The First Rule of Religion Is...

...we don't talk about religion.

At least in my house.

I don't discuss it with my parents because they follow a distinctly....*waves hands in the air* version of Christianity. They *believe*, but know very little about their own faith.

I cannot tell you how many times I have had to point out/remind one of them that according to their beliefs God didn't just *send* Jesus, that Jesus *was* God. Or how many times I have to point out that the New Testament didn't just spring out of nothingness and that historical context is important to understanding what they're reading.

BUT NO. THEY *BELIEVE* AND THAT'S ALL THAT'S NEEDED.

Logic and reason need not freaking apply.

But I made the mistake on Thursday of talking about religion with my father. And it all boiled down to him telling me that I think too much, throwing out the old line about having the faith of a child and that I need to 'shit or get off the pot'.

*headdesk*

*headdesk FOREVER*

So.

I admit that the minute you start telling me that my *thinking* is getting in the way of God and that I need to be a child who just *trusts* and *believes* that you have lost me.

Because I think. It's what I do. I lack the emotional gullibility to just *believe*. I have seen no miracles. I have experienced no transcendent moments of faith. If I cannot think my way to a point then how can I be expected to believe it?

And I was never the child who just *trusted*. Maybe parents are supposed to be our models of that, they're supposed to be trustworthy so that we can have that blind, loving trust in certain things. But I grew up without parents who could be trusted. And I cannot remember ever blindly believing anything anyone told me. I'm sure there was a time. It's a thing that kids do. But for me that time is so far in the past, was so fleeting that it's as good as a non-event.

But really my favorite part of his argument for why I need to just believe so I can make my choice was that if *his* choice (though he swears he has reasons for belief that he can't explain to anyone) is right then I'm going to hell if I don't make the right choice. Implied, of course, being that it's the same choice that he made.

So we have, in my father's Christianity, this: don't think too hard and be afraid of going to hell.

Yeah.

I can't imagine why none of this appeals to me.