Right about now some of you are probably thinking, "Why the !@#$ would I want to read about religion??". Well the answers quite simple - It's all around us and has been preached to us from the time we were able to comprehend what people were saying to us. Whether it was while you were in Sunday school, or possibly forced to go to church on Sunday...most all of us have had some encounters with the issue. So, why not read up on some contrasting viewpoints about religion?

I am not a religious person to put it bluntly. I hardly ever go to church, I don't regularly say my prayers at night, or for that matter say my grace at the supper table unless I'm reminded to. But this does not mean that I don't believe there is some sort of a spirit watching over us - personally I do believe there is. Whether you believe this or not is a choice of yours, either way I believe it does not make you a bad person.

Now normally I have no problem with someone being religious - you know, the regular church goer. But sometimes people can take things too far. Take this story as an example: My friend is quite religious, and regularly goes to a Salvation Army church camp summer time. She convinced me to go with her one summer, which seemed okay first when we got there. But after attending about 8 or 9 church services in a time limit of 2 days, and having the captain telling us through sermons and even short videos that anyone who doesn't get saved (or devote their lives to Jesus) is damned to hell. They were trying to get people to go against their old lives and start a new one with them OR just plain and simply go to hell- How's that for being cleverly persuasive??

In my opinion, you will have yourself so-called "everlasting life" if you are a good, kind-hearted person who does nothing to harm others or I guess doesn't disobey one of the ten commandments or whatever. But that's just my opinion! Of course the whole subject of heaven and hell is a very intricate as well as opinionated one and will probably never be figured out. But I don't think that its right for anybody to tell you that if you don't devote your whole life to religion then you are not a worthy person.

~J~