Mike Lockley: Why I have started reading the Bible

Jan 31 2012 by Mike Lockley, Sunday Mercury

TOOK my car in for a service this week. You should’ve seen the look on the vicar’s face.

It was part and parcel of my search for enlightenment. I’m at an age where I’m leaning towards the spiritual, where I’m pondering the possibility of a Creator, where I’m genuinely concerned there may be an afterlife: a place of payback for sins committed in the here and now.

I’ve started reading the Bible. At my age, it’s not so much a search for the truth, more cramming for my finals.

That revelation would stun my ex-girlfriend. She was such a staunch atheist that she’d cry ‘Oh, Darwin, oh, Darwin!’ when we made love.

But is it all a con? Is religion simply man’s quest for assurance that he’s not dead when he is?

As a child, I prayed. I prayed for a bike, but then realised God doesn’t work that way. You have to nick one, then ask for forgiveness.

Which religion should I sign up for, that’s the rub?

Jehovah’s Witnesses give Christmas a wide berth, which is attractive. I just worry that when a Jehovah’s Witness goes to heaven, God hides behind the gate and pretends he’s not in.

Mormons are always smartly dressed, but I wouldn’t want my sisters to marry one. I’ve also got a lot of time for Judaism, but I hear Jewish women don’t believe in sex after marriage.

I’ve studied world religions and it makes bleak reading.

Awful

There’s Catholicism (if awful things happen, you deserve it); Jehovah’s Witnesses (knock knock, awful things happen); Protestantism (awful things won’t happen if I work harder); Seventh Day Adventists (awful things happen on Saturday) and Hare Krishna (awful things happen rama-dam-a-ding-dong).

It’s all so bleak. It’s all so drenched in guilt.

“It can be extremely uplifting and, yes, things happen that can only be explained through religion,” said my Catholic pal Colin.

“I went on a pilgrimage to a healing spring. A blind man washed his eyes in the water and shouted ‘I can see’. A deaf man cleaned his ears in the spring and cried ‘I can hear’.

“They even pushed a man in a wheelchair into the water.”