This Sunday, Easter, my fiance and I went down to my hometown, “The Burg”, for the weekend not realizing we were about to face my über-religious parents on their holiest of holy days. The day Jesus rose from the grave to defeat sin and all that noise.

Just to give you an idea of my childhood, I was told as a youngin’ that the Easter Bunny was evil because he was a distraction from “the true meaning of Easter.” I suppose he is a bit of a distraction but I think “evil” is a bit harsh. Besides, I was but a wee tot when I was told that. So while all of my friends were finding candy in plastic eggs in their back yard I was having the story of Easter read to me from all four gospels of The Bible. Needless to say it was a blast.

Well to get back to the present. My mother asked me to go to church with them. In short I said no. Then my brother wanted me to go and I said no again. But it’s a lot easier to say no to two people above the age of 60 than it is to say to a 23 year old former Marine who outweighs me by 50 lbs of muscle. So I was dragged to church.

Mind you this is the church I was raised in for the first 16 years of my life before I started to find out for myself what I believe as opposed to what my parents told me I believe. My parents are great people and were very well meaning but I could never convince myself to believe the things that they do.

I agreed to go to Sunday School but not the church service because I knew I disagreed with so much what they taught I thought it would be far less frustrating for me if I had the chance to speak up when I knew they were teaching something wrong. But here’s the thing. These are people that believe everything The Bible says hook line and sinker so I wasn’t about to argue using any points that would try to debunk The Bible, just points that would make them think differently about the things they think The Bible says.

We got there and found that while I did know almost everyone that has passed through the doors of that church over the last 20 years, I did not know this new family that was claiming that they would teach me something new about life. I did, however, find an immediate distrust for them. Which I know is a terribly prejudiced thing to do but I couldn’t imagine a situation in which I could trust these people.

The father of this quartet of fallacy ridden Jesus-ogres had a demeanor about him that I can only describe as car salesman-esque. He was characterized almost completely by his plastic smile that absolutely never changed except to become a bit more fake when he thought he was making a good point. He was soon to find out that he wasn’t. He was also wearing a cheap suit. Did I mention he looked like a car salesman?

His wife just kinda sat there and popped in with a pithy comment or two. She also had the plastic smile but it actually waned to a frown when she could see that someone (me) attending the Sunday Suaré didn’t blindly agree with everything being said in the class.

The grandfather is the one they actually called “The Scholar” of the family. This was a misnomer that I will explain later. However this was the only family member that I saw the least bit of generosity in. He sat quietly listening to the lesson until he was asked to tell a story or something.

And then we have the daughter… Oh the daughter… How I loathed her at first sight. She just sat there in her bad maroon colored pant-suit with a shit eating grin on her face only talking to answer her father’s questions with brown nosing expertise only found in the highest of quality fast-food restaurant managers.

There were three main unforgivable points made in falsehood by these perpetrators. The first of which was I think the biggest problem because it had to do with the very vegetables of the lesson. (The vegetables are much like the meat of the lesson but seeing as how I’m a vegan I thought it would be more appropriate.) The lesson was taught on all four gospels. More specifically about the accounts of the first people to discover that Jesus’ tomb was empty. The verses covered were Matthew 28:1-10, Mark 16:1-11, Luke 24:1-12, and John 20:1-9. The father taught a lesson saying that there was some significance in this because they were four stories about the same thing but only the one in John was a first hand account. I’m not sure why that would be important anyway but he seemed to think so.

There was only one problem. The first three are second hand accounts of the first people to find the tomb empty but the verses in John are not even a story about the same point in time. The story in John is about the second group of people to see it. There is one sentence about the Mary’s given second hand and then the rest is about what happened after he and the rest of the disciples heard the news. I don’t know why they couldn’t have presented it as two different stories but apparently it was necessary to be wrong.

Then for some reason that I don’t remember at the moment the grandfather told a story about the ancient passover feast. Apparently from the time of the first passover on the table there was a plate that held three pieces of unleaven bread standing for The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit separated by napkins. The father of the house would then break one of them in half, hide it somewhere, and the kids would play some sort of a “Button Button Who’s Got the Button” kind of game. Did you catch the problem there? During the first passover feast in 1497 BC, 1,497 years before Jesus was born the pieces of bread stood for the trinity… Amazing.

And lastly we come to the father stating that the proof of Jesus rising from the dead was that the gospels state that 500 people saw him after he arose from the dead. I asked him where the proof was that these 500 people had seen him. Now I realize this was close to the line of disproving The Bible as opposed to making them think of The Bible differently but I tried to ask in a way that would make them make better statements to prove their faith. And by the way I think that proving one’s faith is completely unnecessary. You can’t prove religion with science and people need to see that that’s sometimes okay. Anywho the grandfather was up in arms. He threw his bible away stating that if we didn’t believe that we might as well throw out all of our beliefs. I don’t think he caught on that I thought a bit differently.

I think I should end this by saying that I have no problem with faith of any kind. What I have a problem with is when people are in control of the way young people that are more impressionable than they are get the facts wrong. I have no problem with people believing in The Bible I have a problem with people teaching it wrong to make some sort of a point by using situations and “facts” that don’t exist. I think that the Bible has a lot of good ideas that should be taught correctly.

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
-Mohandas Gandhi