Reflection About Religion

Growing up in the Deep South, specifically southeast Georgia, I was raised in the Protestant faith. We had two churches in my community, Hopewell Baptist, and Aiken Memorial Methodist. I knew and interacted with everyone in both churches which was not difficult since Mt. Pleasant was a small community of less than a hundred people. You might assume Protestants were the only people I knew, but the town where I attended school and another nearby where my father worked, there were Catholic churches, synagogues, and I was aware there were people who worshiped different faiths. What I believe and my general beliefs on religion have changed over the years, from my teenage years and my twenties, the thirties to forties, and then middle age and now

I am embarrassed to say one or two of those times I attended to get out work detail. I attended twice, and that was for funerals of fellow soldiers, who had died in training accidents. I was not interested in church or religion back then, mainly because I thought I did not need or want to hear someone tell me how I should be feeling about God or preach to me about how to make things right. I trusted several people back then, supposedly good friends who wanted everyone to believe they were God-fearing folk. In the end, they were no better than those who never attended church. After leaving the Army, I moved to Virginia and the only thing was on my mind was partying, going dancing, staying out late and trying to catch a nap at lunch so I could do it all over again. I had moved to several different states for the next five years, working and partying, nothing more was needed. During these years, I never stopped believing there was a being watching over me. In fact, the line and I paraphrase, “God protects fools and little children”. I knew I was the fool, but when going down a destructive path, no one knows when it time to pull over and stop. This was my life until 1982 when called one of my sisters to let her know I was in Nebraska. She let me know my mother had been diagnosed with

My mother’s cancer was in remission, so I stayed, found a new job that allowed me to be close by if needed. I met a woman, started going to church with her, and married a year later. The church was close to where we lived, and it was nice to walk there on Sunday morning. I enjoyed the fellowship at first until I found out she was only going to impress her friend, of course, I was being a hypocrite for going just for her. Not for that reason, but we divorced, and I started attending one of the churches, I had gone to as a teenager. During this time, my father had succumbed to lung cancer, my sister closest to me died from gunshots wounds at her job, and my mother’s cancer had finally being too much for her. I took a job with my uncle traveling and working around the southeast, and I was invited to attend church by co-workers many times but felt like an impostor. You might think I was angry at God because of what befell my family, but I was just numb for several years. I regularly prayed to lessen the heartache, but I did not expect it to end, I knew it was not for me to understand why they died and not me. I was one who was wasting his life, and they were good people, always there when I needed