by Nanci Arvizu

Created on: November 11, 2008   Last Updated: January 16, 2009

Is Religion just a crutch? Unfortunately in a lot of cases, it is. People who have lead less than stellar lives find themselves in jail and miraculously "find" Jesus behind bars. They emerge from prison a new person, ready to go and preach the good word to others who have led decent lives, thinking they now know better.

Some of the strangest, mean spirited, low lives that I have ever met had first introduced themselves to me as "Hi, my name is John and I'm a Christian". When someone introduces themselves like that to me, not only do I not shake their hand, I usually turn away and stay away. It's like a huge red flag they've waved that says "I'm a really bad person and I can't help but do bad things, but I've found God and that means no matter what I do, I'm forgiven and since I'm forgiven I'm probably going to do something bad to you".

The stories I could tell about some of these people. There's a friends mom who labels herself a devout Christian and yet mooches off her kids and friends for anything and everything, never contributes at pot lucks, the check at a meal out, or even bringing gifts for grandchildren at Christmas or birthdays, and has her sob story of having nothing down to a "T". But come to find out she's got more money stashed away in investments and savings than all 5 of her kids and their working spouses put together earn in a year. Probably because she never pays for anything!

The "Born Again" boss I had that carried his bible everywhere he went, quoting scripture as often as humanly possible, prayed over everything, and used phrases like "God willing", or "Praise God", in almost every sentence he said, but still had enough "ungodliness" in him to hit on me on a daily basis. The day he came in and said that he needed to "Lay his hands on me and pray", because he had had a "demon filled dream" about me, was the day I quit.

And then there is a cousin of mine, who as a teenager and young adult had more premarital sex than a porn star, drank more alcohol that a brew master, snorted more cocaine than what was done at Club 51 during its entire existence, and yet, since she's become a Christian, has absolutely no memory of any of it. The best part about this lie? I have pictures to prove it. My favorite ones are of my wedding night when she took 6 bottles of champagne from our bar and 4 of my friends from college to a hotel up the road. I took these to the last family reunion so that when she started preaching to everyone about how perfect she was, I had the ammunition to make her shut up. I was offered money for those photos, but then that's another story.

Bottom line, in my opinion, religion is misused by people who use it to make themselves feel better about how they have lived their lives, instead of making people live their lives better. Religious people actually hate other people who believe differently. Don't believe me just take a look at what is going on in the Middle East. Or what happened during Hitler's reign.

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