Tales of Bible Thumping

The Road to Hell . . .
I've had a few experiences this past week relating to religious parenting of varying degrees. I was lucky enough to have parents that respect my intelligence enough to not constantly question my lifestyle and lack of 'spirituality.' Some of my friends, however, weren't so lucky.
I went to dinner with my family last week, because my grandparents were in town. It was a nice, uneventful dinner, the only 'incident' occurred behind my back. But, I can handle my mother asking my girlfriend if she can get me to go back to church, since the idea is laughable even to her. This kind of covert soul-saving is much more subtle and easy to shrug off than some of the things I have seen recently. One of my longtime friends just had his first child, and him and his wife have chosen to raise their child without religion. Neither of his parents are religious, and hers don't seem like it, but apparently there are some underlying roots in Christianity. When his father-in-law found out that my friend was not keen on having his baby blessed, be flipped out, accusing him of 'keeping God from his child' and of 'taking his daughter away from the church.' Even after explaining his personal wishes to let the child decide on his own if he wants to be religious or not without forcing it on him, her dad still raised hell about it, causing the mother-in-law to plead for them to have it done, just to shut him up. You cannot bully someone into following your wishes, no matter your intentions. This kind of outright disrespect would not stand in my family, but I have no children yet, so I don't have a basis of experience. Still, I have known this person for nearly sixteen years, and I know him to be a good person, with just some bad habits. His lack of religion not being one of them. He never really believed that unbaptized babies go to hell. He has common sense.
The Toll to Get to Heaven . . .
The second experience is a tale of guilt-vampires and Calvinist hypocrisy, culminating in free food and the need to drink. My roommate, who also happens to be my girlfriend's uncle (long story), is the kind of guy who grew up rebellious due to overly-religious parenting; impelling him to commit acts that would get a child locked away these days. His dubious past notwithstanding, he turned out to be a pretty good guy, who takes care of his children and leads a quiet, sex-filled life. His parents just happened to be in town this week, and I was invited to the 'big' family dinner since I'm dating one of the grand-daughters. Free food from Mimi's Cafe was all I needed to be goaded into it. Over the years, I have heard plenty of stories and complaints filled with rolled-eyes and shaken heads from the brothers about their father and stepmother, and I was slightly nervous to be attending. The evil-stepmother was not in attendance, who is apparently the source of much of the problems, so papa turned out to be relatively harmless and uninterested in me over the course of the dinner. The real fireworks came today. Whilst I was slaving away at work, the parents showed up unannounced at our place and used the following four hours to dissect my roommate's life and explain to him why he was living such a terrible life and how he could fix it. The kicker? He could improve his life easiest by leaving his kids and moving across the country to work and earn a decent living, which is, apparently, the only way you can be a good person. If you have lots of money, you can get away with anything, it seems, even being a terrible parent. You will earn respect and gain contacts for 'network marketing,' ad you can participate in the occasional animal sacrifice on your lawn, but only if you're wealthy. This kind of thinking, especially from uber-religious people, reeks of hypocrisy and seems to me to be a sign of really fucked up priorities. If that is what it takes to get into heaven, I'd much rather join the eternal barbecue in hell, and retain my respect for myself.