Guilt Trips

I had a conversation with a woman yesterday that left me, once again, pondering the way I view the world around me. My upbringing, especially my religious upbringing, was eclectic in the extreme. The following comes as close to explaining my mental map as anything.

One time I told a fellow writer about my Baptist/Catholic upbringing. My grandmother took me to the Baptist church. I went to Sunday School, Sunday morning church service, Training Union (this taught us about Baptist beliefs and history) Sunday evening Church, G.A.s (Girls Auxiliary of the Women’s Missionary Union) and Wednesday Prayer meeting.

My mother sent me to a Catholic school because she wanted me to have a better education than I would get in a public school. She was right; I did get a better education, but I was also well taught in the Catholic faith and doctrine.

This upbringing confused the heck out of me because, at the time, the Catholics believed the Baptists were going to hell because they weren’t saved. And the Baptists, equally fervently, believed the Catholics were going to hell because they weren’t saved. Throw in the occasional trips to the Methodist and Lutheran churches with my cousins and I was even more confused. They all professed to believe in God and that Jesus Christ was the son of God. He came to save humans and restore them to fellowship with God. He died for them. He was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven. Why were they all snipping at each other? What was the difference?

To add to the confusion some of my mother’s friends were Jewish. When I talked to their kids I got still a different view of God and the Bible. As a teenager I sometimes went to the synagogue with them and there learned still more ways to be confused and baffled by the way humans could get into arguments and fights about worshiping God.

In college I met Buddhists and Muslim students (I was raised in San Antonio Texas which had a language school at Lackland AFB that had people from all over the world attending to learn other languages.) as well as some Atheists. After meeting a number of Atheists and listening to them I concluded Atheism is a religion too, the believers being as adamant as any other believers that their view is the right one.

After listening to my explaination of my background my writer friend said, "I'd pay good money to see one of your guilt trips."

I had to laugh because I have a lot of roads and trails on my map when I do go on one of those guilt trips.