All my life, religion has been something that has not affected my life at all whatsoever. I grew up in a family that really had no religious beliefs, so my whole life I followed suit. At times, people would get me to go to church, but every time I was always filled with disbelief and felt out of place. In general, I don’t believe in a god, but I could be wrong, I really don’t care, for I am focused on living my best life right now. If there is some sort of afterlife or god, then I hope my actions will have been good enough to take me to the right place, and if not, so be it. Due to my beliefs, or lack thereof, when the book opened up by saying that this story made the narrator believe in religion, I was slightly interested, but in the end chose to doubt that the book would have that effect on me. In the end, I was right, the book didn’t just confirm my non belief, but it also made my disliking of religion grow.
One thing that made my dislike for religion grow was the mentioning of corruption in the government with religion. This is one of the only things in the book that I agree with. People in power are shown to be part of the religion out in the open to gain support, for example JFK, yet behind closed doors, they don’t even worry about it and do things just for the pleasure. Lots of people see it as it’s there way or the highway, as shown by Owen’s future rant and by the Rev. Mr. Wiggins not showing up to the funeral just because he couldn’t have it at his church. As I see it, all that religion does is push people apart, without it everything would be more unified.
Another thing in the book that made my dislike for religion stronger was the fact that all the miracles happening at the end seemed like they were just really weird supernatural things, like a ghost haunting Johnny, or even just figments of Johnny’s imagination. When he was told that there was nothing to fear in the secret room with the jellies, it would have been totally believable that Johnny was just hearing things from the past, and Owen said those exact words to Johnny before he died. On the subject of his falling, he was really drunk, so there was a chance that he didn’t even really fall, he just swayed drunkenly. When Owen took control of Rev. Merrill, it seemed more ghostlike than angelic, as I imagined a scene like that in a horror movie when I read that section.
The final reason that this novel has strengthened my disliking for religion was due to the hypocrisy. The character that was supposedly the second coming of Jesus was a disrespectful brat to his parents, most likely participated in the premarital love making, participated in a petty “war” with the headmaster that lead to heavy vandalism, and was a total control freak when it came to basically anything. I understand that he is supposed to be a modern day Christ figure, but he seems more like a child to me, and there is no way that he could have been born in the manner that his father claims. Also, the Rev. Merrill’s actions are not those that you would see from a truly righteous pastor. The man had a fling with another woman despite being married, and had a son from it, yet continued to preach the total opposite moral to the people. Also, it seems ridiculous to me that a pastor can stop believing in god, yet continue to teach about him. Finally, the way that Johnny got him to believe again by tricking him was simply terrible. If a trick is all it takes for someone to believe, how do we know that everything in the novel wasn’t a trick, like the dream or the angel of death, or any other coincidences throughout the novel?
Though this novel made me dislike religion more, it made me understand it better, helping me understand why people practice these religions that I know nothing about.
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