So I feel like I should follow up yesterday's fun posts with a more serious one. In light of that, I'm writing about religion again. I just read a few sermons posted on the website of a local Episcopalian church. Despite the fact that I don't know where I stand on the whole religion or Christianity thing at the moment, no one can say I'm not doing my darndest to see what's out there and what people have to say. I'm certainly spending enough time thinking about it. Two of the sermons dealt with the idea of legalistic religion. I was impressed to see that both were quite disapproving of such policies. It turns out, that at least this one minister, believes that the Bible is not meant to be read word for word and that a religion of rules and legalities is not in the spirit of Jesus, who in fact rebelled against this very same thing in his frequent battles with the Pharisees and society in general. While I have personally felt his way myself for a long time, it was nice to see that it was actually preached from the pulpit by at least one person. I think this is in large part my problem with evangelical churches. They leave no wiggle room. They don't see that it's about relationships with others and with God and not about rules governing the simple acts of men. In fact, when I think about it, legalistic religion is about as selfish as you can get. It's the "righteous" using their religion to beat up on others. Doesn't sound like something based on a model like Jesus does it?
In other news, my mom talked to one of her long-time friends today who is, to put it nicely, a religious whack job. It turns out she recently visited Disney World on "Gay Day." This apparently didn't go over very well with her. I'm a little pissed at my mom who said she couldn't blame her as "a whole lot of gays are just too flamboyant."