Religion and me

After seeing Bill Maher’s movie “Religulous,” a funny but thought-provoking documentary on religious beliefs, my wife asked me how my thoughts have evolved over time on that issue. This question begs for a big answer that I’ll try to keep short. I was raised as a catholic, went to CCD, became an altar boy and dropped it all when I was 17 or 18. I don’t think I ever had any faith in God, because the character was frightening me; I saw him as a severe enforcer, the prospect of dying and going to hell were quite spooky as the bar for heaven seemed to be set too high for me. I also thought Jesus was a good man, but was never ready to follow him as I found his teachings much too demanding and running counter to the capitalistic system I wanted to embrace. I loved the technicalities involved with the practice, like being an altar boy (in exchange, I got a free subscription to Fripounet and Marisette, a kids’ magazine,) handling wafers, mixing water and wine, being close to the holy week’s drama and some other unexplainable mysteries. What kept me hooked on religion longer than I should have was the fact that my parents were obsessed with falling victims of local alpine witchcraft and that spooked me to no end. As a teenager, I was utterly confused by the dysfunctional relation between faith and sexuality and this is what did it for me. Shortly thereafter, as the spiritual fairy tale crumbled, I discovered that there was more to life than this mythic stuff which wasn’t worth my precious time. In recent years, I’ve come to look at religion as the ultimate people manipulator and the most lethal activity on the planet; that probably goes to say that our opinions are meant to evolve over a lifetime and I’m grateful for that. How’s your own relation with religion?