Bad Religion

I sprung from the water, still holding my nose, and felt an innerving chill as if I was being touched by an invisible force. The stimulation started at my eyebrows reaching across my head. The hair on the back of my neck and arms stood at attention as if I was rubbing a balloon on the top of my head and pulling my hair up with static electricity. Not able to see yet, I could hear a tremendous roar of clapping and eminent comments bellowing toward me. As I opened my eyes, I saw only one person in a wheel chair was sitting still. Everyone else was standing and rejoicing that I had made a decision that would forever change my life. I stepped over the edge of the baptism tub, holding my robe in place, and laughed ardently. I was pleased by all of the people cheering and singing praise to me. I started toward the changing room and was met by the preacher who grasped my body in a taunt hug. “Welcome to God’s family,” he uttered as if he had rehearsed it a million times.
The sound of the gas pump stopping brought me back from my abstraction. I hooked the nozzle back to the pump and headed to the store to pay the clerk. I yearned for a cup of coffee, but knew that it would be improper to take it with me. When I returned to my car, I thought to myself, “I must be crazy.” Today I was going back to church after an absence of nearly eight years.
“Will anyone remember me?” I pondered.
“Will anyone judge me for not coming to church in so long?”
I often worried about what people might think of me, and in church this fear was never more present. I pulled into the parking lot and my stomach began to curl as if a hundred foot tidal wave was roaring back and forth in my body. I could see all of the elders standing in a circle in the lot going over the past week of news and gossip. I sat in the car finishing my cigarette. Gazing at all the people in their floral dresses and three piece suits single file into the door, I was strangely reminded of my school lunch line. I exited my car and headed to the door to join the line when my hands began to shake. I held them together and passed it off as me just being nervous. As I walked up the stairs toward the door I was greeted by one of the members of the church. “Welcome to Church of Christ,” she exclaimed, “please take a moment to fill this visitor card out and thank you for visiting with us today.”
“Visitor card,” I thought, “she is definitely new.” I have been a member of this church since I was twelve years old. I thought. “Just because I haven’t been to church in a while doesn’t mean I am not a member anymore.”
Walking into the doors, I realized a lot of things had changed. I noticed the teen room had been changed into the preschool room. I remembered walking into the teen room every Sunday morning after worship and meeting with all of my friends. After conversating momentarily about who had broken up this week and who had started dating, we were asked to quiet down and begin our studies. Danielle, the cutest girl in our class always sat next to me. We snickered back and forth. I didn’t know if she knew, but I had a huge crush on Danielle. She was like my rose, and her boyfriend was like my thorn. He and I never got along, most likely because of Danielle.
Walking into the new teen room, I didn’t feel the same as when I was younger. I was disappointed and walked out into the hallway. Looking to my left, I saw her. Danielle, grown and sexy, walking my way with a warm welcoming smile.
“Oh no, what will I say?” My knees began to shake as if I was about to go down like the walls of Jericho. “If I stand here quietly and close my eyes she might not recognize me and I wont have to suffer the embarrassment of nothing to say.
“Jack, I almost didn’t see you standing there.” I wished she wouldn’t have. “How have you been?” I stared at her with nothing coming to mind. I blurted out the only word I could think of, “Great!” As I noticed a ring on her finger, she announced that she had been praying for me and missed seeing me at church. I stood there smiling. “Well I had better get in there,” she said, and started toward the sanctuary. I followed behind thinking what a moron I had been for not knowing what to say. I stepped into the tall room and could smell the stale pages of the aged song books. The smell of the dusty pews aggravated my sinuses. This triggered a memory of a Sunday morning when right in the middle of a sermon I began sneezing uncontrollable and the preacher had to stop for a moment until I was finished. I sat down in the back row and stared at the people following closely into the doors and taking seats together. Some of them, looking back at me, would point and stare as if I were a traffic accident in the middle of the road and they were driving by slowly to see what happened. I notice Charles, Danielle’s boyfriend, walking down the aisle holding a baby and sitting next to Danielle. I guessed that they had a baby and probably got married. After making this assumption, I realized that it probably wouldn’t be that hard to speak to her anymore.
A man stood at the alter and asked for everyone to stand and sing. I heard a loud thud as everyone stood. This reminded me of a group of soldiers ordered to stand at attention. The sound of their voices singing in a roar was like hearing a band of trumpets marching in front of a platoon of waiting soldiers. I recalled standing and singing along when I was a child. The magnificent noise always sent chills up my spine. The song was finished and another man started a prayer. This bored me and I started to wish I wouldn’t have come. It seemed like the prayer had lasted at least a half hour when the words “in Jesus’ name we pray,” woke me from my detachment. After more songs and prayers it was time for communion. Each row was served with a platter of manna. The spiritual food was the remembrance of Christ’s body, of which was sacrificed for our sins. After this we were served a tray with small glasses of wine, which were in remembrance of Christ’s blood that was sacrificed. When the communion was finished, another man stood at the alter. He motioned the congregation to pray with him. He began to pray about offering and giving. I listened in disgust. I reminisced my mom giving me dollar bills, and me putting them in the basket every Sunday. As the basket passed my way, I didn’t bother to reach for my wallet. Instead I passed it to the next person. This part of the service bothered me. It felt like they were begging for money, or saying that if I didn’t give I wouldn’t pass through the pearly gates. We began another song and a closing prayer and then the children were let out for Sunday school classes. I took this opportunity to get out of there without anyone seeing me leave.
Driving home I thought about the service. I thought about how uncomfortable it was and wondered why I was fine with this lifestyle when I was younger. It dawned on me that church was more like a government then it was praising God. Even worse it felt like a dictatorship. When someone said stand, they stood. When someone said sing, they sung. When someone said give, they spent twenty percent of their weekly income. This all was done in the name of Jesus. If you don’t come to church you need to be saved, and if you go you need to save to go to church. I thought to myself that I didn’t have to dress nice for God. I had to dress nice to please everyone else. I didn’t have to sing loud and proud for God, I had to sing for the crowd. I didn’t have to stand, sit, dance, and give for God. I had to do all of these things so I could keep a good reputation for the people who went to my church. I didn’t have to do any of these things for God. I only have to live a righteous life and love him. I only have to acknowledge that he is the only one that truly matters in my life. I do not need any church or person to tell me this.

Perception vs. Reality

When you think about reality you think about your own life and the world around you. From the trees outside your window to the conversation you had with your family over breakfast this morning. Even now reading this, you think about the words and sentences that make the paragraphs and believe that you are actually reading and that the words are real because you can see them with your own mind and eyes. When you think about that last sentence you think about how perception and reality go hand in hand. You can perceive the sentence is there because you can see it, and because you can see it you know that it is real. It is not hard to tell if something is real. You can use your senses to do so. You can touch it and smell it and see it and taste it and maybe even hear it. When you use these senses you can be positive that what you are observing is real. It has a place in reality. A reasonable person can tell something is real as long as they can use their senses. If it is real it can be perceived. If it can be perceived can it be real? Or maybe the question should be if it can be perceived IS it real?

I have thought about this question for a great deal of time. I always get lost in my own head so I thought that maybe writing it down may help me. I often think about this question when I am looking into the mirror. I stare into my own eyes for a moment and I suddenly get very calm. I get stuck looking into my eyes and it feels like I can not move. Then my heart starts to race and I start to feel fear. It appears to me that I am looking at a different person, a person that is not me. I start to think, is this me? It looks like me, but is it me? I can perceive a person standing there perfectly still as I am doing, but the person looking back at me doesn’t seem to be the same as me. In some form or way the person staring at me is not me. How can this be? I am the only person in the room and the only person positioned in front of the mirror. Some people might see this as a sign of some sort of mental illness such as schizophrenia or something, but I ensure you this is not an illness it is a reality. I can perceive that a person is looking in the mirror because I can see that this is true. I can perceive that it is I who is looking into the mirror because I can see myself in the mirror. The thing is, sometimes even though I know it is me I feel like something is off, like it is me, but not me. How do I explain this? I explain this feeling by acknowledging that not everything you perceive is in fact a reality. Take as an example; seeing color. When you look at a school bus you see the color yellow. You see that the bus is yellow because the different frequencies of light that hit the bus are reflected back to your eye and your brain translates these frequencies of light to a color and tells you that the color is yellow. This is a process known as color perception. You perceive that the color is yellow because that is what your brain tells you. So if your brain told you that the color was purple, would the color be purple? If your brain tells you the color is purple then to you the color is purple. To someone else the color may be green, and to another it may be blue. In reality the actual color of the bus is unknown. The reason for this is that if the frequencies of light were not reflected from the bus and perceived by your brain you would in fact see nothing, just darkness. Since this is the case, what if the frequencies of light that are reflected from the bus were different. Now instead of seeing a yellow bus you may perceive it to be a different color, maybe a color you may have never seen. Quite possibly if there were no frequencies of light, there would actually never had been a color at all. Since this is true, the bus actually does not have a color at all. That is the reality of the color of the bus.

If you are walking toward the bus, how do you know how far away the bus is? You know because your brain uses a process called depth perception. Due to the process of depth perception you are able to see the world in 3 dimensions. You are able to gauge the distance of the bus because you eyes work as a team to create binocular vision. The way your eyes distinguish depth is very complicated but is more complicated by factors such as movement while looking at the object and eye focus. An example to this is if you are standing close to the bus, the bus looks larger. If you are standing farther away from the bus then it is smaller. Now if you are farther away from the bus and you are walking toward it, the bus will seem to get larger with every step. The opposite if you were walking away from the bus. Now say that you only had one eye. The distance to the bus will be harder to see because your eye can not see depth as good as if you had two, remember that you need to be looking out of two eyes to get the full effect of seeing in 3 dimensions. Now lets say that your eyes are not in the same place on you head. Like a fish your eyes are placed on the sides of your head. Now you do not have binocular vision so your depth perception is very bad. In fact if you are walking straight toward the bus in a parallel line, you most likely won’t even see the bus. So if you don’t see the bus, is it even there? You can not perceive the bus because you can not use your senses to see it. Since you can not perceive the bus, the bus is not real. There is only one “thing” that can not be perceived and could still be real, but that is a whole other theory. Of course, when you walk into the bus and feel the pain you will perceive it and therefore it would be real. Let’s say that you never run into the bus. This is because the bus was never actually there. How do I know? Think about the tree question. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? So if you are the only one around and you can not see the bus, is there even a bus there? The only reason you knew the bus was there before was because you saw it. If you can not see the bus, it is possible that the bus is not there. You can not say whether or not it is there unless you can perceive it.

Now let’s say that you and a friend are in the street next to the bus. You have bifocal vision and your friend does not. You see the bus but your friend does not. The only way your friend knows that there is a bus is if you tell him. Now your friend can perceive the bus because he can hear you tell him there is a bus there. But what if when you say the word bus, your friend hears the word helicopter? What if when you say the bus is yellow, he hears you say the helicopter is orange? Now you have perceived a yellow bus and he has perceived an orange helicopter. To your friend there is deffinatly an orange helicopter in front of him, and he believes this to be a reality. You believe that in reality there is a yellow bus there. Is your friend wrong? No, his perception is his reality. Same goes for you. Now let’s say that you have bifocal vision, perfect hearing, and great sense of feeling, can smell just fine, and have a great sense of taste. Both of you are standing in front of a large rock. You perceive this object to be a yellow bus because when you touch it you feel cold hard metal and when you look at it you see the color yellow and a large bus. Your friend does not perceive this object to be a large yellow bus because he perceives it to be an orange helicopter. When you turn and say that the yellow bus is quite large your friend hears you say that the orange helicopter is quite small. He agrees with you and says that the orange helicopter is quite small but you hear him say the yellow bus is quite large indeed. Does this make you both wrong? No, because you both have your own perceptions of the object so your perception is your reality. In fact in another persons' reality the object is actually a rock. But who is to say the object was a rock to begin with. If another person was standing there also, they may perceive a purple people eater. What if in fact the object was not even really there and all three of you have perceived something from nothing? Does that make all of you crazy? No, you all three are just perceiving what you mind tells you to. I guess the real question is not if something can be perceived is it a reality, but instead the question is, what is reality?