to extremely fundamentalist Southern churches.
He mentioned attending a Pentecostal Church where one lady was "talking in tongues" and another lady was interpreting what she was saying. He felt both were working together to fool the congregation, which I feel is worthy of debate.
His mother is currently married to a fundamentalist Christian and claims to be very religious. She fears that she will never see my son in law in heaven as he is not religious and says she can't understand why as she always took him to church. My son in law points out that she rarely attended church when he was growing up and all the alcohol she consumed at that time must have caused her to lose much of her memory. I view his mother as a person who is doing her best to appease her husband but is also trying to be a good Christian. However she is somewhat judgmental of others which is far above her pay grade. She is however basically a good person. She no longer abuses alcohol if she ever did.
Both my parents were raised as Catholics but both divorced which at the time was severely frowned on by the Catholic faith, so they left. They never attended church while I was growing up but my mother did try to read portions of the Bible to me and got me to memorize the 23rd psalm. My main exposure to the Christian faith was in elementary school when a lady would show up and put stick on figures on a background to illustrate Bible stories. (This was in Ohio in the 1950s.)
My parents did send me to a vacation Bible school for several summers. I did enjoy the experience but we spend more time making stuff than we did learning about religion.
In my late teens a friend of mine got me to attend a couple of churches. In one, a visiting Southern Baptist minister was preaching Hell Fire and Brimstone. I couldn't contain my laughter at his antics so I had to walk out into the lobby.
I should point out that the same preacher called both him and another young fellow up to the pulpit and said, "You better accept Christ as your savior because one of you is going to die in the next few years. The other guy did but my friend refused. Two years later he and another guy broke into a gas station and were stealing stuff. A neighbor came home from work and his dog was barking. He noticed a flashlight in the gas station and grabbed a .22 caliber rifle and went to investigate. When he walked into the gas station he encountered the two guys. He shot my friend through the heart and he died. Go figure.
My friend also took me to a Seventh Day Adventist Church for a Sunday School Class. He was dating a girl who was a member of this religion.
After the class I asked him. "Why the hell are you dating this girl? She doesn't believe in dancing or movies, drinking and even coffee? What fun can she be?"
He replied, "That doesn't leave much except sex and she is damn good in bed."
He tried to convince me to date his girlfriend's sister but perhaps foolishly I refused.
When I married my wife who was raised to attend church on Sunday insisted I do the same. We joined a small Presbyterian church. I would enjoy the sermon for ten minutes but then it got far too deep in theology to hold my interest. To avoid sheer boredom and falling asleep, I would look at all the well dressed young women and fantasize about having sex with them. I found this hypocritical and unproductive so I stopped going. That probably added somewhat to the reasons that I ended up divorced. Interestedly my ex ended up marrying a Wiccan although she still attends church.
Perhaps the best sermon I have ever attended was at the Saint Louis Catholic Cathedral on Jackson Square in New Orleans. I was dating a girl who invited me. The priest's sermon dealt with the immortality in the establishments on Bourbon Street. I suspect that some in the congregation either worked in these businesses or perhaps owned them. The priest may not have garnered a lot of money in donations from his sermon on that day but apparently he didn't care.
Most church sermons that I have attended appear to avoid addressing the sins of the congregation. Perhaps that is why I do not attend church. I suspect God is rarely represented in churches today. I feel the most profitable enterprises a person can find today might be to become a preacher or a politician.
Although my father never attended church when I was growing up, his education in a Catholic school enabled him to have a considerable knowledge of the Bible. I watched him argue religion with some who stopped by our home to convert us to their particular faith. He literally destroyed them as he was so knowledgeable of the Good Book that he could point out the many inconsistencies.
Yet before he died he gave me some advice. He said, "Son you can believe in the Bible and Christianity if you chose or not. However if there is any truth to this book and you believe in it, you will be far ahead of those who don't."
So now I am retired and have time to study religion and form my views. I tend to concentrate mostly on Christianity as it is the local religion. I lack the cultural background to understand other religions such as Buddhism but still I enjoy reading about them and finding that the basic principals are quite similar to Christianity.
Like my father, I can find many discrepancies and inconsistencies in the Bible. I avoid attending church services and especially Sunday school as I fear I might speak out and the questions I ask might cause some to lose their faith.
My son in law feels the Bible is a lot like Aesop"s Fables and contains a lot of wisdom. Unfortunately he mentioned this to his mother and she blew up in anger. I have to admit that I found this hilarious but I would never do such a thing. Still I think he made a valid point.
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