Obloquy

  *

  Several weeks went by and I didn’t see Erick anymore. My curiosity about him though had not diminished in the slightest. I did take his advice, though, and began reading everything I could on the old religions and mythologies of the world.

  I came across The Epic of Gilgamesh and read it, and I couldn’t help but consider the fact that it was the original story of the flood.

  In the footnote of a Bible I was reading, I learned that the concept of the Virgin Mary was incorporated into the church because of the ancient goddess religions.

  I also learned that Jesus’ birthday wasn’t really December twenty-fifth, but he was believed to be born in September.

  The more I read, the more I wondered how much I had been taught all my life wasn’t true. Was any of it true?

  I didn’t know what to believe.

  I didn’t dare take any of the books I was reading to Greg’s, for I knew he would take one look at them and say they were works of the devil, even though they had been written by scholars and people who had spent their lives researching their materials. But that was the narrow-minded way of the churches. More and more it was clear to me that they wanted the masses to follow them blindly and not know the truth, for the truth might set them free!

  It wasn’t that I thought Christianity, Judaism and the Muslims all bad. The people didn’t know any better. They were just following what they had been brainwashed to believe all their lives.

  Also one had to appreciate the fact that some of the churches, synagogues and such, did do some good. Still, how much more harm had been done in the name of religion?

  The Crusades came to mind. I thought of the Islamic wars that seemed to continuously rage overseas.

  There were the Salem witch trials. Countless women had been murdered out of sheer panic caused from beliefs that were basically nothing but lies.

  The magnitude of it all was just beginning to hit home to me. I almost felt suffocated by it all. I finally closed one book I was reading and not only put it away, I put all of them away.

  I simply couldn’t handle anymore right then. I needed time to process all of it, and it was so damn much to process!

  Was there even a real God?

  Then my mind went to Erick. I definitely now suspected he wasn’t human. Something I had not told anyone.

  But what was he?