Like staring at the back of a TV set for 20 years

In a letter to Wayne Jacobsen on The God Journey, someone said:

In trying to explain this to others [the difference of a life lived in God rather than a life lived to try to placate God], I've used this analogy: it's as if I've been looking at the back of a television for the last 20-odd years, wondering if this really is all there is. All of a sudden the TV's been turned around and I'm beginning to experience what I was meant to find all along.

Wayne:

Boy, if boring doesn't describe religion, I don't know what else does. It's like looking at the back of a TV set for 20 years.

Hehe :) Now, just to reiterate, I'm not talking about every Christian who goes to a Sunday morning meeting that is boring or 'religious'. Neither are all of the meetings themselves boring or 'religious'. But most of them are, for mine, not out of bad intentions but just because most of them are so bogged down in ... I dunno, tradition, religion, fear, that the life only gets to poke its head up here and there throughout the service before, oops, it's time for the fourth song, or you can't say that because you're just the congregation, or you can't have those problems because you're a believer, bathed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, the Lord Jesus Christ ain't stopped me from having a whole lot of shit happen. In fact, all the Christians I know that I like best, both online and offline, are the ones who are having a whole lot of shit happening to them. Because they're admitting it, right? 'Cause they can. 'Cause the religious folk are having bad shit happen to them too, but they can't admit it because it doesn't fit into their religious paradigm. A paradigm which has basically nothing to do with God, and everything to do with the way people have related to him since forever. The religious system is not about God. It doesn't say anything about God as much as it says everything about human beings and why it is that we need God. And that counts for every single bloody one of us.

I said on Erin's blog the other day that I hate Christians. Actually, I think I said I fucking hate Christians. Which is pretty harsh, really. But I do, because they are some of the ugliest people on the planet, the overtly religious person who doesn't realise it. They come out of all religions. But the extent of my anger really probably says more about where I'm at than anything. 'Cause I might have spied out some good land, and even rolled around in its grasses, and I might be having some sort of a relationship with God that has actually got to the point where I feel safer in him than I ever have ever in any human person, and which has achieved a depth where, like last night, I can be driving to the video store and have this moment where I just felt this communion that brought tears to my eyes at the thought of him.

But I'm still the kind of person who 10 minutes later was bored, who has still got a whole lot of critical, judgmental things going down. And the place I can see that the most is in the way I treat my brothers and sisters, even if it's "not hurting anybody", even if it's only in my own head. 'Cause really, if I'd rolled around in the grass enough, I'd have come to the conclusion that it's not all about me, and about scoring points off other people even if it's in my own head. And that sucks just as much as being a 'religous' folk does.

Well, almost ;)