GOD

"A are you Christian?" a woman at a party asked me innocently.  It
took me awhile to learn to answer this question.

Back in Russia, the official Soviet ideology was atheist. The Soviets
carried out consistent anti-religious policy. They prohibited printing
of Bibles, blocked access to churches, continuously debunked
literal interpretations of biblical stories. I remember how I
participated in an anti-religious propaganda rally in school. I got an
A in my chemistry class for that.

However, people flirted with religion and idealism out of internal
protest against the oppressive regime. Poets put Jesus in the lead of
a the host of revolutionary guards. Writers referred to god as the
ultimate moral justice. It was considered cool to drop a few lines
from the Bible or doubt some of the mechanistic materialist dogmas
that the Soviets inculcated. With Perestroika, the Soviet's grip on
power and on people's souls loosened. The intellectuals delved into
Eastern esoterica, mysticism, kabbablah.  I went to be baptized right
after I got back from the Army. The priest looked at me as an
interloper, took my money, sprinkled holy water, mumbled something and
taught me how to cross myself. He then begged for more money. There I
was, a freshly minted god's servant, having exercised my newly found
freedom of religion.

When I came to the US, it did not take me long to realize how
profoundly religious my adopted country is. It was not just in some
abstract mystical, universal spirit sense. Grown up educated people
literally believed that after they die, there will be a winged guy
with a piece of cake waiting to reward them for good behavior. People
could not even fathom how it is possible to live otherwise.

My fellow Russian immigrants were often affected in a rather startling
way. Severing connections with the motherland and feeling alienated
from the host country, longing for the sense of community and
belonging, they flocked to Russian Orthodox churches, started
attending services and observing lent.

I needed to figure it out for myself. I went about it in a rather
persistent manner. I read the Bible a few times in both Russian and
English. I got a particular kick out of King James version. I somehow
found the verse melodious and pleasing to the ear. And then I found
the good books. 

I read with amusement how archeologists doubted the Bible's story. How
in a couple of hundred years the divergent stories of creation had
ossified into holiness so much that to avert a religious war, they had
to be spliced together to produce Genesis, never mind the obvious
inconsistencies.  The semites, Israelites were not a cohesive people
back then, were not slaves in Egypt. Rather they went there in the
ancient equivalent of Mexican migrant workers. There was no exodus.
Nobody wandered for forty years in the Sinai desert. There was no
point anyway. Canaan was an Egyptian colony. Ramses II had waystations
and supply depots along the way. His troops can reach it in ten
days. Joshua did not conquer Canaan or fought at Jericho. There were
no walls around Canaan cities back then so the priests did not have to
bother with ram horns. Solomon was neither rich nor powerful. Judean
king Josia, Solomon's descendant, invented his riches and wrote them
into the Deuteronomy to bolster his own reputation.  Jesus did not
exist in any historical sense. The gospels started out as a collection
of traditions, customs and sayings. The character of Jesus, as a
person who pronounces them, was inserted later.

I had the good sense not to talk about it all in real life. I clashed
a few times on the Internet. However, the flamewars got stale pretty
quickly.  There are only so many ways these points can be argued
before the debates stop being fun. I moved on to other reading.

However, for the rest of my life I hope I have the strength to know
that I will be dead when I die and there is nothing afterwards. I hope
to treasure every moment of this life and live it to the fullest.

"So, are you Christian, Misha?"
"Yes, ma'am. I was baptized Russian Orthodox. But I am not very religious.
 This cake is excellent. Don't you think, ma'am?"