Hypocrites

I've debated over posting this for about a week and I decided finally to do it. I may delete it later because it is quite personal.

My dad's mom was one messed up woman and I used to wonder if it was her genes or her lack of nurturing that resulted in my dad being the way he is. She is a woman that would throw her own mother to the wolves and I never witnessed or felt warmth from her. She was Nazarene and as my dad's family are the only people that I know that were Nazarene, I don't know if it was their church or the branch of religion, but they were big on memorizing Bible verses. I actually have had a few nightmares about my Grandmother in the basement of their Nazarene church.My dad memorized the entire bible and won the state competition for Bible verses. He is not a believer in any way shape or form, but I remember when I was 16 that he could still quote verses what had to be two decades after the last time he picked up a bible. The point is that memorizing Bible verses doesn't mean anything in my book.

My dad was in the army. When I was ten, my dad was a major and looking to be promoted. We lived on 'Colonel's Row' and I did something to greatly embarrass him. As punishment, he put me in solitary confinement for the summer. He stripped my room bare, removing everything but the beds and dresser. He even took off the dresser mirror. I slept a lot, but there is only so much that even a child with an undiagnosed thyroid problem can sleep. My dad would occasionally let me out to work, such as mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. I took these opportunities to sneak in books. The only books we had were encyclopedias, a dictionary, and the Bible (and my dad's hunting and fishing books, but I was sure he would notice if I messed with those). Now the people that know me in real life know one of the reasons I have such weird pockets of obscure knowledge. The Bible was a copy of the New Testament and I read it straight through. I had no one to discuss it with as that would have given me away and so I came to my own conclusions about what I read. A lot of the impressions that I got then have stuck with me to this day. One of the first things you read about in Matthew, the first book of the New Testament is about how being a hypocrite is about the worst thing that you can be. It states that it is worse than the evil that was present in Sodom and Gomorrah. I came to the conclusion that you should keep your religion private and to this day I still have a hard time praying in front of other people.

I have a cousin that has done a horribly evil thing to her family and she is married to a pastor and quotes Bible verses on her facebook all the time. My niece Little Miss was abused in unspeakable ways and my sister's in-laws that failed to protect her and also continue to make decisions not in her best interest (thank goodness for my sister being there to protect her) are Bible thumping 'Christians'. They are not Christians in my book. I know that not everyone that quotes Bible verses is a hypocrite,but these people certainly are, and I think if Jesus came today instead of then, he would be mentioning the people on the Internet instead of the Pharisees.