The Price of Tea

A few weeks ago I got a message from a friend after I suggested a website for them to visit to gather information. Later that day as I’m going through my mail I see that my friend replied to my suggestion with a brief note saying “I am a Christian and I cannot go to an atheist website.” I sat there flabbergasted wondering what happened between my suggestion and this note, thinking to myself “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

I started to write a scathing letter regarding her timid and accepting nature that caused her to be a victim of a preacher with a taste for little girls. I didn’t, but I had to stop myself to keep from railing about preachers, religion and blind faith. “I can’t go to an atheist website.” What do they tell these people? I had nothing to do with the disappearance of Billy Goat Gruff or breaking and entering at the Bear’s home.

Failure to investigate is what allows unscrupulous preachers to ply their tawdry trade as congregation know Jack about the Bible because they read nothing about it making themselves willing shills for any three-card Monty game the preacher wants to run. Yet, they wonder why the Lord doesn’t provide in times of tragedy and sickness.

If the lady had visited the site I suggested, she might have learned something useful and one thing would be to open your eyes. Like the uselessness of a 2,000 year old medical book, the Bible has no answers and waiting for them is tantamount to idiocy. Living life in an obvious fraud requires a willingness to overlook facts, reality and what is before the eyes.

She won’t talk to me about religion and I know why. She is afraid that I will make her think too much about what she’s saying, which would make her extremely uncomfortable. In fact, that’s exactly what I told her saying that I would come to her church and debate the pastor on his home turf and embarrass him enough that he would have to leave town.

She didn’t care for that prospect, so I asked her to read “God is not Great” and loaned her the book. Two days later she brought it back after reading only the introduction saying she couldn’t stand hear negative things about God. I told her that I’ve been hearing Christian garbage for all of my life and that why I decided to take God off the ventilator. No he didn’t die—I killed him. She didn’t like that. I think I lost a friend.