[LWC]

Vundy, you seem like a guy that likes things straight, so I will shoot straight with you.

If you can honestly claim:

I mean really, what good has religion done the world besides cause us to fight?? All I've seen it do is make a Taliban yell out "Allahu Akbar" before they blow themselves up, and make them call us dirty Jews when we're loading them in a bird for medical treatment when I'm clearly not a Jew..or be a reason behind an American troop deciding to open up on a group of civilians because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time and because they were "those **** Muslims are goin to **** anyway". That's not even to mention all of the other wars and atrocities that I haven't witnessed committed against other people all over the world in the name of religion. I'm really, really trying to find something good in it all, but I'm having a hard time at it.

....then you must be choosing to put on blinders to all the good done all over the world by Christians everyday. As I stated before, for every Westboro Baptist, there is a missionary living on crackers, risking their life to improve the lives of others and share the Gospel. For every person that puts on a fine pressed suit on Sunday and then lives like the world Mon.-Sat., there is a person that loves the Lord with all their heart, mind, soul and strength and loves their neighbor as much as they love themselves.

I could rattle off a bunch of charities that work all over the world, I could give stats about missionaries, I could talk about Gideons putting Bibles all over the world, I could talk about ministers that go into prisons to minister and show love to the people that nobody else seems to care about. I could even talk about the sweet old ladies in the churches that we all know that would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it.

Again, the true message of the Bible is the love that God has for us, and that we are supposed to share with each other. I often ask the question about how the world would look with no religion? I believe that it wouldn't exist. We would be killing each other, sharing diseases with each other, have no welfare system whatsoever, have no charities, etc... Everyone talks about stripping away all the morality talk and such, if we lived completely free to and from each other, who would stop rapists? Who would stop drug dealers?

We cannot simply assume that we would even know that those things are wrong. Where did we come up with what is right and wrong? Would anything be right? Would anything be wrong? Where would we come up with the law? Would we have law?

I read a book one time that talked about how governments all over the world are based off of various religious teachings. Religion, whichever dominated the particular region shaped and/or started the law and governments. Like it or not, a true sense of right and wrong has been ingrained in us, we are just choosing to want to change it.

I went off topic a little but I wrapped it all together. I have had several family members and friends serve in various branches of the military, it always seems like their morals tend to stray a bit off-course from where they previously were at home. When they come home and are honorably discharged, after a while they seem to come back a little, but they are never the same. I hear stories from them about how after being shot at a man needs a cold beer, a pretty woman and a good time. I am not trying to be an over-arching judge of what is right or wrong, I am just using their experiences to gauge where you currently are. (Please understand that I know everyone's military story is different, and I have uber-respect for service men and women.)

One buddy of mine, use to never even say the other form of dang, and now the f-word is in every sentence. He used to never drink a drop and now he gets hammered every weekend. He used to love and respect women, and now he runs around on his wife. I ask him why and he says, "I learned how truly short that life is. I better enjoy it while I am here!"

Again, I am probably allowing a few bad apples to spoil a whole bunch. I can be bad for that sometimes. I also have a friend and associate that joined the military with the intent to use the Armed Forces to be a mission field. He served his either 6 or 8 years and came back nearly the same.

I have also learned from family and friends experiences that it seems to be very tough to adjust to life after a medium-long military career. Many family and friends that I have served at least 10-12 years, some even pulled their 20. They really struggled with what do I do now that I am a 42 year old retiree? An uncle of mine that served 12 years is trying to find a mail-route to do for 8 years to get full retirement.