I was raised Baptist, asked too many questions at Children's Sermon, and decided to stop going to church at 10, went to a friend's REEEEALLLY fundie church a few times at about 11 or 12 and was shown horrific Number of the Beast Hellpocolypse movies at Fun!Wednesday!Church! which (seriously) paired with watching movies and reading horror stories culminated with me learning how to sleep with my foot tucked under my butt because I kinda worried that Satan was going to ass-rape me while I slept (heyyyy, seeds of chronic insomnia much?!), read a lot of everything as a teen and young adult, dabbled in paganism in college, and studied a lot of medieval history on religion, and basically decided I'm agnostic -- I don't know, can't do anything about the existence or not of god(s)/whatever, Old Testament God is kind of a dick, MOST Roman/Greek gods are dicks, and if there is a god, he/she/it should be more mannerly and sensible that most people ascribe him/her/it to be, and if he/she/it is such a dick that I have to bow down and kiss its ass to get to heaven, send me to hell, kthxbai! -- I'mma just going to pet kittens and love rivers and sunsets and good stories and try not to be a dick.
Most of the sensible theology I've read boil down to Don't Be a Dick, But You'll Probably Be a Dick Sometimes, So Recognize Your Dickishness, Apologize and Try To Do Better. I kinda hope there's some type of afterlife/physics energy self/soul thang but if there isn't, I won't know I didn't go on, because I'll be dead and won't care anyway. and there's nothing I can do about it, so why stress? Live life, think about stuff and try to be nice to people, because being nasty and grasping and mean is just exhausting and horrid, and there's too many interesting, delicious, pleasurable, thinky, feely, pretty, amazing things to see and taste and experience, so eat the delicious cake and sit in the sun and read All The Things, and leave me the hell alone to do this, thanks, and fight against other people being Dicks.
That's the Church of Me.
I've set up a tea staging area so that I can have a cup steeping while I drink another cup. I have calendar reminders set so I know when to take more drugs. I'm trying to get some stuff done and also set up interviews for a couple Mountain View jobs.
I made 4 salads yesterday to have for lunches for the rest of the week. Apparently I did not do a great job of cleaning the veggies. Organic dirt is bound to be good for me, if a little gritty, right?
I love the mixture of theology and antihistamines.
God bless you all (for one reason or another).
I think it's really interesting that Jesus used the word "Abba" when referring to God; my understanding is it's the Aramaic equivalent of "Papa" or "Daddy" rather than the sterner "Father" that it's usually written as in the Bible. In that context, while I can certainly see people being a disappointment to God I can't quite imagine the angry torment-for-all-eternity response some people see Him having to everyone who doesn't measure up. (Then again, I have a pretty good relationship with my own father; friends who had strict authoritarian fathers probably didn't have the same connotations of the parent-child relationship when applied to religion.)
I think of lot of the nature of Christianity is from Paul's influence. It's been a while since I've read the letters, but Paul doesn't seem to be a very cuddly kind of guy.
In modern Hebrew, "Abba" is used like we use "Dad" in English -- it's the usual way that people address their fathers, not just little kids like "Daddy" would be. The more formal word for father is "Av." (My Hebrew grammar is terrible, but I don't think Av would ever be used when talking to your father, rather than about him -- I THINK that, if you wanted to talk TO your father formally, you'd address him as Avi, or "my father." But I could be totally wrong about this.)
A guy who translates Aramaic says that translating Abba as Daddy is incorrect, linguistically. [link]
Weird. I just got a call from someone in a nearby Bank of America branch indicating that she's assigned to me and that I should contact her with any banking or investment questions.
