Tuesday, August 16, 2016

THE MEANING OF MAKE BELIEVE (WHY RELIGION DOESN’T HAVE TO BE “REAL”)

From Religous Dispatches-

When I was in fifth or sixth grade my father bought me a King James Bible. It was bound in white faux leather and embossed with gold lettering. My dad was not religious in the slightest (though he had a surprisingly large collection of books about the historical Jesus), but the children’s Bible with pastel illustrations I got from Sunday School demanded a dignified, literarily respectable replacement.

I couldn’t make much sense of King James, but I enjoyed leafing through the pages—more gold, on their edges!—and sensing some vague power in the sheer overwhelming quantity of words they contained.

I started bringing this Bible with me wherever I went—in my backpack to school, biking through my neighborhood. At my best friend’s house, we marched around his yard and the woods behind his house pretending we were preachers prophesying the end of the world. It gave me a thrilling sense of power to possess this secret knowledge that everyone else was too blind to see.


More here-

http://religiondispatches.org/the-meaning-of-make-believe-why-religion-doesnt-have-to-be-real/

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