Keep Your Shortcuts To A Minimum

Today I was thinking about religion.

I was brought up in a Christian faith, but I can’t say that I am really very religious. I was baptised an Anglican which basically means I am Catholic without any conviction. Mom and dad were the kind of Anglicans that would go to church for baptisms (ours), marriages, Easter and Christmas if all of the Santa stuff had been taken care of. In other words, we never went to church on Christmas. I am pretty sure that we went to church when we were younger, because I have just enough knowledge of the bible to raise my eyebrows at some of the stories. I just can’t see how any quasi intelligent person can take the gospels as …well…gospel.

I remember that I was dating a girl once in high school and thought nothing of the fact that she was Catholic. Really all that I knew about Catholicism was that the Catholic guys I worked with during the summer would buy fish and chips on Fridays. I liked fish and chips. I have nothing against a religion that encourages me to eat anything deep fried. The church that my girlfriend went to had folk singers and every now and then I helped her to make tissue paper flowers to sell at a church bazaar. It was pretty harmless stuff. I knew that Catholics would confess, but I didn’t  understand what that really meant. I thought that confession was kind of like saying “I confess that I believe in God.” When she told me that she would tell the priest all of her sins, I wondered what sins she was talking about, because I knew that we hadn’t been sinning. Oops, I guess we had.

She told this guy that she smoked dope, kissed a boy (me), had impure thoughts (not me), didn’t respect her father…on and on and on. I told her they weren’t sins, murder was a sin, having sex with animals or lawn furniture was a sin, getting caught by your parents when you were drunk was a sin, telling a priest everything that you do is a sin! God give me strength!

I could never be a good Catholic, Hell; I could never be a bad Catholic. I am a pretty poor Anglican, but I think that I am a pretty good person. I don’t believe that I need a church to tell me what is right and what is wrong, I had parents that did that before I was five. My sense of right and wrong is pretty well developed, so I know when I have crossed the line and listened to the little devil on my shoulder. I think that all of the major religions really boil down to just a code that we can live by in order to get along with each other. It doesn’t always work, because people tend to take short cuts in life.

 

I try to keep my short cuts to a minimum and you should too.

PS. I saw that our rhubarb was taking over a larger part of the garden than it is allowed, so I cut it off and made some Strawberry/rhubarb jam. So easy…so good! Here is the link to the recipe that I pretty much stuck to.

http://www.canadianliving.com/food/strawberry_rhubarb_jam.php