THE LAST FORWARDED EMAIL I commented on was about politics and economics.

This one is about religion and God:

The following is kind of neat. 30 years ago, when I was invincible in my own mind, I wouldn't have even read this. At almost 62, I occasionally think about where am I going to go when it is time to get there. And it has occurred to me that being without faith all these years may not have been the wisest choice. I look at my boss, who is as devout an atheist as there ever was, and I will defend to the death his right to go to Hell. And I'm not sure I want to be in Hell when he shows up, asking me if we can get all the Devils into wanting their horns cleaned. After all, at that point, I'm retired. And so I look at the following story and decide that I guess I don't need it proven to me. I've got a better shot at winging it on faith. Dr. Steve

Legend of the Cherokee:

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's rite of Passage?

His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone.

He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it.

He cannot cry out for help to anyone.

Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.

He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own.

The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him.

Maybe even some human might do him harm.

The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold.

It would be the only way he could become a man!

Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold.

It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.

He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.

We, too, are never alone.

Even when we don't know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us.

When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

Moral of the story: Just because you can't see God, doesn't mean He is not there.

'For we walk by faith, not by sight.'

I'm not really interested in debunking this one, in the sense of proving it wrong.

The questions it raises, for me, are more questions about the worldview of the person who wrote the original, and the worldview of the person who wrote the introduction.

I can't imagine how any sane person—especially a Christian—could seriously endorse such a strange set of ideas. This is the kind of thing I would have cringed at when I was religious.

The presenter—"Dr. Steve"—begins by claiming the worst motivation for religious faith I can imagine: fear of Hell. He doesn't believe in God because he thinks there's any evidence that God exists, but because he's hedging his bets.

I never understood that argument, even in—I should say, especially in—my religious days.

It's irrational.

If I don't believe the boogie man exists, why would I be afraid he would send me to Hell?

Or, to turn it inside out, what can it possibly mean to believe or "have faith" that God exists, if the entire basis of that faith is the fear that if he exists he'll punish you for not believing?

It makes my brain hurt.

But on to the parable itself. It has two characters, the boy and the father. We are told, at the end, that the father is supposed to be an analogy for God, and the boy is supposed to stand for humans like you and me.

So this is the situation the story paints:

God intentionally lies to us.



The father quite intentionally misleads the boy, making him think he is alone, when he is not. God is willing to inflict terror on us.



The father sits beside the boy, knowing full well that the boy is going through the most excruciating terror, and does nothing. God does not want us to have faith in him, or believe he is there.



The entire exercise, as ill-conceived as it is, would not even work by its own lights if the boy had "faith" in his father. The whole point is that he does not have faith that his father is there, that, in fact, he believes he is not there. God will instantly intervene if we are in danger, and does not require faith in order to exercise this protection.



The father is sitting, right beside the boy, all night. The boy does not know he is there, has no "faith". Yet, had a real bear appeared, the father would have intervened to save him. And, by the way, the boy in this scenario is an atheist.



He does not believe the father is there, he does not ask for the father's help, and he makes it through the night by facing his own fears, by himself, in the darkness, alone.



This is how he proves he is an adult, and not a child.



This is how he shows himself praiseworthy.

The author of the story, and "Dr. Steve", seem to think that this story endorses, not the bravery of the young man, but the cowardice of a person who will believe out of fear.

They seem to think that it demonstrates a God who wants us to know he is there, who will not intervene to help us unless we figure out that he is there and ask for help, and who will send us to Hell for not figuring it out.

Hmm.

My brain hurts.

At least, that's what I think today.