This isn't really anything other than a rambling thought.

I started to write a short story. It's going to be here on this blog one day. The whole "journal" thing gets pretty boring. Nobody is really that interested in my life anyway, so I like to mix it up. It seems a lot of the fiction I write has religious themes, even though I am not actually religious. Technically, I suppose, I am agnostic. But I'm not really comfortable with that label either. Religious people are always the ones that want to stick a label on you, that is, religious people and atheists (I contend that dedicated atheists are just as bad as dedicated religious people as far as being judgmental. It's true and you know it. Don't send me emails). Labels have always made me uncomfortable. If you're a self aware human being, you eventually start to outgrow your label. And what happens when you start to outgrow your label? False advertising?

Something that's always dismayed me about religion is it's use as cruelty. I'm not talking about just the obvious Crusades or sex scandals, I'm talking about on a deep personal level. The exact reason this has always bothered me stems from when I was little, and I went to a Baptist church with a friend (we were not Baptists). First, they found out I was Catholic (might as well tell a fundamentalist you are a pagan voodoo dancer). So immediately, I was the Weird Kid. The teacher told us if we didn't say prayers every night, we would go to "Hell". Stupid little Meg asks "What if I accidentally fell asleep reading a book?" Apparently, according to the Sunday School teacher at the Baptist church, you still go to hell if you fall asleep reading a book. So I prayed like crazy for a week or so. Then one night, inevitably, I fell asleep reading a book, Nancy Drew, I believe. Woke up crying in what I thought was the middle of the night. This was the first my parents knew of what the teacher had told me. I did not return to that Sunday school.

Anyway, as the title suggests, this isn't a "real" blog entry, just a rambling of thoughts. This came to mind a few days ago when the world was supposed to end, but didn't. It really upsets me when a person gets some power or a pulpit, predicts doom, and gets people to believe it. Those people then sell their belongings, quit their jobs, travel the country spreading the word of their false prophet. Worse, of course, when it ends in death, Heaven's Gate,  Jonestown, Philippians. Granted, people who believe in a false prophet are ultimately pretty foolish. But that doesn't make the actions of the false prophet any less shameful.


Nothing left to do when you know you've been taken,
Nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb,
Nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting
Waiting for the miracle to come

It keeps on happening though. On many levels. From the little kid being told they are going to hell by a stranger, to the suicide cult. This kind of power always ends up being abused. It's hard to fathom how many terrible things have been unleashed on the world because of this sad human tendency. Better not to ponder it too long, lest I lose more sleep.