When I was walking in the parking lot at work I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said "Churches Eat Souls". I stopped and reflected on that for a moment, and realized that one little sticker said volumes about what blind faith can do to people. It made me think about my soul, and if I have one.
Of course, this was coming after my previous post about radical Islam, and an email thread started by Greg about patriotism, so it might have been my mood at the time which made me so introspective. But the way I saw it, and how I stopped afterwards, made a lasting impression on me.
Amazing what a bumper sticker can do sometimes.
Honey, you've got soul - and you're super-bad.
Seriously, that's an awesome bumper sticker. Granted, church can be a useful social outlet for people; for my folks, it's all but their only excuse for getting out of the house anymore, and I know my mom gets a lot out of the after-school program she helps with. Spirituality can certainly be a source of comfort and a means of finding answers to what would otherwise by unanswerable questions - I understand the desire to believe in God(s) on high watching over you and shaking an invisible finger at you to remind you to live right, and I absolutely respect people's rights and needs to believe in Him/them, even if I'm not feeling it myself at this point in my life.
Organized religion, however, is a different matter. I'm not sure about eating souls - to me, organized religion on a larger scale is maybe more like grabbing people by their soul-strings and making them dance to the beats of DJ Dogma. No requests allowed, no remixes - there's a playlist and you're going to dance to it, bitches! Oh, and have a little cash money shaken of your pockets in the process. I'd say the ratio of good-to-evil that organized religion has done on Earth is about even; the point is that it'll never go away, so the best any one of us can do is decide what we need to live a fulfilled life and, importantly, try to not mess with others who need something different while insisting that they do you the same favor.
Posted by Tess at April 8, 2006 10:42 AM