The Word

Today, I began my new year's resolution to join the cult of the Franklin planner. It takes a little getting used to, because in order to get in the habit of marking everything down means you have to mark EVERYTHING down. Even daily rituals that don't require a reminder have to get written in the schedule. I'm drawing the line when it comes to smoke breaks and bowel movements, even though I'm pretty sure they ask you to jot those down. It's a lot like being in a life-long meeting and you're required to record the minutes.

This all sounds pretty ridiculous when you walk into work to find a light workload. For me, this means tackling the really big projects that are coming up on us, even though a job ticket has yet to be written for it. This means lighting fires under the asses of my bosses to get me said work order, and dealing with the clients, which in these cases are about a couple dumb questions away from being deemed completely clueless. Can we get a full-color 8-page catalog insert to you by next Tuesday? Yes. Even though you don't know exactly what you want in the catalog? Maybe. And I won't know until the end of the week? Improbable bordering on impossible.

Meanwhile, our other artist got to surf the net all day, doing further personal research into bible scriptures...even though she has two separate kinds of bibles on her desk. One of which is called the Amplified Bible, which begs a smartass like me to scream, "IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH!!!"

I can't help but respect her level of faith, though. I grew up way to cynical to believe like that. You see, I am the son of an escaped Baptist and a recovering Catholic. Go ahead, try and convert me. I do believe in God. Hey, man could not create something like Double-Stuf Oreos without divine intervention. But I cannot consider myself a Christian.

I believe that Jesus Christ did exist, however I cannot accept the idea of the son of God when the first written record of the man was centuries after his death. I believe he was a great man who wanted to change the way people treated one another, but I cannot buy the miracles when the stories had been passed down for generations before being written down.

But here's my real beef with the Bible:

1. How can it be considered the one true word of God, when there's the Koran, the Torah, the Communist Manifesto, Dianetics...hell, you could turn the Cat in the Hat into a religion if you had enough people put blind faith behind it.

2. I just don't understand how one man can read the Bible and want to live a peaceful and harmonious life with his fellow man, while another man can read the exact same words and say, "See? This is why gays and Jews are evil and must die!"

I think George Carlin said it best, "Religion is like a lift in your shoe. If you need it to walk straight, fine. But don't ask me to wear your shoes if I don't want to, and please don't go nailing lifts to the native's feet."