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the god I was taught to believe in


The god I was taught to believe in had a lot of rules.  Of course, he didn’t expect you to be able to follow them. But he did expect you to try really, really hard.  And if you didn’t try really hard then you must not believe in him enough.  And that was bad news for you.  Because if you couldn’t believe enough then you would have to go to hell, forever.  So, while you didn’t have to worry about possibly failing at keeping the rules, you had to worry double about why you weren’t able to keep the rules.  Man, it was hard.

The god I was taught to believe in particularly didn’t like social change.  He didn’t like uppity blacks, he didn’t like (the people on) welfare, he didn’t like feminists.  But he did like patriotism.  I’m not sure if he liked patriotism in people in other countries, but he liked it in Americans.  He also seemed to like Israel, but jews not so much.  He liked country music, but not pop music.  I guess because you can't dance well to country music.  Finally, the god I was taught to believe in didn’t particularly care about poverty or the death penalty, but he was really pissed off about abortion.

As I grew up, I had friends who had been taught to believe in the same god as me.  Friends who wanted to be good.  But they couldn’t.  They were different.  I guess the god I was taught to believe in wanted to see them have to try even harder than the rest of us.  I guess so if they did manage to believe enough, it would be that much more satisfying for him.  Kind of narcissistic.  In short, the god I was taught to believe in was hard to trust.  Always watching.  Always ready to judge.  Kind of like an abusive parent.  Being taught to believe in this god couldn’t help but leave a mark.

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