The Rich Man Who Went To Hell

There was once a rich man. 1% for sure. In fact, if you're not the 1%, I don't think the term "rich" should be applied. The gap between the 1%, maybe 2%, and everyone else is getting so wide that there's not much left to be called "rich" among people not up there at the top.

So there was this rich man who liked to wear expensive clothes. The most expensive he could get his hands on. He was known for it.

He also ate pretty well.

There was also a homeless man. The homeless man was Lazarus, and he was suffering greatly from being homeless, so much so that he wasn't able to get around on his own anymore. He had oozing sores because he didn't have any healthcare, and he couldn't keep the dogs and flies off of them. The dogs because they like to lick gross stuff and the flies because... well, for the same reason, I suppose.

The homeless man had a few of his friends, if you could call them that -- people willing to give him a hand, at any rate -- drag him over and leave him in front of the rich man's house. Not right in front, you know, because that would be trespassing, but on the sidewalk near the gate. Maybe, just maybe, the rich man would allow him some of the leftover food from his amazing dinners, though, really, any food at all would have been amazing to the homeless man. To Lazarus.

Lazarus lived out his days there on the sidewalk in front of the rich man's house. I'm going to just assume that those days were not very many, though I don't know for sure. But we know that he was starving, that he was unable to seek shelter because he wasn't strong enough to walk, that he was suffering from oozing sores that wouldn't heal. None of those things bodes well for a long life. When he died, the angels came and carried him away. Or maybe those were just the first responders who showed up when they got the call about about a body.

Some time later, the rich man also died. I'm going to go ahead and assume that it was some years later, though I don't know for sure. After all, we don't know how old the rich man was, and we don't know what he died from. Maybe he lived decades because he probably had great healthcare or, maybe, he died the next day in a car crash. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that the rich man got sent straight to Hell. I imagine this rather like a game of Monopoly: He did not pass "Go" and he did not collect his $200.

Now Hell is a pretty awful place. Or so they say. Evidently, it's hot, or there wouldn't be a saying about it being "hot as hell." It seems there is also no water, because the rich man was dying of thirst. Okay, sure, he was already dead, but it sure felt to him as if he were dying of thirst. At any rate, he looked up toward Heaven (because you can see it clearly from Hell), longing for water, and, what do you know, there was Lazarus, the guy who died in front of his house, just hanging out and having a good time.

And drinking water.

The rich man wanted some, and he wanted Lazarus to bring it to him. The answer, of course, was no. Not just no, but, "Hell, no!" heh

Some of you may be familiar with this story. It's pretty popular in churches and comes from the book of Luke. Yes, that's in the Bible. So let's look at some things about this particular story, shall we? Yes, we shall.

Jesus was telling this story to the Pharisees because he liked to tell stories that were also lessons. That he was telling the story to Pharisees presents us with a small problem: The Pharisees were all rich, hyper-uptight, religiously educated dudes. Let me make one distinction, though: when I say they were religiously educated, that means they were educated in Jewish law. And they knew it backwards and forwards but, basically, it made them lawyers. They weren't actually interested in spirituality; they were interested in the law and how to keep the letter of the law.

So Jesus was speaking to a bunch of lawyers, experts, about an intersection of religious law and spirituality, and today's church-goers are hardly experts in, well, anything to do with the Bible at all.

Jesus was speaking to the 1%. When pastors are preaching this particular message, they are most assuredly not speaking it to the 1%.

Jesus was speaking to hyper-uptight... Oh, well, that's still the same.

But, really, pastors today are not delivering this message to the intended audience. Let's look at why that matters:

Jesus was delivering his message to the rich. Based on other things he said to the rich, like "give away to the poor everything you own," I'm going to take this story as a warning to the 1%. I think that warning is, "Don't be rich," which is a warning that rather flies in the face of the oh-so-popular prosperity doctrine. [For those of you who don't know, the prosperity doctrine says that "god" will make you rich if he likes you. Conversely, if you are rich, "god" likes you.]

Of course, pastors tell this story as if the rich man was being punished because he didn't do anything to help Lazarus, and I can see the temptation in telling it that way, but we don't know that that was true. The story Jesus tells says nothing about whether the rich man offered Lazarus food or not. Or what he did or did not do for the man. What I do find interesting, though, is that the rich man knew Lazarus' name, not something I would expect if he had taken no interest in Lazarus at all or if his interest had only extended to, "Get that wretch away from my gate!" In fact, we know that Lazarus lived in front of the rich man's house until his death. Maybe the rich man kept Lazarus fed all along but Lazarus was just too sick for it to do any good. We really don't know.

Pastors also tell this story to the poor of the world as a comfort story rather than to the rich as a warning. Not what Jesus intended if we look at the audience Jesus delivered this particular message to. No, the message pastors today want to deliver is this: Don't worry about being poor and sick and abandoned; you will get to go to heaven. As if Lazarus got to go to heaven because he was poor and sick. That also doesn't follow from the rest of the accumulated teachings ascribed to Jesus.

Basically, what we have here are two completely divergent messages.
The first, by Jesus:
Hey, you, rich people, watch out. You're going down.

The second, by modern pastors:
Hey, you, downtrodden people, be accepting of your fate. You'll get rewarded for your suffering after you die.

That second message is kind of sick if you ask me.

What I do know is this: No matter what you believe, the 1%, after they die, are going to end up in the same place as the rich man from the story. I suppose they better hope that "christianity" doesn't turn out to be true, because an eternity of nothingness has to be better than an eternity in hell.

The Good Place (a review, of sorts)

We stumbled across The Good Place recently. Which was a good thing because it's a good show. Actually, I'd say it's a great show. As I was saying to my wife just before we found this, the problem that I have with many shows is that there is no story. For instance, we've been watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine with our kids, lately, and it's a funny show; I enjoy watching it. BUT! If we never watched it again, I wouldn't miss it. I wouldn't miss it because it has no story so I wouldn't wonder what was going to be happening next. The Good Place, despite its sitcom status, has a story, a pretty great one, too. As I said, it's a great show, currently my wife's favorite show.

Part of that is because of Kristen Bell. Actually, all of the cast is great, including Ted Danson, whom I've never been a big fan of, but he's great in this. But Kristen Bell! She's just the kind of person you'd expect to find in the "good place." Which is part of why it's so funny that -- okay, spoiler alert but not really since you find this out virtually right away in the first episode -- she's not supposed to be there. Yeah, she's died and gone to "heaven"... by mistake.

Hi-jinks ensue. Because, you know, now that she's there, she can't let anyone know there was a mistake.

Oh, and Adam Scott shows up as "Trevor" a few episodes in, and he's spectacular.

So here's the thing, and it's the thing about why it's such a huge mistake that Eleanor is in the Good Place: almost no one gets in. Like, less than .01% of people get in. The system in the show is all based on how much good a person has done in the world, and only the very best of the do-gooders get into the Good Place. Everyone else goes to the Bad Place. There's this funny bit where Eleanor asks Michael who got it right, you know, about the afterlife and all of that, and Michael says something along the lines of, "Well the Christians got it about 5% right, and the Muslims got it about 5% right, basically, everyone got it about 5% right." Then he goes on to say that one guy sitting around a campfire one night doing mushrooms got it 92% right, but he was the only ever who got even close. The whole thing is kind of brilliant.

Not the getting into "heaven" by doing good things, but the part where no one has gotten it right. Because if there's one thing the religions of the world have in common it's that they, none of them, have not gotten "it" right. Oh, and they all think they have.

Which is why there should be more shows like this, shows that state bluntly, even in a comedic way, you've got it all wrong. Though this might be a show that "christians" avoid. I'm pretty sure that when I was younger I would have been offended enough by the premise of the show (that you earn your place in the Good Place by doing good in the world) that I would never have watched it no matter how funny it was. And there are a lot of people out there who are like how I was. Which is to say: stuck in dogma. Which is to say: wrong.

All of that to say that this is a show you should check out, especially if you're a "christian." While I don't necessarily agree that it's how much good we do in the world that gets us into Heaven or the Good Place or whatever you want to call it, it's certainly an idea that more of us should be paying attention to.

Why You Worship a False god (Part Two)

[You should go back and read part one of this, because I'm not going to provide any kind of recap or summary, and this probably won't make sense without the previous post.]

I left you all last time with "Christianity is the worst," and I meant it. Why? For one simple reason:
"Christianity" provides a solution to the linear god problem then turns its back on it and walks away.

Imagine three cages with people all locked up inside each one, one for Jews, one for Muslims, one for Christians. No one can get out. Except there are people inside the Christian cage with keys to the door, but they like being in the cage and like having all the other people locked in with them, so they don't bother to tell anyone. They could, but they don't want to. That's pretty despicable. At least there isn't anyone in the other cages concealing keys.

Look, it's even true of Paul. The asshole. To paraphrase:
When Paul was approached with the idea that sin didn't matter anymore because all sin was forgiven under Christ, Paul said, "Sure, you're right. Don't sin anyway." Basically, get back in your cage and sit down and shut up. Because Paul was a legalistic douche bag, kind of by his own admittance. He was a Pharisee among Pharisees.

And this is where we get to the point:
The whole point of the idea of Jesus is that he was a final sacrifice for all sin. All sin. Everyone's sin for all of time. Yes, you have to accept it, but, if you do, all of your sin has been atoned for. All the sins you've already done and all of the sins you'll do in the future, because it's only past and future for you. God sees you as a whole human being throughout the entire timeline of your life, so the one act of accepting the forgiveness offered through the sacrifice of Christ cleanses you of all of the sin. Therefore, it doesn't actually matter what you do; all sin is forgiven.

Now, this is the point where you really need to pay attention to get to the same place that I'm going.

Only a God outside of Time can do this. Only a God who can see your whole life at once and take away all the sin at once. That's what makes God, God.

If your god demands constant repentance and/or sacrifices to be on good terms with "him," then your god is no god at all. A god who is locked into judging you based upon your latest prayer, act of contrition, or sacrifice is a fraud. If your god is a fraud, then there is no sin, and it doesn't matter what you do. If your god is a fraud and you insist on dogmatically following some esoteric list of rules, you are also a fraud, propped up only by your legalism.

If your God is outside of Time and able to look at a person as a holistic being and has given you a way to purge your sin once and for all, then there is also no sin, and it doesn't matter what you do. Because let me be clear, no little prayer of "asking Jesus into your heart" is going to fool that kind of God into forgiving you. Whatever that means. Either that kind of God is up there judging people and it doesn't matter if you've "prayed the prayer" or not, because "He" knows more about what's going on in you than you do; or that kind of God is not judging people at all because, seriously, why would God even need to do that? Either way, it doesn't matter what you do. Neither can you "be good enough" to get into Heaven, nor can you be bad enough to get kicked out.

Which leaves us all in a very uneasy space, I know. A place of real moral ambiguity.
I mean, I've just stated that it doesn't matter what you do! How will we know if people are good or if people are bad or whether they're going to get into heaven or go straight to hell or whether we should look up to them because of how "righteous" they are or look down at them and spit because they're dirty, rotten sinners?

But here's the thing, man clearly has a moral compass of sorts. Humans have a pretty standard idea of what's right and wrong across cultures. It doesn't matter whether you believe if that's something divine or if it's some kind of genetic inheritance because we're a social species, there is a clear call to uphold the social good. Maybe the idea is to be good for goodness' sake, not out of fear of some kind of punishment. Maybe the idea is to do the Right thing because it's the right thing.
And God doesn't matter in that decision.

Here are the things I can tell you for sure:
1. Any God is so far above man that we are incapable of any kind of understanding about who or what God is. Anyone who tells you differently, anyone who tries to tell you what God is about and what God approves of and what "he" doesn't, is a liar and a fraud. Any person claiming to know God's mind worships a false god. Anyone who ever utters the phrase, "You need to get right with god," worships a god trapped in a linear timeline, and that god is not a god at all.
2. The current "christian" establishment in the United States (possibly the entire "christian" establishment across the world) clearly worships a linear god; therefore, the current "christian" establishment worships no god at all.
3. Anyone supporting "christianity" and Trump are clearly not even "christians," let alone a Christian. There is nothing in "christianity" which supports the support of a person like that. He is the antithesis of what it is to be a Christian, so anyone supporting him is clearly paying lip service to a religion they know nothing about. Clearly those people are worshiping a god they have made up in their own minds, not a God who lives outside of Time. The fact that they can't see the glaring divide between the character of Jesus in the Bible and the caricature that is Trump highlights their ingrained hypocrisy.

What I'm saying here is that most of you out there, if you believe in "God," have no idea what you believe. You've been told what to believe by other people and your idea of God is flawed. If your idea of God is flawed, you can't believe in God, only god. You have no idea what the Bible is about or what it says because you've never bothered to read it. And reading the Bible should only be the beginning of your learning about what you believe. That is, if you believe it. Because, really, most of you don't believe in anything; you just think you do.

Why You Worship a False god (Part One)

Let me just say upfront that I'm probably going to lose a lot of you with this "discussion," and not because of the offensive material but because of the metaphysical material. My experience is that people don't tend to be able to keep up. For example, my first college roommate was a Calvinist (you can look it up), but he was a Calvinist because he didn't understand the doctrine of predestination or what they mean by it. In his mind, since "god" knows everything, "god" also causes everything to happen. There is no free will. Foreknowledge equated control. Basically, "god" was upstairs with puppet strings attached to everything, and no one had any choices about anything.

How boring.

The problem was that he really just couldn't see the difference between foreknowledge and complete predestination (of everything) no matter how many times or how many ways people (not just me) tried to explain it to him. Some of the people who tried to explain it to him also didn't understand the differences in the concepts; they just knew that they had been told that Calvinism was wrong.

I only bring this up because it relates. We're going to talk about God and Time and why your god isn't actually God. And, sure, that part might be offensive, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose most of you way before we get far enough along for you to be offended. Unless, of course, you're already offended.

So let's start with something pretty basic:
For god to be God, He has to be outside of time, the maker of Time. That's pretty standard thought nowadays, in theory, at least among "christian" theologians, so I'm probably not losing anyone yet, theoretically. Until we get to the part where we're dealing with what it means to be outside of Time, but I'm not got to get into that, because that's kind of like asking a fish what it's like to be outside of water. And the fact that most of you probably don't get the part where Time is not some linear stream that has always existed.

Maybe you're wondering why that even matters, but it matters in that, for god to be God, He has to be omniscient, and He can't be omniscient from within Time. To know everything, you have to be outside of everything, including Time.

And it matters because of sin.

Before I go on, let me state quite clearly that I am NOT just talking about Christianity here. I'm also talking about Judaism and Islam. It's all the same god, and all three religions suffer from the same issue: sin.

Here's where we start getting tricky...

Men are linear creatures, time-wise; therefore, our views of people tend to be pretty tied into whatever they did last. The quality of a person is based on his/her most recent actions. That's the linear view.

And that's the view religious people, of whatever religion, tend to take, too, hence all of the sin, repent, repeat nonsense. Because you can't go to heaven if you have sin, and you're only as good as your last repentance.

Christianity, theoretically, deals with this issue. Jesus was intended to be the one and only sacrifice that would wipe sin from your life both backwards and forwards. Hebrews 10:10 -- "...we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." The idea for the need for constant repentance (sacrificing) has been dealt with by the one sacrifice of Jesus, so sacrifices are no longer needed. Provided, of course, that you accept the One sacrifice of Christ as your own. This is what the writer of Hebrews is saying. [Note: The writer of the book of Hebrews is unknown, but it was almost certainly NOT Paul. The asshole.]

Of course, the writer of Hebrews couldn't reconcile this idea with himself and, a few verses later, says that, basically, since you've been forgiven of your sins -- all of them past, present, and future -- don't ever sin again. I mean, if you're accepting the grace of God but, then, go out and sin again anyway, you deserve to go to straight to hell. STRAIGHT TO HELL, I tell you! Because he couldn't take himself out of a linear mindset despite the words of Jesus himself claiming to be the one and only sacrifice ever needed.

This is where we run into some problems, because neither Judaism not Islam have any mechanism for dealing with sin in a non-linear fashion. Their god is completely Time-linear and can only deal with men based upon their most recent actions. This causes two problems:
1. You have a man who has lived a horrible, despicable life full of sin and mayhem. The worst possible person you can think of. But, shortly before his death, he "sees the light," repents, offers the appropriate sacrifices, then dies and goes to heaven. [And some of you are saying, "But that's the great power of "god" and his offer of forgiveness to man!]
but...
2. You have a man who has lived a pretty great life of being good and just to other men as much as possible. A true saint among men whom everyone looks up to. But he "stumbles" and commits some sin or other and, before he can repent or make the appropriate sacrifice or whatever, dies suddenly. Because he dies with sin, he is denied heaven. AND GOD CAN'T DO A DAMN THING ABOUT IT! Just, oops! That's too bad, but you have sin and can't come in.

Let me tell you, that's the kind of god I want to follow. One who is bound up in his own arbitrary rules and inability to see beyond the same linear timeline as man.

You "Christians" can stop patting yourselves on the back, because, in a lot of ways, you're even worse. Probably in the most important ways, you're worse.
But we'll talk about that next time.

Angels Unbound: Yahoel (an a-to-z post)

Yahoel
Yahoel likes to bill himself as the Manifestation of the Power of God. He is the restrainer of the Leviathan and will be the one to unleash it upon the Earth during the End of Days. After the War of Heaven, and because of it, Michael has formed close bonds with Yahoel. He is the Guardian Angel of the Chosen.

He is also the choirmaster of Heaven and taught the Angels to say the praises of the Father.

His body is like a sapphire with hair like snow.



Already released:

Fallacies of the Church (part two) -- All You Need Is God

Maybe you've heard the joke:

There was a man caught in a flood because he didn't leave his house when he was told to evacuate. Rather than leave, he put his faith in God to save him. The waters rose higher and higher until he was eventually forced to climb out onto his roof. Once there, a man in a small boat came by and offered to carry him to safety. The man replied, "No, thank you. God will save me."

The waters continued to rise until he was sitting on the very top of his roof. A couple of men came by in a fishing boat and offered to carry him to safety. The man replied, "No, thank you! God will save me."

The waters continued to rise until he was forced to climb to the top of his chimney to sit. A helicopter came by and lowered itself and dropped a rope. The man replied, "No, thank you! God will save me!"

The waters continued to rise, and the man was swept away and drowned. Upon entering Heaven, he said to God, "God, I put my faith in you. Why didn't you save me?"

God answered, "I sent two boats and a helicopter. What more did you want?"

** ** **

Unfortunately, this joke is the perfect example of one of the greatest lies of "the church": God is all you need. And, hey, I get it; there are plenty of verses you can point to in the Bible that seem to say that, plenty of verses that talk about how God will supply your needs. Your physical needs. Except, the problem there is that those needs, with the exception of manna in the desert, don't magically appear. People provide them.

The thing is this: This is one of the most harmful lies of the church, this idea that God is all you need. It's always delivered in the context of someone needing help, which is what makes it so destructive. Are you going through an emotional upheaval, like a divorce? Don't worry; God is all you need. Are you going through a financial difficulty, like you just lost your job and can't make your house payments? Don't worry; God is all you need. Did you just suffer a physical trauma, like you found out you have cancer? Don't worry; God is all you need.

This line is always delivered in an effort to get the human(s) saying it out of any responsibility to be of assistance in the situation. "Oh, you don't need me. God is all you need." Then, if that situation doesn't turn around and end up in a positive manner? Well, there's definitely something wrong with the individual who had the problem. That person didn't "trust" God enough or, maybe, and even worse, God didn't like that person to begin with.

"All you need is God" is a cop out from "the church" and its members delivered on a weekly basis to people "the church" doesn't want to associate with.

What's worse (and it's worse because it's more insidious) is that it teaches people to not accept help, just like the guy in the joke. Accepting help from other people is some twisted kind of weakness and proof that you're not trusting God to... what? Who knows. Materialize a stack of money in your living room? "Fix" the spouse who is initiating the divorce? Heal you over night of the cancer? I'm just going to say this: If you're in need and someone offers help, fucking take the help! That's what people are for. Because God is actually not all you need.

What I know from experience from the use of this statement against people (and, yes, I do mean "against"), either from getting out of needing to offer help or people refusing to ask for it, is that when things don't work out, people feel abandoned by God and, therefore, abandon "the church," which, actually, might be for the better. However, destroying someone's faith is never for the better. And "the church" was put here to help people, not to tell them that they only need God and everything will be okay.

Look, I'm not going to get into a tit for tat verse argument about the validity of the statement; that would be pointless. Instead, I'm going to look at one particular event in the Bible, a foundational event, you could say. It doesn't even matter if you take this event as literal fact or some sort of metaphor, the truth that comes out of this is the same either way if you believe that God created man as a being meant to be in a relationship with Him. Let's look at Adam:

God is sitting around up in Heaven and, evidently, being a bit bored. All He has are Angels who don't have "free will," whatever that means considering a third of them rebelled against Him. Whatever the case, God decides to make a man, and He does. For a while, everything is great. God comes down to the special place He made for the man, Eden, and hangs out with him every night. Maybe they played poker? Or, maybe, they had a long running game of Monopoly going? You know with just two people that game can go on for ages. Or, maybe, they just skipped stones on the lake. I don't know.

What I do know is that, after a while, God realized that He, He being God!, was not enough for Adam. Adam was lonely and bored and couldn't handle all of the work of taking care of Eden all by himself. God was NOT all Adam needed. The end result of that is... well, people. Social people that need to depend on each other and cannot get by on God alone, as it were.

And I could go on and on. God appeared to Moses and told Moses that He would be with him, and Moses said, "Nope, I need a person." David had Jonathan. Paul had Barnabas. Jesus had his disciples! God, as man, needed people! Obviously, God is NOT all you need.

That the current iteration of Christianity is full of this message, "All you need is God," from the pulpit and pews to Christian music, is, well, it's horrible and destructive and a lie. In fact, it's undermining to the whole message of true Christianity. Of course, what we have in the United States today is more of a political movement, not a faith, and that message fits right in with that. A church that is preaching the "all you need is God" teaching is, more than likely, not a church you should be attending. Unless, of course, you're already bought into the same idea as a way of avoiding helping people.

Unexpected Applause: Temporary Anne

One of the things I like about the writing of Briane Pagel is that you can kind of see the questions that must be going through his head that inspire the stories he writes. So, like, with the After, you can see the questions about Heaven and the nature of Heaven that inspired the novel. And, so, Temporary Anne

seems to me to be a logical extension of his exploration of Heaven into an exploration of Hell. And what an unsettling exploration it is.

And, actually, in this instance, I'm glad I can't see what's in Briane's head to give him ideas for all of the horrible monsters he creates for this book. And they are. Horrible, that is. And fairly disgusting. But, you know, when designing minions from Hell, they ought to be.

However, as repulsive as his creatures are, they do not approach the level of repulsiveness that his main character attains. I don't think I've seen a truer example out there of the anti-hero. On the one hand, she's trying to escape Hell, and, well, it's Hell, so you are kind of wanting her to do that. But... well, the "but" is full of spoilers, but there comes a point when the idea of her escaping for any longer is not something you want to see happen.

And, as bad as she is, she is not the worst character in the book.

From a train wreck perspective, reading this book is like watching one. And it's fascinating. If you like horror, this is definitely a book worth reading.

However, there are editing issues. Some of them, most people won't notice. Like the punctuation stuff. But the verb tense mistakes might catch some people, although I'm not convinced that most people will notice.

Overall, I'd give the book a B. Maybe a B- because of the editing issues. Definitely worth $0.99, though.

BUT there's more!

Included at the end of the book is a series of short stories by various writers including one by yours truly. So here's the thing there: I was going to release "The Magic Cookies" as an individual story for $0.99, so, of course, I think the $0.99 price for Temporary Anne is more than worth it. And, hey, "The Magic Cookies" is a funny story, and you should all read it.

I'd review the other stories included except that I haven't quite gotten that far. I finished Anne because that was my priority, but that's it. However, Rusty has a story in there that is, at least, part of one that I've read. I'm not sure if it's the whole thing (because it looks too short from what's in the table of contents), but, however much of that story that's in there (all or part), it's also well worth the read. What all of this says to me is that for less than a buck, this book is a steal.

[Note: Once I finish the short stories, I will post an update with short reviews of those. Except "The Magic Cookies." I can already tell you that that one is GREAT and you should run right out and read it. Oh, wait, you don't need to run anywhere. Even better!]

The Religion of Writing: Part One -- Religion

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be offensive in any way. It's about an actual experience which will serve as an example to my actual point in this series. Having said that, though, and knowing that religion is a touchy subject, as is writing, I know that this post is opening to door to people being offended. Just know that when I write this, I'm not really condemning anyone else's beliefs or belief system. I am condemning people that are condemning of others' beliefs, though, because that's just wrong. People ought to be allowed to believe whatever crazy thing they want to believe no matter how wrong it is without the fear of other people coming along and damning them for it. You know, as long as those beliefs aren't hurting someone else.

I started working at my church at a pretty young age. I don't mean just helping out in VBS and stuff like that, although I did do those things, too; I mean I was actually on staff and getting paid. I was 15 when I started being in charge of things like the gym and being left to supervise various recreation programs we ran. By the time I was in college, I was actually in charge of the youth and recreation programs.

One of the things we did was rent out our gym building (which had the chapel in it (as opposed to the sanctuary, which was the bigger building where we had "big" church)) to other church groups that didn't have a gym at their church. The most common reason other churches wanted to rent our facilities was to hold lock-ins. That meant I had to be there for the duration of any given lock-in. [Sometimes, during the summer, we would have a lock-in every weekend.]

There are a few things here you need to know:
1. My church was Southern Baptist. I have always liked to refer to the Baptists as the Pharisees of the Protestants. They are as tied to tradition and "how things are done" as the Catholics.
2. That being said, there are "worse" denominations (by worse, I mean even more strict and legalistic). One of those is the Pentecostals (and the Pentecostals really liked to rent out our gym).
3. Sometimes, to have something to do during a lock-in, I would invite some of my friends to hang out in the office with me. Seriously, it was important, because it was hard to stay awake otherwise. Just sitting and watching people skate and play basketball isn't all that entertaining.

4. You also need to know the basic fact of Pentecostalism: you only get to go to Heaven if you speak in tongues. [Yes, I'm boiling it down to its very core essence, but there's really not room, here, to elaborate.]

[The issue with the speaking in tongues thing is that it doesn't say that in the Bible. Not explicitly. There are some passages they base this belief on, but they create a logic trail you have to weave all through the Bible to come to that conclusion, and there are just as many passages that knock the foundation out from under that belief.
And, now, the plot is set for you.]

So... there was this lock-in, and I had invited a couple of my friends from college, both ministerial students, to come hang out for the night. I mean, it's free food which is pretty close to the Holy Grail for college students. All the pizza you can eat is a pretty big draw, and, in all actuality, getting invited to come to one of these things with me was pretty highly sought after. These were my two best friends, and it wasn't the first time they'd done this.

At one point, I was in the office working on something; I don't remember what but something to do with the lock-in. The guys had wandered off to the lounge where the TV was; one of them to work on a class assignment, which happened to be a sermon. He had his Bible out and open. The two of them were alone in the lounge. For a while.

But a group of the women (moms and such (chaperons)) who had been setting something up in the chapel for later in the evening came out into the lounge and found my friends there, one of them with his Bible out (maybe both of them, I'm not sure). One of the women asked them what they were doing, and the one working on the sermon responded that that's what he was doing...

And the group of women began telling my friends about how they were going to Hell.

It was the noise of the arguing that drew me down the hall. My two friends were surrounded by about half a dozen Pentecostal moms, one of the scariest things on the planet, I'm pretty sure. One of my friends was holding an open Bible with which he was refuting statements by the women. Now, here's the interesting part of that:

One of the women would say something like, "Well, the Bible says blah blah blah."
And my friend, with the Bible in his hand, would look up that passage of scripture and say, "That's not actually what it says. It says," and he would read it, "blah blippity blip blah."
To which the woman would reply, "Well, that's wrong, because my pastor says it says blah blah blah."
Did I say that my friend had his open Bible in his hand?
But the Bible was wrong because of what some woman thought her pastor had said about what was in the Bible. And none of the women had ever read the Bible. Many of them had never actually physically read any part of it because they had been indoctrinated to believe that they shouldn't read it because, you know, they couldn't figure it out for themselves, so it was better to just let the pastor tell them what was inside.
Even if it wasn't.
[I'm not making that part up. Several of them made statements to that effect.]
It didn't matter that my friends had the book in question in their hands, the proof, so to speak. The proof, the actual data, was "wrong."

That's what I walked in on. I was no less offended than my friends, but I was offended because they were in my church telling us we were going to Hell. My only question was why they wanted to rent our building if they believed we were a church on the way to Hell. With or without the hand-basket.

Since I was in charge, though, I had to break the whole thing up, so I sent my buddies down to the office to cool off for a while.

I'll be explicit here:
Many writers are just like those women in the way that they treat writing. In all sorts of ways. Things like traditional publishing being god. Agents being priests carrying the Holy word that can't be questioned. And all sorts of other things that I'm not ready to get into, yet, because we'll get to them in good time. Just be thinking about the ways you might be like that group of women. Believing without questioning what's being handed down to you.