Church & Religion

I had a discussion this past weekend regarding the state of religion today. I do realize everyone usually has a strong opinion regarding church and religion. I'm no different. The question came up - what is the one biggest incident/occurrence that shaped your views of church/religion. For me there is one biggie:

When my son was born, we had just moved to a new town. Let me backtrack, I didn't grow up with parents who pushed us to attend church. They let us make our own choice with my dad being Protestant and my mom Catholic. As a teen, I took a job working in an area church's nursery and Father Don was human. He did not look down on anyone. He make the services fun, with laughter and merriment.

So I move to this town, and there are three choices. Catholic, which wasn't going to happen, Methodist, or Baptist. I opted for Methodist and my husband and I decided to start going ever week because having our son Christened was important to us. What a miserable experience that turned out to be. The reverend was very anti any form of gambling. He scorned people who bought raffle tickets (even for charitable purposes), lottery tickets, friendly poker games with friends, etc. But I figured it might be a Methodist principle. We attended for a couple months and then my husband's work started forcing weekend overtime. Because I stayed home with our son, we cut down to one car to save money. So weekend overtime meant I was home without a car. For three weeks while he was mandatoried, we skipped church. The next week we returned. Before the service, the reverend's wife and some of her friends were sat in front of us and made the following comment out loud so that I heard - "I don't know why those sinners bothered to return at all. It's obvious that they are doomed."

Floored, I walked out of the church and never returned. When the reverend called me to find out why we'd left, I told him and he stood up for his wife. At that point, I decided that with an attitude like that church was not for me. Over time, I've developed into an agnostic anyway. I am pretty sure there is a higher being, but I'd like evidence to prove it. Renderings of a "white" Jesus doesn't convince me. In Jerusalem, he is far more likely to be Middle Eastern. Again, I want my proof.

Then I heard another story that happened probably fifty years ago. My grandfather was the one who would go out and plow roads during the winter. Vermont winters are quiet snowy. So one Sunday morning, he had been out plowing snow since the wee hours. He made it to church and happened to fall asleep during the sermon. The pastor took him to task in front of the church for daring to fall asleep during a sermon. Church wouldn't have been held had he not been out clearing the roads, so I'm baffled. He never returned to that church.

Obviously, times haven't really changed. It leaves me to wonder, how can people like this call themselves "Christians". Tolerance is supposed to be a part of being a good Christian and I've heard far too many stories of intolerance in church to believe some churchgoers are truly any nicer than the average joe.