Funeral Thoughts

I attended a funeral today, for an uncle of a good friend of mine. I know this family well and I knew this uncle. In fact, I have stayed with this uncle and his wife on a couple of separate occasions. Great people.

Attending this funeral brought me back inside the walls of the church I grew up in. The church where all of my religious trauma resides. It was an interesting experience, sitting though that service, alone in a pew in the back of the familiar sanctuary. 

There was a lot of emotion at this funeral. People were very somber. I have no problem with the idea of people taking comfort in the idea that a person's soul exists beyond the earthly body. I know that as ego driven humans, we really like the idea of NOT ceasing to exist after this life, especially when there has been a high degree of suffering. 

What I noticed that I DO take issue with is, a clergy person trying to use the emotionally fragile and vulnerable state of grief as a recruitment tool. Using it as a manipulation tool. "Dennis is going to heaven, don't you want to go to heaven too?" Gross.

The further I am separated from the church and the more I study things from a nonbiased perspective, the more I can see the level of indoctrination.  I see people blindly believing in things taught in church, that when you actually study religious history you find out, aren't even in the Bible. They're just ideas about scripture. They are interpretations and in many cases, just assertions with absolutely no backing whatsoever. The widely accepted ideas of heaven and hell, would fall under this category. 

The fact that even learned religious leaders can KNOW what is in the Bible and still preach ideas outside of it is gross to me. I mean, the Bible itself is a steaming pile, don't get me wrong. But, to teach things as the TRUTH that aren't even backed up in scripture is misleading at best. The rapture is a good example of something the church decided to add to its teachings back in the old days, with zero scripture backing it up. The rapture is not in the Bible. But most Christians don't read their Bible, outside of the cherry picked verses they are pointed towards. They are taught what to read and hot to interpret it. The only ones who truly read it with an open mind often turn out like me and see what a bunch of BS it is. It is eye opening and it is no more far fetched than any other ancient belief system.

I just sat there, listening to a guilt trip from a Pastor talking about this faithful and all-loving God. The God I know from the Bible is a lot of things, but all-loving is not on the list of things I would use to describe him. And why are we so arrogant that we refuse to consider the idea of this being all there is. Why can't this life be enough? And even if there is more, there is NO evidence to suggest that the Christian ideas are the truth. Heck, most of them don't even make a lick of sense. 

I know that those things brought people peace today, and I am glad they are able to find it. For me, I saw a man trying to use other people's pain to build his "flock."