I’m a little puzzled by religion, if I am brutally honest.
I was brought up a Catholic. I was baptised in a Catholic church at a time when I had no say in the matter. In fact I may have screamed as the Holy Water hit my forehead, which some people might have considered a bad thing – after all, don’t vampires scream when you throw Holy Water at them?
I had to endure confession, when I was a child and found myself struggling not to laugh as I lied to the priest about my sins simply because I couldn’t think of what I had done that was wrong. My penance was to say the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” multiple times – there’s a lot of trust in this punishment because you can simply just sit there and think about what you are having for dinner tonight rather than reciting prayers.
First communion was strange too because I was a child and was offered bread dipped in wine – although initially I don’t think wine was involved because we were all underage.
I then acquired a new name as I was confirmed. I chose John because it was common – not because I admired John the Baptist as I told the priest when asked (another lie).
None of this made me a better person. Worse, there was no proof that any of the teachings I was indoctrinated with were actually true or based on fact. I started to realise that the teachings of the Bible were in fact rather contradictory, which is no surprise when you think about it.
The word of God was written by man and of course, as we all know, man has the uncanny ability to exaggerate to prove a point – I do it on this blog all the time. If you think about it, the Bible has been translated numerous times and even reinterpreted and modernised so some of the stories, as fascinating as they are, are bound to be enhanced for dramatic affect.
My scientific mind has been questioning the logic of what I was taught ever since I was a teenager and I have a relatively clear picture in my mind.
Some of the stories in the Bible basically teach us to be good to each other and not be arses. Whether you believe all of the amazing things that Jesus did is up to you. It’s a stretch to believe that he could turn water into wine, cure leprosy and raise a man from the dead but the words he supposedly spoke and his deeds are worthy of consideration.
I am therefore not anti-religion, despite my mockery of it.
On the contrary, if it makes people happy then I’m all for it. If you are a person who can made happier by spending an hour in church every Sunday praying to God and as a result feel a deep sense of fulfilment and happiness then that’s terrific.
The same goes for other religions too. For example, I have known Muslims who are lovely people and pop off to pray at regular intervals during the day and worship at their mosque. I know Sikhs and Hindus who are content with their religion and happier because of it.
If your religion can make you happy then that’s a beautiful thing.
What I don’t like, though, is when religion is used as an excuse to cause harm. Over the years, I have seen this happen many times. People who look down on me because I am a Catholic, for example. People who actually prefer to mock me for confessing my sins to an “old man in a frock” (their words not mine) are not helping anybody – especially themselves.
Worse, there are those who actually harm people in the name of religion because their views are different. This has happened throughout history and is happening right now.
Aren’t we all past that?
Most if not all religions are peaceful and promote moral ideologies. Yet there are people who interpret the teachings of their religion in a way that suits their twisted minds, even in some cases, harming people with supposedly the same religion, just a slightly different flavour.
And I am not singling out Islam here, by the way – Christianity has a bloody history of doing exactly the same.
The bottom line is that religion, if you choose to believe, should make you a better person, eager to promote happiness and a willingness to help others. It should make you happy in your own belief and if you can turn to it in a moment of despair for comfort and security then that is fantastic.
When religion promotes peace, happiness and prosperity then it is a good thing.
If it is used to oppress and harm people then it is a bad thing and people who use religion to exploit and harm others are using religion nefariously.
By the way, I do not count Scientology as a religion and that is a prime example of how a so-called religion has been used to control and exploit people. It is the opposite of what a religion should be.
I’ll just finish by telling you all that I haven’t been a practising Catholic for almost forty years. I wonder what I would say to a priest in a confessional booth? And how long would I be in there?
I’ll leave you with a joke by the late great Dave Allen. Like me, he was a Catholic and courted controversy with his jokes about religion. Here is one of them:
If you can’t laugh at religion then there is something wrong. I like to think that God has a sense of humour.
The fourth part of my mini-series on the meaning of life was going to cover happiness, leaving death until the end. However, Christmas is approaching faster than a speeding Santa so happiness is a fitting topic to finish on.
Sadly this means I have to discuss death now.
Death is a nasty part of life – which is kind of weird really because death means the end of life. Some people become preoccupied with death in the later stages of life and become obsessed with it.
I hope that doesn’t happen to me.
I have faced death in a major way, as regular readers may know, when I watched my father die at the tender age of 44. Obviously that was a traumatic event which time helped to cure. The problem was that because his death was so unexpected and so sudden that it planted a seed of anxiety that lay dormant until I approached the same age.
Reason was cast aside and for a whole year, a part of me expected my own life to come to an abrupt and meaningless end. The feeling was totally irrational and while it didn’t dominate my life, I found my thoughts drifting towards the Grim Reaper more times than I would have hoped for.
My 45th birthday was a great day because to me it meant the end of what I described as the year of death. I felt like I had reached the finish line of a great race.
Looking back now, some seven years later, I have no such fears and I can’t believe the thought ever crossed my mind. Furthermore, I really ought to be worrying about it more because I am older and, realistically, closer to the day when the Grim Reaper comes knocking to collect me.
And I can’t help but wonder why that is.
Death is the inescapable conclusion to life and, unless you have discovered the secret of immortality or are a vampire, it will happen to you.
Why worry about it?
There is no reason.
Life is great and when the time comes, it will come; there is nothing you can do about it.
What’s more, death may not be the end. The premise of most religions is that death is merely a transition to a higher plane of existence – or possibly even the chance to pop back to Earth as another person or another creature.
As a Catholic, I have been indoctrinated by the premise that when I die, I will be judged and, having been a naughty boy (and I have been a naughty boy), I will suffer the consequences in Purgatory before joining the legions of the dead in Heaven in eternal happiness.
I could go to Hell of course and spend the rest of eternity being tortured and tormented by demonic forces. My punishment would almost certainly involve being locked in a cell with Piers Morgan with diabolical pop music blaring out of speakers at a high volume.
Reincarnation seems a reasonable option – if options are available. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be born again as another person and live another life? Of course, it might already have happened and I may have been a slave in Pompeii, or a jester in the court of Henry VIII or an explorer sailing towards America with Christopher Columbus.
Apparently it is possible to be hypnotised and drift back through your past lives. I am tempted to have a go at this but I am too sceptical and realistically I imagine my “past life” will come from a historical novel I have read or a blockbuster movie.
Other options exist; what about the science fiction concept that death is just a way of entering a new plane of existence? When we shuffle off this mortal coil, do we shed our old bodies and float off into space in an alternative reality?
Or the idea that we all drift off and continue to prevail in death? In the Necroscope series of books, when people die, they exist in a different form and continue their life’s work in death.
Apart from Hell with Piers Morgan, most of the alternatives sound appealing in one way or another.
And being a positive person, I would like to think that there is something more. The scientist within me is very sceptical and informs me that we will simply cease to be. After all, we don’t remember anything from before we were born do we?
I have no memory of anything before October 1962, my birth month. I suspect the reality is that I will return to that emptiness.
But I may be wrong.
Death could be the beginning of a brand new adventure.
Finally, please excuse the morbid tone of this post but people can’t talk about death without some negative overtones.
To cheer you up a bit, here are a couple of funny videos relating to death:
A trip to Manchester city centre can sometimes be entertaining and thankfully a visit last Saturday did not disappoint.
Mrs PM told me that she planned to go to the city in the morning in order to buy a couple of things, in particular a new watch for her fortieth birthday courtesy of her mother. She wanted my opinion and so I agreed to go.
Regular readers will know that I have always suffered when shopping with Mrs PM mainly because she is a woman.
Shopping with Mrs PM can be particularly irritating because I am usually dragged around shop after shop and left standing looking like perverts in the middle of the lingerie section while she tries on the umpteenth item of clothing.
However, in this case, Mrs PM promised that we would only be a couple of hours and that all she wanted to do was to buy the watch and for me to help her choose it.
I agreed.
We decided to go early to beat the crowds and a miracle occurred; Mrs PM chose her watch in the very first shop we tried and it only took about twenty minutes. She was happy and I was elated.
“Can I just look around for a handbag?” she asked. I was buoyant after the success of the watch purchase so I agreed.
“While you are looking for your bag, I’ll pop into HMV,” I suggested.
After browsing through the CD’s on offer and the new releases, I decided that HMV was too expensive and that I could get what I wanted cheaper via the internet. I left HMV on Market Street slightly early and decided to watch the crowds while I waited for Mrs PM.
And I was in for a treat.
First there was a guy playing a guitar just like Hank Marvin. He had a small crowd around him and entertained them and me with his rendition a song by the Shadows. A bit further down the street, a young couple were salsa dancing, which was very brave considering the drizzle that was drifting down from the heavens. Even further, a guy sitting a massive green umbrella played a mixture of songs by Dire Straits and other similar artists; he had a great singing voice and played a mean guitar.
I saw Mrs PM approaching and as she did, my attention was drawn to a man standing in the middle of Market Street who was shouting at everybody.
“What’s he saying?” I asked Mrs PM who had walked past him.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t listening.”
“Can I just walk past him?” I asked.
“You attract nutters,” she warned. “Keep your distance.”
As I approached, I began to smile. He wasn’t a nutter at all but he was very brave and very foolish.
He was a normal looking guy in his late thirties with black hair and a few grey tinges and was wearing a black coat and jeans. He was clutching a well thumbed Bible and bellowing at anybody and everybody who walked past.
I wanted to go closer as we approached but Mrs PM pulled me to a distance that was close enough to hear him but far enough to make a quick getaway in case he made a threatening move.
“You! Yes you there!” he yelled at a particularly sweet old lady. “You are EVIL! Your wickedness knows NO BOUNDS!”
I laughed.
“SSSHHHH!!!” hissed Mrs PM.
The old lady and others ignored him; yet I was fascinated that this man had the balls to chastise every person passing. He looked into his Bible for guidance and then starting screeching scripture at people accusing them all of being fundamentally evil and committing a major sin by merely existing.
I caught his eye.
“Your EVIL is beyond measure,” he bellowed across at me stabbing his Bible with his finger. “You seek reward in this life. You will not be rewarded in the next.”
I smiled at him and was very tempted to go to him and find out why he was having such a bad day and to advise him that he should perhaps stop accusing every person who passed of being evil personified. After all, somebody might just punch him.
Mrs PM dragged me away before I could act. But this man did get me thinking – and that is a dangerous thing. It got me thinking about religion and people’s interpretation of it.
I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, something I abandoned as a rebellious teenager. The problem I found with being a Roman Catholic was that no matter what I did, I was in the wrong. My soul was stained with Original Sin (through no fault of my own) and as a consequence I had to live my life in a constant state of repentance, confessing my sins on a weekly basis to a priest who would punish me by making me recite thousands of prayers.
And at the end of all that? I would end up in Purgatory being tortured before I was worthy enough to pass through the gates of Heaven.
I know that one or two readers of this blog are very religious and that they feel it is their solemn duty to spread the word of the Lord to the fallen, like me. I’m okay with that – I am fascinated by it in fact and I will do absolutely nothing to stop them from preaching the Word to me. In fact, I actively encourage it.
I don’t mean to belittle the beliefs of anybody who is a Christian at all but I would like to know how certain people can be so convinced that because I am sceptical of their words that I will burn in Hell. I was told that as a child even when I was religious – so what’s changed now that I am not?
When I was in the sixth form at school (aged about seventeen), there was a sudden surge of religion amongst my friends. One or two, like me, had decided that going to church was not for them. A fairly large number, however, travelled the other way and became “Born Again Christians”.
What is a “Born Again Christian?”
It is a person who has been reborn spiritually and sees spiritual life and belief in a completely different way. I was fascinated by this and at the time I actually started to interrogate friends who had undergone this transformation.
In those early days, my tone came across as scornful as if I were making fun of them. These guys didn’t help themselves. One guy who had been reborn a week before accused me of being Satan in human form because I listened to heavy metal. Another said that I was not a Christian even though I was a Roman Catholic. I would have to be baptised AGAIN if I wanted to become a “true” Christian.
As you can see – the lines are clearly blurred between the various Christian factions. I didn’t help myself because I was cruel in those youthful days.
One guy, a very intelligent lad who ended up at Oxford University, stood up in front of the school at assembly and told us a story that his pastor had told him that illustrated his beliefs and explained why he had begun to follow the Lord. He said:
Two men were on an island with the tide rising. If they didn’t leave they would drown. A man appeared on the water and held out his hand. “Follow me,” he said, “ and you will be saved.” The first man was sceptical and had no faith. “I will not follow you – if I do I will drown.” The other man had faith and took the man’s hand. He departed leaving the sceptic behind. And what happened to the sceptic? The water got him.
All of this proves that you must have faith in the Lord. If you have faith you will be saved. If you don’t – the water will get you.
Nobody argued – except me. After the assembly, his fellow Christians congratulated him on his speech.
“Hang on,” I said. “What if the man who suddenly appeared on the water had been Satan and had tempted the man to follow him? Wouldn’t he have followed the man off the island straight into the Gates of Hell to have red hot pokers stuffed up his arse for all eternity? How can you use that story to illustrate faith?”
The problem was that because he believed his story without question, he accused me of doubting the word of the Lord and consequently I was embarking upon the road to Hell itself.
“But how do you know that the man in the story wasn’t Satan? How would you know? Didn’t Satan attempt to tempt Jesus?”
That did it – they all refused to even consider my argument and walked away proud, yet sorrowful that I was going to become Satan’s plaything for all eternity.
This is what irritated me about certain groups of Christians; they refused to argue and debate about it.
Many years later, in Birmingham, I was sitting outside the library on a bright sunny afternoon when a Christian came up to me and told me that I was going to Hell.
“I beg your pardon?” I said. “How do you know?”
“Do you acknowledge that our Lord is the Way the Truth and the Light? Do you embrace Him without question? Do you have faith?”
“I’m a Roman Catholic,” I replied. “What are you exactly?”
“I’m a follower of the One True Lord,” he said.
I tried to debate with him but he, too, told me in no uncertain terms that I was going to Hell.
“Hang on,” I asked finally, now very annoyed with him. “How do you KNOW? How do you actually know that I am going to Hell? What proof have you got? Who told you?”
“God,” he declared as if that were proof enough and sufficient to end the discussion.
“So God has just told you that I am going to Hell, has he? How did you hear Him? Did he come down and tell you? Am I not privy to this secret conversation between you and the Lord?”
“It’s not too late,” he said mellowing slightly. “Come with me and you can be saved. Open your heart and let in the Lord.”
“The Lord is in all of us,” I said fighting back. “You have no right to declare that I am going to Hell just because I don’t walk the streets talking to strangers about Satan and his minions.”
These days I am much more relaxed about it, having met and chatted to quite a few born again Christians. I welcome their input and I can have a good conversation with them about their beliefs. They have faith that I don’t but they do not seem to scare me into believing that I am going to Hell.
I have noticed a trend though and I don’t really want to say that this is why people are “born again”. A lot of people who suddenly find the Lord seem to do so when they hit rock bottom and are embraced by a crowd of friendly and supportive people at a Christian gathering. It is that support that lifts them up and breaths new life into them. Not all people hit rock bottom but when they get involved in the church, the support of the congregation can be mesmerising.
This was certainly the case for Mrs PM’s grandparent, Tom and Paula; they never hit rock bottom but they became Christians when they were welcomed by an Evangelical Church in their early sixties.
When I first met them, about fifteen years after their rebirth, I thought they were wonderfully happy people. I had no idea that they were seriously religious until Tom died.
I saw Paula shortly afterwards and said “I’m really sorry to hear about Tom. He was a lovely man.”
She said “Thanks very much – he’s with the Lord now.”
And then I realised something – her faith helped her cope with the loss.
The funeral was very sad for the family but I realised that Tom belonged to a much bigger family than his own flesh and blood: the Christian family at his church. The pastor led a celebration of Tom’s life in a packed church full of friends that they had met through religion and many of them shouted out prayers asking the Lord to look after Tom and guide Paula through the hardship. Songs were sung and Tom’s life was celebrated – it was almost a celebration of his passing into Heaven.
It was pretty much the same when Paula died a couple of years later All this has taught me that, if nothing else, belief in the Lord and faith makes people happy and guides them through life with no fear of death.
I think that is a good thing, which is why I try not to mock devout Christians.
There are a few bad eggs though and it is those who annoy me. A man standing in the centre of Manchester telling everybody who passes that they are evil is, in my opinion, wrong.
We should embrace life and be tolerant of those whose beliefs differ from our own.
Even Jehovah’s Witnesses – I am one of those people who love discussing religion with them. Most people slam the door in their faces – whereas I will chat about the differences in our beliefs until the cows come home. Perhaps that’s why they don’t call anymore.
Anyway – I will leave you with the words of a much loved Irish comedian who was one of my all time favourites – the late great Dave Allen. Here he is:
