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When I was just a child, I looked up at a large church and imagined that the bricks were loaves of bread. We had little to eat in those days and my wish, I am sure was created from hunger. The only work my father could find was unloading rail cars of chunk coal with his bare hands. At the end of his day, he would buy milk and bread with the two dollars and fifty cents he earned. My oldest sister and brother helped out with part time jobs.

My mother was in a Tuberculosis hospital at that time. The closest I could come to her was waving from our old hand painted green car. I can still see her wave from the third floor window, in a white gown, standing with a Nun. A local Baptist preacher had come to our house and told my father that we were poor because we didn't go to church. He told my father that we were being punished by God. My father told the preacher to leave and never return.

Even though I was just eight years old at the time, I knew that God was about building people, not churches. Both of my parents had been involved in Baptist and Pentecostal reilgions. They came from a long line of such. In a few months, it was discovered that my mother never had Tuberculosis and she came home. My father found a good job and things got better for us. My father had tried so hard in his youth to fit in with church goers but his curiosity and conviction always made him an outcast.

The hereditary religion line was broken by my parents. My father and mother worshiped God under their own sky. I witnessed their sufferings and joys throughout life. I never once connected their sufferings or joys to not attending church. I understand the purpose of religion but have never understood the condemnation by religion against people who don't attend their services. To this day, I do believe that religion has more to do with gold than God.

My father once held a loaf of bread in his right hand and a brick in his left hand. He asked me, "which would you choose to give the people first?" I picked the bread and he smiled. Not one stone should have been laid to build a church until the children were fed. Thousands of children starve to death each day as religions build new churches. The children are Lazarus and the religions are the King. Who was Jesus giving a hug in that story?

None of my three children attend church, even though I have made the freedom to do so, very clear. It is more than likely from the family stories I have told them and my influence as their father. I still look at churches and wish they were bricks of bread.

Learn more about this author, Larkin Williamson.
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