The day I gave my Mama a heart attack.

[Are_grits_groceries]

I had come home for a visit, and we were talking about this and that. We got to talking about religion which we could do most of the time because she wasn't a Bible beater. She went to church and taught Sunday School, but she had no time for the hypocrites and haters. When some wingnut would make some religious based pronouncement, I could always rely on her to put it in a proper perspective. She'd shake her head and say,"They need to be shot with shit, and killed for stinking."

Anyway... As we were sitting there, I made the pronouncement that I didn't believe you needed to believe in Jesus to go to heaven. Then before I even looked up, I thought, "Uh oh." I had just said I didn't believe in the whole foundation of Christianity to my Mama. I should have told her I was gay instead.

When I looked up, she was frozen in place with this indecipherable look on her face. It wasn't anger or surprise, and I couldn't quite place it. She didn't say anything or move a muscle. She was catatonic for Christ or something. I waved my hand in front of her face. Nothing. I turned my head sideways, and asked her if she was a pillar of salt. Not a word. I asked her if I needed to leave and come back with a fatted calf or something. Silence.

I decided I might as well try to explain. In for a penny, you keep the change. I told her that I had had arguments since I was old enough to remember about this idea. I had argued when I was a teenager that if someone acted as Jesus would want but they never knew about him, why would they go to Hell. I was always assured that it didn't matter how good they were, they had to come to Jesus. I asked about babies who were too young to know anything. I was told that if they hadn't been baptized then they weren't bound for glory.

I said if that was the case, then Jesus had been reduced to a magic word like Abracadabra or Shazam. You could be meaner than a rattlesnake, and still ask Jesus for forgiveness and you were home free. However, if you did the work of Mother Teresa, but you didn't know the magic formula, you were bound for hell. I told her I never would believe that.

She limbered up a bit then, and finally said that she didn't think it was that cut and dried. She went and took a nap. I never brought it up again, but I found out she used the story for a basis of a lesson in Sunday School. I'm not sure if I was the good guy or the bad guy. Mama was always using my brother and I along with several cousins as a basis for her lessons.

I decided I wouldn't tell her that my brother had told me he was a Druid.

[dorkulon]

1. It's a good point--but believing in heaven is still kinda silly to me.

I get that people don't want to die, but I don't want to be fat either, and yet here I am in 42-waist pants.

[NMDemDist2]

2. that was the same logic I used when the nuns told me the same thing when I was seven

I decided that GOD was an ass and have never looked back

[ejpoeta]

7. what's amazing to me is what i was taught about jesus and god and how

it contradicts all this stuff i keep hearing about god and jesus now.... like how jesus would have nothing to do with the big wigs and hung out with the prostitutes and ne'er do wells. yet somehow i am to believe that he would shun them were he here now and go along with the church and the christians. there are so many contradictions that are there for those that bother to ask questions.... that's why they don't like when you ask questions. i asked questions.... i went to catholic school and ccd classes and stuff. the more you think, the less it makes sense. not that i don't believe in god.... just that i question religion and their book and frankly their whole line of teaching juxtaposed to the reality of the pope and his summer house and living like a king.... and being deified, basically, by the catholics.... how does that fit in with what we are supposedly taught to believe??? i can't speak for other religions, because i am not familiar with them as i was raised catholic....

i do know that i have an uncle who went to all the trouble to tell us of how my dad drove all the way to vermont to help him with getting his church ready for its opening and then stayed for the first service and then left to come all the way back to wny..... now this was after he came from vermont to visit my dad at his deathbed in the hospital.... i was ready for war were he to try to 'save' my dad who is catholic.... i may not be catholic anymore, but i will protect my father's right to his beliefs and not try to take it from him... especially at his last days.... i had heard how uncle ed had gone to his own parents and tried to 'save' them at their deathbed. he was very proud that he got them to accept jesus. uggh. oh no way was he doing that to my dad!! my dad did everything for everyone else. including his brother ed. if the stuff he had done in his life for his sibling and his kids and everyone else wasn't enough to get into heaven, then no one deserved to be there.

[safeinOhio]

3. You are a Universalist.

A loving God wouldn't send anyone to suffer for eternity.
You could also remind Mom about the story in the Bible of the separation of the sheep from the goats. It is not if you believe in Jesus, but, how you treated him. How you treated him was how you treated the least among us.

I don't really believe any of it, but love to study it.

[mdmc]

4. I would rather be in Gandhi's shoes when Judgment day come

If I had a choice between Hitler and Gandhi, I would choose Gandhi.

[ejpoeta]

5. i don't think you need to believe in jesus OR god to go to heaven.

it's about the way you treat others. it's not about any sort of declaration. i know plenty of people who believe in god and jesus, and they are more than happy to let people starve and go without healthcare because they don't want to have to pay for it. they think they are going to heaven. they think they are better than everyone else too. and then there are people who don't believe in jesus, but treat others with respect and decency and don't judge others. they just live their lives. I am not saying your mother is one of those i first mentioned.... i am referring to people i know who are relatives and judge everyone else and could care less about others. but they are going to heaven because they are christians and believe in jesus and all that. if god and jesus do exist, i tend to think the second example would be more likely to get to go to heaven then the first.

[Are_grits_groceries]

6. Mama was considered a "liberal."

She was a Christian, but she never beat me over the head with it after I was on my own and made it clear I wasn't going back to church. I think she was a used to differences in her family. Her oldest brother was an atheist.

I do have some other relatives who are endtimers, birthers, and whatever else. They loved Jesse Helms. They are scary.

[ejpoeta]

10. don't we all have those. i think i have the spectrum covered there....

i have friends who invited us to go to their church and after we respectfully declined never pushed it on us again. and then there were others who just kept hammering at it. i remember coming back to ny from AZ when i was 18/19... we went to a church that my BIL's sister attended. As soon as i heard them talk about women being subservient to men i almost stood up and walked out. LOL! hell no!!! we never went there again. LOL! I refuse to participate in anything that tries to make women less than anyone else. And I worry that my daughter may ever want to go to one of those churches. I know I said that if she ever were interested in going, I would take her... but i don't want her brainwashed!!

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. The preacher who gave the eulogy when

my Daddy died kept comparing him to Nathaniel. He talked about the fact that Nathaniel had been born in a poor place, but still became a good man. He said my father was the same way.

I cut my eyes over to my Grandma to see if she had taken in that last bit. The preacher had praised my Daddy, but he had inadvertently dissed the place where he grew up and everybody in it. A lot of them were sitting in the pews.

My Mama said that they sure as hell realized it, but they let it slide. Kinda like Sanford being King David. You better know the whole story and who you are talking to.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. "catatonic for Christ" Heh.

:thumbsup:

[Orsino]

9. If she said it's not cut-and-dried, she's essentially agreeing with you. n/t