m an athiest. I’ve said Christianity is pathetic. I’ve made comments suggesting that I think God, if he exists, is an arrogant bastard. Don’t baptise me yet; I’ve not and don’t expect to ever make a descision as to what religion fits my soul. But I do realize this: holding a grudge against a person is an enormous enough burden to bear, and holding a grudge against a diety, real or not, is proportionately more difficult.

I realized that what I’ve despised so long wasn’t God, nor Christianity, nor the Church. It’s Evangelism. Its the good news spreading, gospel pushing, audacious my-way-or-the-highway attitude of the evangelical christian. It’s the false sadness in the eyes of those that know in their heart-of-hearts that I will surely burn for not understanding God the same way that they do. It’s the 170 decible “personal” prayers to Christ. It’s creationism in school. It’s the borg mentality. It’s the arrogance in reinventing God’s image whenever the current one gets a little stale. It’s the simple-mindedness it takes to think that the translation of a translation of an interpretation of a translation of translation that your minister preaches from got everything exactly right. It’s the evangelist’s attempt to herd the stinking cattle away from the green but perilous plains of moral freedom into the ever loving, ever giving, ever oppressive confines of their god’s fenced-in pastures. It’s their ability to feel superior in their self-inflicted ignorance. And above all it’s my own hypocritical evangelism of my hate for all the things I just described.

I want to know God. I want to know Allah, or Jahweh, or Shiva, or Vishnu, or no one at all. I want to know if I was created by random chemical reaction or by blueprint. I want to know the nature of my creator. I want to understand Boddhidarma’s Middle Path. I want a deeper understanding of Shinto, Pagamisn, Hindu. I want to know what’s truly right for me in this world, and when I know I’ll gladly return to the dust from which I came.