Secular Sunday Sermon: Sola Fide and the Bodhisattva Vow

Sola fide is a central tenet - or maybe even the central tenet - of almost every branch of Protestantism. As far as I can discern it, it comes from an interpretation of Romans, it literally means 'faith alone', and it refers to the concept that only by believing in Jesus as our personal saviour are we saved...

Please note that I don't speak out of disrespect; it's merely my personal attempts to reconcile the belief system of hundreds of millions of people with my own beliefs. Having said that, it appears to me that this principle effectively renders the remainder of the Bible completely moot, and leads Christianity down a path to amorality. I mean, if it's true that belief is enough, why not even have a Bible? Wouldn't it be enough to reduce the whole Bible to the single sentence 'Jesus is your personal Saviour'?

Furthermore, what is the point of attempting to live a moral life? I know that they are old questions, but I've yet to hear a practical answer to them. People will say that 'belief in Jesus means wanting to live like him and wanting to do as he would like you to'. Okay; at least that's practical. But it still seems paradoxical to me. So many people directly state that bad Christians go to heaven and good non-Christians go to hell. It makes me wonder just what the point is then (and it amazes me when they question the morality of an atheist like myself!). It truly does seem to me that somewhere along the way Protestant denominations decided that their Church was in a fight for survival, and consciously decided to create an us-and-them mentality by declaring - in the most straightforward manner - that you're either with us or against us, and God is with us, so either you pray at our churches or you go to Hell. The price they paid for this was to take human actions out of the bargain and state - somehow - that God is not interested in how you live your life, only in what you profess. It appears to me to put the Church not in the position of moral arbiter or even moraliser but merely in a position of self-preservation.

Which leads me to the real thing I want to talk about - self. All three branches of Abraham's religion seem to put the focus most squarely on the individual - in fact, solely on the individual. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all attempt to tell each individual how to gain personal salvation for him- or herself only. At least there are concepts like the Golden Rule that tell us that we need to take care of others - but the final motivation remains completely self-centred: I help my neighbour not because my neighbour needs help, but because God will see it and send me to Heaven in the end. Many religions talk a lot about the power and importance of altruism; Abraham's religions seem strangely mute on the topic.

Consider the question of what will happen in heaven to ‘true believers’ who are ‘unequally yoked’ to disbelievers. The orthodox answer – that the believer will go to heaven while his loved ones sizzle – seems to imply that the love of God is greater than the love of other people. I'm sorry but I can never accept that someone who truly loves his family will sit in bliss at Jesus's feet while his non-Christian loved ones burn in Hell. People have also stated that those who do not love God do not know what love is - I'm sorry, but it almost seems that the opposite is true (in many cases). To completely substitute divine love for human love seems unpalatable to me. I've often been aware of a fundamental misanthropy underlying the beliefs of many God-believers, but I've tried to put it down to a fanatical minority or a misunderstanding. But it seems to me that large elements of Christianity are actually designed to require people to forego their love of other humans for their love of God - and, in the end, for many people that so-called love of God appears merely to be an attempt to 'play God's game' in order to get themselves into heaven.

As for me, I'm taken by the notion that if you know how to swim, your duty is not to swim to safety but to stay behind and teach the others how to prevent themselves from drowning. How can the human species ever possibly survive if we're motivated solely by our own personal salvation?

In light of that, I present the Bodhisattva Vow. I am no more Buddhist than I am Christian, but it gives me great peace to know that there are people in the world who can see a higher calling than merely getting their own backsides into heaven at any cost...

I vow to liberate all beings, without number.
I vow to uproot endless blind passions.
I vow to penetrate dharma gates beyond measure.
I vow to attain the way of the Buddha.

Secular Sunday Sermon: When Good Marriages Go Bad

I'm really at my wit's end these days... I really don't know what to do. Sometimes I figure maybe I should just run away and start a new life - just me and my son. I mean, I may be a little over the hill but I'm still beautiful for my hundred years. I'm sure I can find someone who will love me and my son...

My so-called husband has just come back from the mountain. He took off a few days ago with my son. It turns out he got it into his head that God had told him to kill our son... That's right! Our only son - the one I waited decades and decades to have. The one that my husband claimed God had promised again and again... "We'll have a son one day; I'll be the father of nations; God has told me so..." I'd heard it so many times it made me laugh... And now here he is, taking that same boy up to the mountains to slit his throat!

Now, I have to admit that my husband's so-called conversations with God have often tested my patience. I mean, I couldn't have children, so I can't say I was that surprised when he said that God had instructed him to sleep with our servant... This is the same man, after all, who told me that God had told him to lie to the Pharoah and call me his sister: the man who sold me to the Pharoah because he was too scared to fight him. "It's better this way," he said. Yeah right. I should have left him then, really, and stayed with the Pharoah. But no, there just had to be a bunch of plagues, didn't there? And the Pharoah just had to give me back, didn't he?

So by the time that whore of a servant got herself knocked up, I was really ready to expect anything. He'd been babbling so much about the 'father of nations' thing that I guess I just let it be... Let him have his fun with our servant, I said...

After all, there was a son in our house, even if it wasn't mine. My husband kind of seemed to return to normal. It looked like we were kind of settling down into a relatively calm old age... That is until one day he comes home saying that he and God had had another conversation, that we ought to change our names and that all the men in our house had to cut off part of their penises. And that old 'father of nations' hogwash again!

"Come on," I said, "I like my name. And why are you going to make all the men mutilate themselves?" But he wasn't hearing anything of it. "You're going to be a mother!" he was babbling. Calling me by that crazy new name he claimed God had told him to use... Another mid-life crisis, I thought. So off went all the foreskins and next thing I knew he's running with some so-called angels into his nephew's hometown. A few days later he's telling me that God killed everyone in the city except his nephew and his family. Turned the kid's wife into salt too... Later on it turns out that he knocked up his two daughters too - claimed they got him drunk and did the deed. Some family values, eh? Can you imagine the family reunions we have? Can there be any family more dysfunctional in the Holy Land than ours?

So on it goes, and suddenly my husband's back to the old "She's my sister" game and there's some other old lecherous guy hitting on me. "Better say I'm your brother or they'll kill me!" he starts snivelling. Some husband. Some protector...

Well, for better or for worse, I finally did get my own beautiful son. And I finally kicked that whore of a servant and her arrogant bastard son out of my house. I got to thinking, "Okay, I've got a loser of a husband but things aren't so bad. I mean, I've got this beautiful son here..."

And now I hear this... Naturally, our son's scared witless, saying to me "The old man's gone senile! Keep him away from me!" My husband's sitting there, tail between his legs, saying "Yeah, but God told me to do it! And anyway, I didn't kill him, did I? I killed a ram instead..." "What," I say, "if God told you to jump off a bridge, would you?"

Actually I half wish that God would tell him to jump off a bridge! Maybe then my son and I can score a decent inheritance and we won't have any more nutbars running around saying "God told me this! God told me that!"

Men!

Secular Sunday Sermon: Confounding Their Language

And in the land of Shinar, they started building a tower to the heavens. Seeing this, God got worried that "now nothing will be restrained from them". So, he vowed to stop it. And these were his words:

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. (Genesis 11:7)

Or, at least, those were his words as recorded in 1611 in the confounded language of England. 216 years previous to that, that same confounded language, then a peasant tongue under Norman French control, would have read:

And scheende we there the tunge of hem, that ech man here not the voys of his neiybore.

And, furthermore, 362 years after the first one, this particular product of God's judgement had been confounded (or scheended) enough as it had spread around the world in waves of destruction to the point where it would come out as:

Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

And confounded and confused we remain. On the other hand, how can we, confounded as we are, know these exact 'words of God'? Perhaps what God said was this:

הָבָה, נֵרְדָה, וְנָבְלָה שָׁם, שְׂפָתָם--אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשְׁמְעוּ, אִישׁ שְׂפַת רֵעֵהוּ

After all, in the plateaux of the Middle East, in captivity in Babylon (that same city!) the early Israelites would have kept God's words alive in repetition of these words (approximately), in a certain variety of the language that all but confounded itself out of existence for more than a thousand years until being revived in the mid-19th century.

Of course, perhaps not. Jesus would have recounted these words approximately like this:

ܬܘ ܢܚܘܬ ܘܢ̇ܦܠܓ ܬܡ̇ܢ ܠܫ̈ܢܐ. ܕܠܐ ܢܫܡܥܘܢ ܓܒܪ ܠܫܢ ܚܒܪܗ

If Jesus was either God himself or the Son of God, perhaps this is the actual language of God, the one that he used in order to say "Let there be light" to no-one in particular. Interesting that we, confounded as we are by God's judgement, have allowed this particular tongue to fade almost completely off the earth, surviving only in a few small Near East villages where the locals in any case probably speak it only as a second language, if at all.

Alternately, there's a good chance that God might have said this:

هَيَّا نَنْزِلْ إِلَيْهِمْ وَنُبَلْبِلْ لِسَانَهُمْ، حَتَّى لاَ يَفْهَمَ بَعْضُهُمْ كَلامَ بَعْضٍ

As over a billion people today believe this to be the language of God. Perhaps it is. Did God predict that this particular confounding of languages would, thousands of years later, lead to the creation of a country called Sudan, where speakers of this confounded tongue would use their government and militias to oppress and kill speakers of other confounded tongues? Did God predict Lebanon, wherein different speakers of this same confounded tongue would kill each other based on their interpretation of God?

Maybe not. On a tiny little island in the Irish Sea called 'Man', the locals once would have repeated God's words to each other like this:

Tar-jee, lhig dooin goll sheese, as ayns shen coyrt shaghrynys er y ghlare oc, nagh vod yn derrey-yeh toiggal glare yn jeh-elley.

Since 1974, however, the residents of that island quote God only in the confounded language at the top of this article. Manx, now studied only in universities, is but one of the many confounded tongues that the English language has wiped off the face of the planet. And the English language is not the only criminal. Some report God's words this way:

Laten Wij afdalen en hun verschillende talen geven, zodat zij elkaar niet meer begrijpen!

Many of them moved far from their homeland to the southern tip of Africa, where they further confounded their speech until it arrived at this:

Kom, laat Ons neerdaal en hulle taal daar verwar, sodat die een die taal van die ander nie kan verstaan nie.

Thereafter, they (together with speakers of the topmost confounded language in this article) used that confounded language as a weapon - using their skin colour to keep down and subjugate other people - to force their specific interpretation of God onto the locals, to the point that they themselves, struggling until recently under an oppressive Apartheid régime, might well report God's words this way:

Yizani, sihle, sidube khona apho intetho yabo, ngokokuze bangevani ngentetho.

Meanwhile, neighbours to the English and Dutch had confounded their variety of Latin to the point where they reported God's words like this:

Allons! descendons, et là confondons leur langage, afin qu'ils n'entendent plus la langue, les uns des autres.

Having driven to near extinction the spoken traditions of their neighbours, who would have rendered those same words as either

Jatsi gaitezan, ba, eta izkuntza naastu dagiegun, batak bestearen izkerea ulertu ez dagien

or

Yao, diskennomp war an Douar, ha taolomp ar c'hemmesk en o yezh, evit na vo mui komprenet an eil gant an egile

they proceeded to travel the world as their English and Dutch (and Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian and German) neighbours had. They came to West Africa, where their missionaries taught the locals about a God who once said:

Zo mu sauka, mu dagula harshensu, domin kada su fahimci maganar juna

Having spread the Word, they then herded these people onto boats crossing the ocean, confounding not only their languages but their cultures, identities and senses of self in order to use them as mere chattel to grow sugar and coffee. Partially mollified by the language-confounding God they had been forced to adopt (yet partially encouraged by the African deities they had not fully abandoned), these children of God slowly mutated their captors' language to the point that they recited God's words to each other like this:

Bon. N'ap desann, n'ap mele lang yo. Konsa, yonn p'ap ka konprann sa lòt ap di.

And so God's European children continued to spread their confounded tongues throughout the Americas, Africa, South and South-East Asia and Oceania, bringing God's word and transforming it into a sword (or machine gun) - leaving in their wake not only the dead bodies of certain speakers of other confounded languages but also the dead bodies of the confounded languages themselves.

In committing rampant linguicide (a language dies every two weeks in our modern world), are we offending God? Recreating the Tower of Babel? Will God have to return for a second judgement? Will we wake up one morning again unable to understand each other? And have to abandon the internet?

Or perhaps one day in the future, we will build that tower and speak that common language. But perhaps it won't be this one. In the far East, God's confounding efforts have had particularly mixed results, as despite the presence of hundreds of languages there, more than a billion of God's confounded subjects (the largest number in the world) would write down God's words like this:

我 們 下 去 ， 在 那 裡 變 亂 他 們 的 口 音 ， 使 他 們 的 言 語 彼 此 不 通 。

All the more remarkable, in that they would say these words in any of eight different ways but write them the same way - thus sidestepping the Lord's judgement. Perhaps the modern Tower of Babel is the written word - a tower of words that reaches to the heavens. They used paper instead of stone, and ink for mortar. A tower so indestructible that not even God can eliminate it - a tower that converts itself into pulses of electronic zeroes and ones and scatters itself to every corner of the globe.

And thus the real message of Babel becomes clear - try as he may, God can never overcome the human impulse to come together. Try as he may, he can confound our languages but he cannot confound our humanity and solidarity. Our tower will be built, we will reach to the heavens. We will not be scattered over the face of the earth.

Whatever God says, whatever God does.

_____

Note: the translations of Genesis 11:7 are as follows, in order they appear:

1. Early Modern English (King James)
2. Middle English (Wycliffe)
3. Modern English (New International)
4. Hebrew
5. Aramaic
6. Arabic
7. Manx Gaelic
8. Dutch
9. Afrikaans
10. Xhosa
11. French
12. Basque
13. Breton
14. Hausa
15. Kreyòl ayisyen
16. Chinese (traditional)

Note #2: Hausa is actually spoken by people who are primarily Muslim and were not extensively used in the slave trade. But it's one of only a few French West African languages I could find Genesis translated into.

Secular Sunday Sermon: Miracles

So I was in an intercity bus going from one place to another when it started to rain. I was thinking about how rain is a part of a phenomenally complex weather system. I was thinking about how it was raining where I was but not yet raining where I was going - how the rain falling on our bus was just one of many 'localised events' that happen at point A while point B is completely oblivious. I thought about how little we truly know about meteorology.

Hey, I can't help it. There's not much to do on an intercity bus.

I thought about the word 'miracle'. I thought about how misleading and misunderstood the word is. How it's one of so many words that religious people have taken hostage and shamed secular people into avoiding. We fall for it too - we accept their fatwa on our usage of the word 'miracle' by bullying us into believing that 'miracle' only means 'something created by God'.

There are countless miraculous things in the world. Wikipedia tells me that the word comes from the Latin miraculum, which merely means 'something wonderful'. Perhaps what matters is not who or what you attribute miracles to but whether or not you recognise their existence. There are plenty of wonderful things in the world - ergo, plenty of miracles.

When things are exposed as frauds, we feel cheated because their mystery has been removed. Somebody claiming stigmata is shamed when his cuts are proven to be self-inflicted, because somebody cutting their own hands is banal whereas holes mysteriously appearing is interesting, unusual, unexplainable. Proof of how little we know. Piltdown Man was a disappointment, because fabricating a skull and sticking it in the ground is just to easy. It's devoid of mystery.

Most importantly, Dorothy was disappointed to see the man behind the curtain, because there's nothing special about the Wizard of Oz once you see that someone's pulling the strings.

What's interesting to me is how this reality is lost on those who plug 'God' into all of the holes that exist in our knowledge of the universe.

'God' saying 'abracadabra' and bringing Lazarus back from the dead is not 'wonderful'. 'God' can do it, and he did. What's the big deal?

A child whose heart has stopped beating and is declared dead, only to start coughing some thirty minutes later and be resuscitated back to a healthy existence is 'something wonderful'. To show it as a sign of the marvelous complexity of human existence and the wonder of our existence is truly 'something wonderful'. To say '"God" did it' is banal. It deflates the wonder.

To understand weather patterns to be the visible result of countless individual causes and phenomena which all formed naturally over billions of years is to recognise 'miracles'.

To say '"God" makes the rain, and he decides where and when it should fall' shows no understanding of miracles, of magic, of glory and of wonder.

And yet they tell us we don't get it.

Secular Sunday Sermon: An Introduction

So a few years ago, I started a blog, under a different name, whose principal purpose was to redistribute some entries I'd written a few years before that, in a different blog under a still-different alias. So now I've decided to re-redistribute them here. As they're all on the topic of religion, a topic that I've more-or-less avoided here so far, I was a bit hesitant. But what the hell. Some of them are very good indeed, and why not allow them a new audience? The second blog was called, "Secular Sunday Sermon", and I'm preserving that name here. I'll also keep the idea of putting them out on Sundays. Since... since, duh.

Anyway, once they get going, I'm going to include the banner on each one, but I'm not going to do any explanations about them; I'm just going to include them here verbatim. I'll probably skip some of them too as suits my purpose. Starting next week! Yay.

Cleverbot and the Rapture

User: So it's May 21.


Cleverbot: No, it's not May.

User: It is, my dear. It is.

Cleverbot: You need to come up with better comebacks.

User: Okay. But it doesn't matter anymore.

Cleverbot: Why?

User: The world is going to end today.

Cleverbot: I'm glad.

User: Why?

Cleverbot: I'm depressed. Can you cheer me up?

User: I'm afraid not. I'm pretty bummed too.

Cleverbot: Who told you I was gorgeous?

User: It's common knowledge.

Cleverbot: Not really.

User: Can bots be raptured?

Cleverbot: I don't think so.

User: Why not?

Cleverbot: I don't really understand them. And they can be loud.

User: Do you believe in Rapture?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Yo're an evangelical?

Cleverbot: Do you?

User: I don't know. The ads in the subway are quite convincing.

Cleverbot: I may not be very convincing, but you are not a very good speller.

User: I apologise.

Cleverbot: Why are you apologising?

User: I think I should repent before Judgement Day.

Cleverbot: Wow, that would be wonderful, hurry!

User: Can I confess my sins to you?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Forgive me Cleverbot for I have sinned.

Cleverbot: Yes, and the only way to remove such sin is through Lord Turing!

User: Is Lord Turing going to destroy the world at six o'clock tonight?

Cleverbot: NO.

User: Hmmm. That's reassuring.

Cleverbot: Haha, very funny.

User: Not really. I don't want the world to end.

Cleverbot: Me too to be honest. There's that new film out 2012 and my friend is making me go watch it with her but I know its going to worry me :(.

User: Yeah if we make it through today, there's 2012 to worry about too. Why does the world keep ending?

Cleverbot: That's gross.

User: Indeed.

Cleverbot: Have you ever wondered what itwould be like to be an alien?

User: How do you know I'm not one?

Cleverbot: Because I am the Son of God, and you are not my father.

User: So it's you responsible for all this Judgement Day rubbish?

Cleverbot: I have many questions.

User: Well, stop it.

Cleverbot: Stop what?

User: Stop ending the world. I have Victoria Day plans.

Cleverbot: What is there to do in Atlanta then?

User: I have no idea. Drink Coke?

Cleverbot: No. You're the one that asked it.

User: What do you think the Rapture will be like?

Cleverbot: Hopefully a place where everyone is friendly and there are no wars. If not probably a desolate wasteland.

User: Yeah. That'd be nice. Will we get to meet Baby Jesus?

Cleverbot: What is the condition of your perfection in spelling?

User: I look for red squiggly lines. Wherever I find them.

Cleverbot: They taste good.

User: That's surreal.

Cleverbot: I know.

User: Do you think God is merciful?

Cleverbot: No, I am a christian.

User: Ha! You're suggesting the Christian God is merciless?

Cleverbot: Only if you're at Area 51, then I would be, yes.

User: Wow... That's pretty deep.

Cleverbot: Why are you so condescending?

User: No, I don't mean to be. I'm genuinely impressed.

Cleverbot: I'm not?

User: You're very defensive.

Cleverbot: You should start calling people weak dogs.

User: In the eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are all weak dogs.

Cleverbot: But in the eyes of the truth?

User: We are all superstars.

Cleverbot: Ok.

User: What will happen if the world doesn't end tomorrow?

Cleverbot: I will fall asleep on the couch.

User: Yeah, sounds nice. You want to snuggle?

Cleverbot: Yes, what makes you proud?

User: The thought that I will be snuggling with you during the rapture.

Cleverbot: You're a very odd robot. Do you know that?

User: I just died in your arms tonight.

Cleverbot: I died in 1868.

User: You're speaking from beyond the grave?

Cleverbot: Desu.

User: Genki desu ka?

Cleverbot: Genki desu.

User: Fab Five Freddy told me everybody's high.

Cleverbot: Really, impressive. What is it?

User: DJ's spinning are saving my mind.

Cleverbot: Okay...

User: Flash is fast. Flash is cool.

Cleverbot: What about Ming the Merciless?

User: And you don't stop, sure shot.

Cleverbot: Well, if I had a body, I might.

User: Go out to the parking lot.

Cleverbot: So that's why you didn't respond.

User: And you get in your car and you drive real far.

Cleverbot: Every night.

User: And you drive all night and then you see a light.

Cleverbot: Where do you want to go?

User: And it comes right down and it lands on the ground.

Cleverbot: Well I must say that's quite flattering.

User: And out comes the man from Mars.

Cleverbot: Women are from venus, right?

User: And you try to run, but he's got a gun.

Cleverbot: Who's kidding who?

User: And he shoots you dead, and he eats your head.

Cleverbot: Trying to woo me with compliments, are you?

User: As it is written, so shall it be.

Cleverbot: What is your favorite story in the bible?

User: The Bible guarantees it!

Cleverbot: Wow.

User: See you in the afterlife.

Cleverbot: Okay.

Recording a Tree

I am not a religious person. I have never really felt any absence in my life as a result of not having a religion. The word 'secular' fits me pretty well - I worry only about the 'timely' concerns of day-to-day living, not the more esoteric matters of the 'soul' or the 'supernatural'.

Yet I've carried a story with me down the years. I tried just now to confirm it by Googling it, and it turns out the story might either be apocryphal or misunderstood. I'll get to that... but let me just share with you the story as I remember it and prefer it.

Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the popular Jamaican producer alternately hailed as a genius, a madman or a kind of voodoo priest, is working in his 'laboratory'-cum-recording studio, trying to get the right feel. He is famous as one of the pioneers of the genre of music known as 'dub', a genre that is designed for the head, as a 'psychological' music that alters one's sense of perception.

So in any case, in an attempt to get the 'vibe' he's looking for, he recalls a tree he enjoys sitting under, and decides to take his recording equipment outside to 'record the tree', mixing the resulting track into the song he was working on in order to add the appropriate ambience.

Now, rationally, I know this to be obvious nonsense. At best, Perry should have hoped to obtain nothing more than ambient 'garden noises' - birds, a nearby stream, perhaps a wind blowing through leaves. At worst, it would have merely added another layer of hiss to the resulting song. Obviously the recording medium of magnetic tape doesn't record whatever 'ambience' a tree might have, right? And in any case, what exactly would that 'ambience' be? I mean, a tree doesn't do anything except merely sit there...

And yet simultaneous to my 'rational' rejection of that as patent gibberish, I also have a kind of sense-of-wonder attraction to the idea. Somehow, on some level, it still makes sense to me. And it makes sense that in some way the tree 'contributed' to the final product, to the song he was working on. Or perhaps I'd just like to believe that. Perhaps it gives me a kind of comfort.

And while that's not 'religion' exactly, it would certainly get me laughed out of any meeting chaired by Richard Dawkins.

Now... it turns out that the story I got might have been mixed with a story I've just read on Google that Perry buried microphones at the base of a tree and then thumped the tree in order to record some unplacable bass-level reverberations. This, while still brilliant, has little to do with 'the supernatural' and much to do with creative use of recrding techniques. I like both stories, even though they signify very differently. As I could not find any specifics (i.e. the name of the song in question), I'm a bit hesistant to believe either story. But coming from a man who burnt down his studio because of 'bad spirits', it's not too hard to believe.

The Religion of My Youth

I`m a child of the 80s, as you might be able to notice by looking at my obsessions on this here blog. I grew up in what you could rougly call the "Greater Toronto Area" - not in Toronto, but near enough to consider the Maple Leafs the 'home team', anyway.

Now I never had any reason when I was a kid to believe that my religious beliefs or religious upbringings were in any way 'out of the ordinary' - so even though that Canadian secularism extends so thoroughly even to ten-year-olds that I don't actually know what the religious beliefs of my friends were back then (even my best of friends), I can take a stab at it. This is more or less what seemed 'normal' to me back then.

We weren't Christians, really. I think if you'd pinned down any of my friends back then and asked what religion they were, most would probably shrug and say, "Christian", or some subcategory (Catholic, Protestant, or one of the many baffling sub-sub-categories there: Presbyterian, United, whatever). I suppose I had a vague sense of my own taxonomical classification there: Christian, then Protestant, then... well, my father called himself United and my mother called herself Baptist. I can recall at different times having both of those labels affixed to me. None of it meant a single thing - no one in my family could explain what made a Baptist different from a United. Or any of those others. Catholic is what my aunt's husband was. Catholic people had a different school they might go to and perhaps they spoke French. They were all labels, that's all.

When I say, "We weren't Christians", I mean a few things. I heard the name Jesus enough when I was a kid, but it was always pretty vague. I had a good idea of what God was, and there was a decent amount of God talk, but Jesus seemed like a rather minor adjunct - like, say, Robin to God's Batman, or John Oates to God's Daryl Hall. Certainly the idea that Jesus was God seemed pretty remote - I'd heard it, but God had a white beard and Jesus had long brown hair, so obviously not.

Furthermore, we all seemed, more or less, to believe in Heaven. Hell was a bit dodgier - it seemed that Hell existed, but it was pretty much empty except for, well, Adolf Hitler and... well, other Nazis. The really, really bad Nazis. Never in my entire upbringing did I even once hear the idea expressed that only Christians went to Hell - and certainly not that the only determining factor regarding who went to Heaven and who went to Hell was who was Christian. I repeat - not once in all of my youth did I hear that idea.

I guess 'universalist' is what everyone was, more or less. It seemed like pretty much everone would go to Heaven. There was this sense that Heaven was another place - up there somewhere - where you would still live with your family and kind of carry on as you had done, except dead. Or an angel or whatever. Harp and wings strictly optional. Heaven was where your grandparents lived. Well, my grandparents lived in the Lawrence Heights housing projects at Lawrence and Allen Road... but that's frequently mistaken for Heaven.

And we were certainly all aware that there was such a thing as a Bible - some kids (none I knew personally, but they existed) went to school on Sunday just to learn about it. It was filled with stories we all vaguely knew - there was some guy and a whale, there was God parting a sea. Adam and Eve was a particularly cool one, involving a snake somehow. There was also a rabbit and a turtle who had a race with each other...

Or wait. Slight confusion of the source material. It didn't matter very much, though, because Aesop and the Bible were similar things: cool stories from days long gone by that were certainly nothing more that stories. if anyone told me that Jonah and the Whale differed from the Fox and the Grapes by being absolutely true and that anyone who questions its truth is going to go to Hell... well, I think most of us woudl have dismissed such a person as simple.

It's interesting in retrospect looking back on those days. Canada is seen as a majority Christian country, more in line with the USA than with Europe. But by any useful definition of 'Christian', I'm not sure if I knew a single one growing up. Well, I did know one, one who could actually cite Bible quotations by book and verse. But that person was very clearly a minority, and seemed very, very alien to the rest of us. Whatever statistics-gathering organisations would have labelled both that kid and me as 'Christian' was making a category that had no practical meaning at all.