Doubling Down on Church

NOT ONLY AM I GOING to go to church this coming sunday, I am going to go twice, one service right after another. The first is a Methodist church I went to a coupla of weeks ago, at nine thirty, and the second, a huge new church which denomination I know not, shich has services at nine thirty and eleven. but which the friend I am going with suspects of being either a cult, or a mega (MAGA?) church wannabe. We'll see. Every Sunday their parking lot is packed, and my friend says that she heard that the services are extremely theatrical and quite a spectacle. They must be. That aint my style, but I'll give it a try. So, a balanced attack,two churches in one day, one I have already visited and liked, the other, a grand new adventure. When I consider that the primary purpose of religion, at least in my opinion, is to provide people with inspiration and comfort, my recent outburst of church attendance begins to make more sense to me. Part of it is a sense of community, and having one. The "when in Rome" attitude is part of it. I tell myself, justifiably, that one can maintain attitudes about anything, including politics and religion, which fundamentally differ from one's fellow congragants, without feeling any sense of guilt, isolation, or conflict. Political conservatives have no monopoly on the sublime teachings of Christ. I believe in the god of Spinoza and Einstein. Accordingly, I am not, at least techically, a Christian. Or, as Thomas Jefferson called himself, I am a "primitive Christian." (Actually Jefferson was a scientific, progressive Christian, or a "deist", and the "true" Christians around him were the primitive ones, but that, as we say, is another matter. What I love most about Christian doctrine are unconditional love, forgiveness personal redemption. Like the new Pope saidabout LGBTQ people: "Who am I to judge?". If Jesus isn't "the way", heaven forbid, who or what is? But when God isperceived an an anthropomorphic being who dispenses morality and inspires and/or authors books, count me out. I like to quote Goethe: "It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books and stories.If the world doesn't directly reveal itself to us,andif our hearts do nto tell us what we owe ourselves and others, then we will most certainly not find it in books, which, at best, are designed only to give names to our mistakes." Worth mentioning is that itis indeed true that there are no atheists in foxholes. At least notfor me,not in my foxhole. relative to Christianity, I am indeed an atheist, because the god I conceive and perceive bears no resemblance, none, to the biblical God. One thing's for damned sure though. Anytime, anywhere, for whatever reason I really get into a bad emotional place, depressed, grieving and such, the first thing I do is go running to god. It is then when my conception of God becomes as closest as it ever comes to anthropomorphic. But innormal, healthy, happy times the closest I come to god is through gratitude. As I approach the end of this lifetime I feel an enhanced of gratitude, gratitude which would have been much less likely for me in my younger years. I prefer Einstein's "humble admiration" of God to worship. And since we say that "God is love, I see no reason to be "God fearing", and every reason to be "God loving". And so be it. All I need to do is remind myself that "The old eternal genius who built the universe as Einstein put, is eminentaly worthy of humble admiration and love in both good and bad times, and that my salvation lies in the self envident truth articulated by Goethe, who said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine."