Religion And Me

Ian Henefield
Aug 23, 2017 · 2 min read

Religion isn’t for me because I know myself. It’s not because I’m too smart for it, or that I understand we live in a physical world, or that I think organizations and groups in general are lame. I’m not too smart for anything. In fact, I’m kinda stupid. Or at least I’m closely related to stupid’s cousin ‘stubbornly unhinged.’ I’m easily manipulated, highly impressionable, sometimes angry, confused, prone to sweeping generalizations, and have trouble arranging thoughts in my head so I can think about them clearly for a second. When I can think I have an overactive imagination. I’m just about par for the course as far as humans go. I can hold down a job, make a sandwich, and keep my head above water by treading vigorously. It’s for this reason that I stay clear of religion and the teachings of the Bible. As a human I’m way too dumb to be reading that kind of stuff. I could really take it too far. I know the power of a good yarn. I tell them everyday. Sometimes to thrill, sometimes to cheer up, sometimes to mislead. I get influenced by Micheal Crighton novels and B movies god’s sake. I can’t imagine reading the Bible. I hear the Bible’s a good book. You know what else is a good book? Jurassic Park. That book had me believing we were going to begin installing dinosaur lanes alongside bike lanes. I watched the X-Flies throughout high school and thought I was an FBI agent (side note concerning the X-Files, do you think other agents got pissed at them, like, ‘fuck you two weirdos, we got stacks of cold cases and backlogs of rape kits, get to fucking work!’ Anyway, words can be powerful. Intelligence does not exclude folks from believing in the unknown, and being dense certainly doesn’t help either. I read a clearly written instruction manual and get inspired, feel the rush. If I read the Bible I may kill someone. Alas, I caved. I started reading Genesis and thought, ‘this is making insanely good sense right now.’ Uh oh. I’m not the type to read the fine print, I don’t look for nuance or multiple viewpoints. I consume and ask questions later. While I began reading the Bible I wasn’t like,‘let me seek within myself,’ I was firmly enraptured, thinking to myself, ‘murder, control through fear, some people are less than?’ I read further in and still I couldn’t shake it. I wasn’t filled with a sense of wonder or awe. I was engorged with an almost sexual lust to someday have all mankind bow before me…all I could hear in my head while reading was, ‘KALI MA, KALI MA, KALI MA!’ No, methinks it best to avoid the lure of these types of tales. I will stick to reading Stephen King on long car rides and pretending I know the darkness in men’s hearts.

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Ian Henefield

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musician, humor lover, amateur writer, intermediate thinker, advanced sandwich eater.