Being a Better Person

In my youth, I would rail against religion given almost any excuse. Especially when I initially broke "officially" with the Catholic church. I think I was about nineteen when I did that.

It was a tweeny, immature soapbox session I held while standing in the doorway to the family den/television room. My parents were both sitting on the couch. I don't recall what brought it on. But there I was, proclaiming my definite belief in the ridiculousness of the Roman Catholic church, and my probable disbelief in god as well.

Thus began years of alternating anger and guilt associated with religion, and all it's trappings. I maintained a sort of 'face' with the family, by attending important holiday masses with them. This went on whenever I was in town for Christmas usually. I don't know why I bothered. All pretense was gone.

I do admit to a certain amount of the comfort food factor, especially around the holidays like that. After all, I had been an altar boy for almost ten years. I knew the mass scripts mostly by heart, as well as most of the hymns, prayers, etc.

I feel badly about all my preaching against religion. Mostly stemming from a comment one of my best friends made once. I may have mentioned it before.

He told me something to the effect of: I don't believe in god anymore, mostly thanks to you.

That stabbed at my heart. I had climbed down off the soapbox for the most part by that point, and to have him say that. Well, that told me I shouldn't have been up there to begin with. I feel like I raped someone spiritually.

It's just not up to me to tell people what to believe, or not to believe. If I do, then I'm as bad as the church.

Belief, or unbelief, should be very personal choices.

To murder a George Carlin quote: Whatever gets you through the day, rub blue mud on your belly, whatever.

And that's the point, isn't it? To make it through each day, with some semblence of sanity and happiness. Despite the fact that our time on earth here is very limited, and this mortal life is all that we know. Everything else, we have to take on faith.

Unbelieving is no less a faith than believing, believe me! You have to work at it. Annd I'm still not perfect at it.

The important breakthrough for me, when I was struggling with religion, morals, ethics, happiness. Was a quaint little argument I made up to 'defend' my so called atheism.

In a nutshell, it is thus: Take two people.

One is a devout religious person, who follows all the rules of his faith, and is fully expecting an afterlife in a good place, be it heaven, valhalla, what have you.

The other person is an unbeliever. This person lives a good life, following his own moral compass, with no expectation of an afterlife, or any reward in that place.

Which one is the better person? The one who is good because of God's rules, and the hope for an eternal reward after this life? Or the person who is good and decent because he/she chooses to be. Because that is how that person believes it should be done. With only this mortal life span to look forward to, no consequences after that.

It's a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer it out loud. The way that I couch it, a logical person would choose the latter individual. But logic seldom plays in faith based scenarios. So I gave up trying with that argument.

That philosophy did help me turn my life around. I feel I'm a better person these days, because I choose to be so. Not because I have to be, or there are some arcane rules to follow.

I always had a problem with authority anyways. This way, it's my choice. :)

But ultimately, I decided, it's not important.

It's not important why you live a good life, or make life better for others. It is only important that you do.

So when I see someone, who was in a dark place at one time, and they are now a changed person, dedicating their lives to helping others; all because they found the lord, or Jesus, or Allah.

I call it a good thing.

I praise them for it. Because they are a better person, and make the world better for everyone else by being that way.

When I was 19 I would have ridiculed them.

Now that I'm 40, I know better.

Cheers, to doing good things for a reason, or no reason at all!