Couchism (part I)

prewarning, although parts of this may be humorous, it really isnt that funny as a whole and is probably kinda boring. feel free to just delete it.

well i think i should start at the beginning, as that seems the best place to start.

i was born to two parents who both follow thier faith blindly. my dad was a catholic. my mom a protestant. my mom was one of those incredibly subservient people who believed that her whole existance revolve around serving my dad. for example, she firmly believes that the only purpose to having sex is to get pregnant or to please your husband. (what a horrible way to live). she told my wife that on our wedding nite. (thanx mom!) my dad was always the more dominate role in the family. to the point that he has now earned the eternal nickname of Joe "The Hammer" Sopha.

since my dad was the leader of the family, my siblings and i went to catholic church every sunday at emmett church. when we were old enough we went to catholic catecism (i have no clue how to actually spell that). catecism was between services so that we could goto catecism and still attend mass. growing up i was an inquisitive child. i was a "why?" child. i liked to read (and still do). i would goto catacism every sunday with a question about something i didnt understand in the bible or with the last service. everytime the answer was the same, "That's the way its always been." now im no genious but after awhilei got sick of hearing that everything that ever happened, happened becuase it had always happened that way. my mom being protestant had constantly urged me to read the bible. more so than my other siblings though i dont know why. i actually read it and read all the way through it, a couple of times. by then i had tons of unaswered questions and i knew the bible well enough to show up almost all of the attendees at emmett. (im not bragging. reading of the bible was never really encouraged at the emmett church so few people ever bothered too.) every sunday after church everyone would gather in the back of the church and bs. i think this happens in every church ive ever been in. well one sunday, i believe it was the summer after i graduated from high school, i was discussing my questions with someone. i dont remember who. but anyways on this particualar sunday one of the guys in the funny hats was there. i dont know if it was a cardnal or arch bishop or what, i just know he higher then a priest. well i figured that hey maybe this guy was important so he might know the answers to some of my questions. i started discussing them with him and when he gave me the exact same answers that i heard all my life something snapped. by this time i had aquired in my head quite a few places in the bible were the catholic church of emmett did not follow. some of them werent even close. well i decided that this guy with the funny hat was goona hear them. and so was anyone else in my vicinity. well i layed into him for a bit and at the end of my little rant, instead of even attempting to defend himself, he asked me to leave and to never come back until i had changed my attitude. kind of a poilite excommunication. i didnt go back for around 5 years or so. and even then only once.

the next year at college i hooked up with a missionary group know as GCM. i became a bible thumper (im currently seeking therapy for that). i held bible studies in my dorm room. i would goto fast food resturants and ask people to take a survey which always ended in "If you were to die today, what percentage chance do you think you would goto heaven?" this was really a trick question becuase unless the person answered 100%, i would give them this little 10 minute speal which would ultimately result in them haveing to choose between saying i dont want to goto heaven or becoming "saved." its amazing how many people dont have enough sac to just say that they didnt want to goto heaven. anyways as soon as someone was "saved" i would take there name down and give it to one of my hirer ups to go chat with at some later date. and then id mark another little victory off in my mind. there was actually unwritten competion between myself and the others to see how many we could "save."

well several monthes later, i broke up with a girl i had been dating for some time. she was my first real relationship and i took it kinda hard. plus all the drugs i had been doing at the time didnt help either. i went into a rather deep sorta depression and took a retrospect look at my life with God. i came to the realization that nothing that i had ever prayed to God for ever came true. if it did, it was becuase i worked my ass off or accomplished it myself. not becuase God had given me strength, or mystically made some chain of events happen so as to resolve my problem of the day. i also realized that all the things i had thanked God for really werent from him. they were just from chance. it was at that point that i got out of my depresion and continued on with my life. i even went and spent a night with my old girlfriend. made my balls check.

that summer i went to hawaii. where i meant a gay catholic native. in my entire life i had never heard the words gay and catholic used in the same sentence, let alone to describe the same person. (aparrently fondling altar boys never qualified as gay). he introduced me to what he called a holy man. if youve ever been around a really bad person, like a mass murder or a politician, youve probably felt that tinge of evil that makes the hairs on your neck rise. this holy man was like that except he radiated goodness. sometimes to a point that it was uncomfortable to be around him. it was he who explained most of the hawaiian culture, history, and religion. he said that they had believed that the entire community was a family. all of the children were raised by all of the adults. everyone considered everyone else a sibling, father, mother, or child. it was kinda neat but is really totally irrelevant to the story. i had the holy man baptise me in the ocean right off of coconut isle i think it was called. there was a big turtle shaped rock there, thats all i really remember.

when i got back from hawaii, i went on my yearly trip to milwauki with two of my closest friends. it was then (although i didnt know it at the time) that my current belief system really truly started to form. while on the trip, although i cant remember the exact circumstances, im sure i could make an adequate guess. one of my companions said "God is an absentee landlord." i found it funny at the time but really put little thought into it and just stored it away for later use.

im an assimilater. every time i learn something i try to assimalate it into everything else i already know. i think most people are this way. unlike most people though i will assimilate it even if it cant be. im the kid who took the sqaure peg, got a hammer, and pounded it into the round hole. for some reason over the next few monthes, "God is an absentee landlord" stuck in my head. it eventually started to assimilate itself into my, at the time, devoutly christian beliefs. and with the amount of drugs i was doing it fit pretty easy. at some point in the year that followed, i stopped hosting my dorm rom out to bible studies, started sleeping in rather then going to church, and stopped giving nazi survey-sermons.
it is now five years later, and im just started to put my belief system together. several recent occurances have led to this. 1. i read the book cats cradle by kurt vonegut. a very good book, id recommend it to anyone. an underlying theme in the book is the religion of bokonism. a religion completely based on lies. yet the lies make more sense than most supposed truthes. to some extent parts of this religion were assimilated into my own. 2. up until recently if something didnt affect me (such as abortions), i had no opinion on it. i still dont really care but i do have any opinion on such stuff now. and 3. ive recently been attending colonial woods church. i really cant stand the place, or the people there, or the entire way they do things, but last year they got a new pastor. pastor phil. ive had the pleasure of attending many different religons, and ive heard many great speakers. but to date i have yet to hear one as blunt, honest, and just plain fucking good as pastor phil. now i dont agree with everything he says, but i give him a great deal of credit. he doesnt twist the bible. at all. the man knows it better then i know the back of my hand (bryan should apreciate that one). last sunday he asked the congregation to stand or sit based on wether they followed a certain belief. i stood, but afterwards realized i probably shoudnt have. it was right then that i decided to get my shit together and figure out what i did and didnt believe in.

well thats all im going to right for tonite. if i have time tommarrow i will lay out the exact details of my belief system.