Firstly, I want to point out that in some states, hitching is frowned upon more than others. Washington State is a bad one, as well as a few other states. There is an interesting article that discusses this a little more here: Hitchiking Laws in the US.  Despite this, I have hitched in almost every state in the United States not counting Alaska and have never been outright ticketed or prohibited from hitching, with two exceptions:  Once was when a friend and I were hitching across Tennessee and some over-enthusiastic local insisted that we take a detour to see the Great Smoky Mountains. I kept telling him that we would rather stick to the Interstate, but I let him persuade us into dropping us off in the middle of Smokey Mountains National Park. Bad Mistake.  A park ranger immediately stopped us and said that hitching in the park was illegal and we could not do it. We were over 50 miles from any park entrance. I asked him if he could give us a lift outside of the park. He said no. I asked him how we were supposed to get out of the park and he said that was not his problem. I then asked him if we could stand by a driveway to a rest area and hold a sign up saying we were trying to get a ride out and he begrudgingly let us do that. Forunatly we were able to get a lift from a young guy who needed someone to talk to on his road trip, or else we would have been stuck walking the 50 miles out of the park.

This happened once more in the Grand Canyon National Park on a hitching trip. A park ranger angrily told us we could not hitch, and said we would have to walk the 28 miles to the park entrance. As soon as he drove off we hurridly hitched a ride and got out of there.  This has not happened to me in other National Parks. Yosemite is a regular hitch hiking stop, as climbers and hikers thumb rides to trail heads. Park rangers and employees will sometimes stop and give you a lift. Why some parks dont allow this and some do is a huge mystery. But you have been warned.

My preference for hitching is the Interstate System. The roads are broad and there is always plenty of traffic. It is easy to get rides going long distances. The interstate system can be a really great way to hitch; however, sometimes Highway Patrol will stop you and tell you can only stand on on-ramps. I tend to ignore them and go beyond the on ramp and up onto the interstate itself. There is usually a bridge that is convenient to stand under that has lots of space for passing cars to stop. It provides shelter in case of rain or brutal sun, and if you get stuck there for the night you can just climb under the alcove  and crash out for the night if its not already occupied by homeless people.

Once I find one of these lovely spots under a bridge, I hang out until I get a ride. At most I usually wait about 2 hours before someone stops.  If it is getting late and the sun is going down, I will usually just climb up into the alcove, crash out for the night, and start again early in the morning after a light snack  of whatever I have in my pack. Eventually someone will stop and pick you up. There is no reason to burn your energy up by walking down the road. You will only succeed in getting blisters, exhausting yourself, or winding up in some lonely country with no shelter around for miles. Find a good spot, and stick to it until your ride comes.

While I am hitching, I try to make it really obvious what I am doing by holding my thumb up nice and high…really getting it out there for people to see. Some hitchers make a sign that has their destination written on it, but I have never been partial to this method and just use the good old fashioned thumb. Whatever you decide to do, just make it clear what you want and don’t expect drivers to be able to read your mind.

Something you will discover quickly enough is that if you are a single male, getting a ride will be much much easier if you have a girl with you. For this reason some guys suggest not hitching unless you can persuade a girl to travel with you. I would like to point out that while it is true that girls can get rides easier,  there are some girls who have a difficult time with the rigors of hitchiking. This must be carefully weighed when considering asking someone to travel with you. Dragging a girl along who is not tough enough to handle sleeping outside in strange places, dealing with weird drivers,  or going without a shower can make an otherwise uneventful trip a living nightmare; however, some girls are really great travelers. Choose your travel partners carefully. A solo trip can be easier than having a companion whose personality collapses under stress, guy or girl.

I am against taking dogs on hitchiking trips or hiking trips or road trips. Although there are lots of people who travel with their pets, many of these people do not seem to be aware of how difficult it is on the animal. One reason for this is that dogs do not shed heat as easy as humans. We have a much more efficiant cooling system, so it is easy to not be aware that a dog is seriously overheating while we might feel only slightly hot. This overheating can cause brain-damage to an animal, but dogs are so faithful that they will continue to follow their owner even when they are killing themselves. Also, consider how difficult things will be while trying to do such simple tasks as using a public restroom or trying to take a bus. If you have a dog with you while traveling, your are greatly limiting yourself, and quite possibly making your animal miserable in the process.

In the last and final part of this article I will go over a few more tips on staying warm and dry and comfortable, and also suggest a few nice places to hitchike through.

-endle

In part one tried to use scary photos of Jeffery Dahmer to disuade you from trying such a dangerous venture; however, here you are at part two, so clearly you  are seriously considering hitting the road. Maybe you have been reading too much Kerouc. Whatever the case, In this section I will discuss what gear is good to carry when heading out.

A friend -having a friend along on a journey can not only provide a little more safety, but can also be a great morale booster. I have found myself on more than one occasion alone in some barren wilderness highway with hardly any traffic passing and felt frighteningly alone. A friend brightens the road. Bring one!

Sleeping Bag -If you only carry one item with you on a hitchhiking trip, that item should be a warm sleeping bag. From my own experiences, and talking with others who have hitchhiked, I would say that this is the undisputed golden item to bring, despite what Douglas Adams may tell you with his ridiculous talk of only carrying a towel.  A single night of trying to stay warm using a towel will be all that it takes to convince you that a sleeping bag should be a top priority. This very well may be your most expensive item

I will not digress on a discussion of the merits of synthetic fill over goose-down, or mummy versus rectangular sleeping bags. There are plenty of websites that cover that topic quite thoroughly.  Suffice it to say that the lighter and smaller the bag, the better, but only if that bag is sufficiently warm enough for a chilly night. I have found that sleeping bags rated around 20 degrees seem to have a good balance of weight versus warmth.  Even in the summer I have found that the nights can turn chilly very quickly, especially in places such as deserts, mountains, and beaches. A decent sleeping bag can be had for around $100( or less if you watch out for sales), which might be a steep price for some, but worth their weight in gold.

Of course, you will be bringing more than one item, so lets talk about what those other items may be,  bearing in mind that it is important to keep your load as small and light-weight as possible. If your pack is bulky and heavy, it can be difficult to load into someone’s car when they stop to pick you up. Also, having a large bulky pack can not only be a heavy burden to carry around, but it can make you very conspicuous when you find yourself having to walk though towns and cities (which will most likely happen,and it will behoove you to not attract certain types of people, i.e. the law and spangers)

Back Pack -My personal preference  for a pack is a black book-pack with all of the labels carefully taken off. This might be accompanied by a fanny pack, where I am able to keep a few items on my person at all times, This has been enough to carry the few items I need and is non-descript enough to not attract undue attention in civilization.LL Bean makes a very stout book bag that has plenty of space, and mesh side pockets for water bottles that I like very much, but of course everyone will have their own preference. If I am going very far I also include a small duffle bag for a few extra items such as a change of clothes.

Army Poncho At most any Army-Surplus store you can find these nifty ponchos. I have been able to use these as a quick makeshift shelter to stay dry in a rain storm, and also as a way to keep my pack and myself dry while walking. These ponchos fold down very light and very small. If you cannot afford one then a piece of plastic can be had at a hardware store for a dollar or two and serve the same purpose.

A water bottle will, quite naturally, be another important item. I have found that one quart of water is sufficient between spots to fill up. If you do not have a water bottle, then a plastic bottle can be retrieved from any gas station trash can and cleaned out thoroughly in the same gas station bathroom with hot water and soap, rinsed well, and then filled up with water. I look for aqua-fina water bottles, because they have a nice wide mouth and seem to be just the right size. ALWAYS fill up your bottle when you get a chance.

A map can be had for a few cents in any library in any town or city you might happen to find yourself in. As a matter of fact, one of the first things I tend to do when I arrive in an unfamiliar place is to go straight to the library. Not only are they heated and air-conditioned quite nicely, but you can use the restroom, fill up your water bottle, and find maps of everywhere you need to go. The local phone books often have maps of the city. An atlas will have highway maps of states. These can all be photo-copied for a few cents. While in the library, you can also use the internet to check email and let everyone know where you are and that you are okay. Also, find out if there are shelters there  if you need a place to stay for the night or a shower. Or a bookstore, or grocery store, or laundrymat. Mark all of these places on the map you just photocopied ….now you have a handy guide to the city.

Music Although it is is extra weight, a smalle cd player, tape player, or mp3 player can often revive the spirit when you are on the side of the road for more than two hours and no one seems to be stopping. Put on an inspiring song such as Van Halen’s “Jump” and you will perk right up. Latley I have found myself bringing audio books along to pass the time.

Bandanas are so multi-use that I wonder now how people ever survive without one or two on their person. I am much like Bilbo Baggins in that I get very upset if I leave home without one. Two is better. They can be used for the obvious nose-blowing as well as a quick towel or sponge bath, a handy tie-down, a hair-band, an eye cover, a bandage and many many other uses.

Some food a couple of chocolate bars or candies stuffed deep inside your pack can be a nice sugar boost. A sandwich from a grocery store deli is a very nice meal. Cookies, crackers, slim-jims or whatever you prefer. Cans can be heavy, and trail mix gets old very quickly. Glass is a stupid thing to bring on a hitchiking trip for many reasons that should be obvious. Zip-Lock bags are the greatest thing in the world to carry your food in, as it will keep the ants out when you have to sleep outside.

A jacket and scarf I find that old army jackets work well for me; however, if you can afford it, outdoor stores sell a wide variety of wind and rain-proof jobs that work well, but cost $$$.  A scarf can provide a lot of extra warmth. If you have never tried one I recommend it.

A change of clothes this can be whatever you like. If it is warm I will have a pair of shorts,  two pairs of socks, and underwear (in addition to what I am wearing on my person). Colder weather will naturally require long pants and perhaps a pair of long-johns. The point is that you can change into a clean pair of clothes at some point while washing your dirty ones at a coin laundry mat.

Bathroom/First-aid kit this will vary from person to person. I personally carry a small bath-bag kit with some asprin, band aids, bronners soap, toothbrush, and a few q-tips. This seems to be sufficient for all of the times I have travelled. I also carry some raw ginger in my fanny-pack for curing motion sickness (it really works but is a very strong flavor).

A knife A knife is useful for many things. I tend to mostly use mine to cut food. I used to carry a large knife for protection, but found that I never used it for such, and quickly shed that heavy object for a small kitchen knife with a plastic handle(like a steak knife). You can find these in a thrift store for less than a dollar. They are small, legal and cut your bagel very nicely, and will also spread cream-cheese. I suppose they could also serve as a weapon if you really needed it to.

A plastic coffee mug Another thrift store item that can be had for under a dollar.I usually carry a few tea bags with me, and stop in a coffee shop or gas station, fill up on hot water, sugar, and cream, and viola! I have a hot cup o tea. I always offer to pay for the hot water first, and most of the time they do not charge me.

A plastic spoon for soup or whatever other food you may be eating. Some outdoor stores have some nice lexan spoons that are perfect for this. Forks are redundant. Leave them at home.

A flashlight or headlamp. These can be nifty little thingees for finding a place to sleep at night, reading before you go to sleep, or waking up to scary noises and shining around while you yell “Whos there?!” over and over in a screechy voice.

There will, of course, be a few more items that you don’t want to leave home without. Some people might want a cell phone, or a pen and notebook. If you are traveling with another person, then a deck of cards can provide some entertainment. A lighter or matches is always nice.The main point is that the fewer items you bring, the lighter your load will be. The above list, if packed properly, weighs under 20 pounds, fold up nicely, and keep you comfortable for many many miles, and can be had for under $200.

Having said all of that, I would also add that for those who have larger budgets, there is a huge array of outdoor equipment that is light-weight and functional that will do just about anything you can think of.  Again, the point is to keep your load small, unobtrusive, but functional for what you will be doing while hitchiking, which is walking, eating, sleeping, riding in cars for long distances and talking to complete strangers about life.

In the next part I will write about ways to get rides, places to avoid, and places of interest.

But despite the danger of getting picked up by a celebrity psycho-path, hitchhiking, just like many adventure sports, can be a perfectly safe past time or mode of travel if one applies common sense and a few safety measures. I  have hitchhiked across the United States in its entirety several times, as well as a few up and down the coast trips in California, Oregon, and Washington,  and have suffered very little damage to my person. Along the way I picked up a few tricks and pointers that may he helpful to know about if you plan on undertaking a trip of your own.

Mostly I have hitched when I had to travel long distances and had very little money, but plenty of time. There are other modes of travel, but the money might not be available.  Don’t despair! A few dollars and some basic supplies can be all one needs to travel.

Having said that, I must say that there are times when I have had a little bit of money to spare, but not quite enough to get me all the way to where I wanted to go. At these times I have quite successfully combined the speed and reliability of the Greyhound transit system with economical hitchhiking.  A little pre-planning can make a big difference in these situations. Greyhound usually has some sort of deal going on, so I always check this first and base my travel plans accordingly. For example, sometimes there is a deal where you purchase a ticket a week in advance, and you get half off the price. When this is the case, I immediately buy a ticket for half of my trip, say from Flagstaff Arizona to Atlanta Georgia, and then spend a week hitching to Flagstaff from California.  After I make it to Flagstaff,  I jump on the bus to continue the rest of the journey.

In the next part of this blog I will write about what sort of gear is good to carry when thumbing it. The gear you carry can make an otherwise cold and miserable trip into a fun and entertaining voyage.

I think by this simple shift, we would quickly see the poorest communities rise out of poverty. Education would become an important issue, as these same politicians would be sending their own children to the same schools as the poor.

The point is that there is a huge gulf between our politicians and the regular people in our country. They live at the top percentage of wealth. Their children go the most expensive schools and hospitals. They dine at restaurants that an average person would only dream of eating at.

How can these same people know what laws should exist for the American people, when they are so far removed from regular life in the United States. Instead, the interests of huge corporations are taken into consideration above those of people.

Until the everyday life of politicians is at least somewhere near what the everyday life is for the majority of our population, this gross imbalance will only become greater and wealth will become the final law.

C.S Lewis, when writing about this topic, noted that “..You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like , ‘I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 am on January 15th and saw so and so’  or ‘I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such and such a temperature and it did so and so.’ Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a person is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science-and a very useful and necessary job it is too. “

What this amounts to is that the claims of Evolutionsts and Creationists both tend to rely on a lot of theories, however scientific they try to make them sound. We simply do not have the means to time travel and observe what really happened during the formation of the world. Nor can we replicate something that (theoretically) occures over thousands or millions of years, nor do we have the power to create life. There can only be speculation on these topics.

I am not sure how evolution turned into something that people felt necessary to teach at schools. Would a person studying science not be a good scientist if they had never heard about evolution? How can holding to a theory about how the earth and life formed cause someone to have good scientific practices?  Why is it so incredibly important that evolution be in all school books, while creationism is removed? The very argument that the theory of Creationism not be in school books would, by logical sequence, also dictate that evolution not be included either. It also seems to me that teaching evolution as a fact (which appears to be the goal) would promote bad scientific methods.

I know that many people will rail at this and say that evolution is widely accepted by all “vaild scientific organizations.”  The problem with this line of argument is what these people mean by “valid” is people who believe that evolution is fact, or at least the best theory, so basically what they are saying is that “all scientific organizations who accept evolution are the ones who believe evolution is the best scientific theory.” , or, more simply put “we agree with the people who agree with us.”

As far as Creationism goes, I am not sure it matters one way or another to spiritual well-being. A person can accept either theory without offending anything spiritual.  It may be at the end of times one finds out that God used a little evolution in the creation process. If a person believes in God, then any sort of evolution will have only happened with Gods full knowledge and interaction, or not have happend. God will still be the same God. A persons spiritual beliefs would be very weak beliefs if they hinged on  a particular guess at how things looked while life was forming.

At the end of the day, the real question about this would be: Is this really something that needs to be anything more than a friendly discussion? If not, then why is so much time and energy being put into promoting guesses and speculations that simply cannot be validated by any means available to us?

My particular request for people who comment on this is please do not make statements that are presenting theories as some kind of irrefutable fact. In this case I think the Evolutionists are worse than the Creationists. I am constantly getting statements like this:   “Love, loyalty, and altruism within one’s community evolved as adaptive behaviours.”  …ummm so because this person believes in evolution they can now make statements about how love came to being.  I even hate worse these same people who begin their sentences with “1 million years ago…”  as if this person knew what was happening 1 million years ago.

My attitude would be much different if this debate were about something that we might actually be able to validate. Like “Is there life on Mars.”  We will probably be able to find this out sooner than not, of we dont destroy ourselves first,  but unless Time Travel becomes a reality, we will not in this life be able to know what things looked like 1 million years ago…or 10,000 years ago for that matter. It is, and will remain, a mystery.

One side believes that life begins either at the moment of conception, or sometime shortly after that, (there are various opinions, but this particular side of the line all agree that life begins while a baby is inside the womb). Those who hold to this, believe that inside a mother is a human being who has full rights as a human. If you killed this human, it should be the exact same thing as if you had walked up to someone and fired a gun on them.

Some people have been convicted of manslaughter for harming a pregnent woman and killing her unborn child, so this viewpoint is not something that is entirely ridiculous. If, for a moment, you could imagine that some people were killing babies who had just been born, you might be able to imagine the same sort of horrified reaction that the people have who believe that unborn children are fully human.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that an unborn child is not quite a human yet, but rather something similar to cellular tissue (there are also varying opinions  on this side of the argument as well). These people see the issue as enforcing laws on a woman that could affect her entire life, just because some other group believes that cellular tissue is human.  If the government created a law that said anyone who has cancer cannot remove it, because the cancer is a living thing,  then that would be the same sort of law to these people.

The line is clearly drawn where people believe that life starts and someone becomes human. Is it at the moment of conception? (which is the view that the Catholic Church holds). If so, this would mean that certain types of birth control are committing murder anytime a woman uses it.  Others hold that a child becomes human after a certain stage of development in the womb, such as when it starts sucking its thumb or moving around. Still other people believe that a baby is not a human until it is born and takes its first breath. Anything before this is non-human, and can be destroyed with no moral bounds being broken.

There is no clear scientific data on this topic. The accounts range wildly. Viewpoints are debated constantly and with much yelling and spitting on both sides. Few topics can bring up so much emotional energy in people. Personally, I have no answers, as I have never studied up on the topic of the unborn. My point in writing about it is to define exactly what the debate is about, which many people seem to miss out on, and that is simply when life begins. The entire debate fascinates me because both sides have such powerful arguments, but all the while the simple point seems to be overlooked.  I am not sure why this is.

If it were the future, and we had the correct technology, I think that people should be sterile unless they go through some kind of process, such as getting a simple injection or taking a pill…almost like reverse birth control. This way, having a child would require a certain amount of thought. Anyone who wanted could still  have children, but no one could accidentally become pregnant; however, this is currently not the case, and figuring out whether abortion is killing a human (and thus committing murder) or rather a case of violating a persons rights  is an important topic of our time.

Maybe a certain amount of cells should be required to be qualified as a human, or perhaps the first heartbeat. If this point could be agreed upon, we might be able to arrive at a happy medium for both sides.

Having said that, I still believe that marijuana should be legalized. I have travelled profusley around the United States, mostly by hitchiking. On average, in my travels, I would say that one in every ten people I meet smoke pot. This is not a certain group of people I hang out with (in case you were picturing a bunch of hippies on a bus), but rather a wide scope of United States citizens that I have met: a wealthy white man in a sports car who talked about money for hours on end, a couple of mexican men on their way to work, a woman with children…the list is long, wide and varied.

To believe that these people are all criminals is quite a judgement. The people who support the silly laws against marijuana seem to always quote reasons read straight off of an anti-drug pamphlet: “Pot is a gateway Drug”  “It is highly addictive”  Smoking Pot causes car accidents”  and many more such lines that I cannot remember but all are founded on ignorance of what effects pot really has on a person.

It is frustrating to talk to these people, since they are usually adamant about their opinions, while they clearly don’t know what they are talking about. Do people really believe that weed is more harmful than alcohol or tobacco? It is a difficult stretch of the imagination to grasp this. Alcohol is legal, yet thousands of people are killed by drunk drivers, or alcohol poisoning. My uncle died from liver failure caused by excessive drinking. We all probably know someone who is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, struggling with their addiction to drink. Yet, alcohol is not only sanctioned by the government and our culture,  but a huge profit is made every year in taxes on beverages.

Cigarettes are the apex of this same sort of hippocrytic thinking that criminalizes responsible adults who smoke weed in their leisure time, while supporting and profiting from giant tobacco industries that clearly profit from the addiction and subsequent deaths of thousands of people in our country.

In short, I am against laws that  criminalize a large portion or our population based on reasoning that crumbles to dust on close observation. Smoking marijuana only affects the individual who chooses to smoke it. Some people benefit from the effects of weed. The laws that put our citizens into prison, or lay heavy fines on the poor, are far more harmful and costly than the very thing they are against.

-endle

Currently, by my own choice, I live in poverty. My yearly income averages about $8000. If I wanted, I could make more money; however, my problem is what I would have to do in order to achieve that. Someone once told me that it takes money to make money. This sounds cute because it rhymes, but there is some truth to it. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I would first need to either move to a large city, or buy a car. Both of these would cost a small chunk of money, or involve me getting into debt, which I refuse to do.

Rather than getting into debt, I choose to live a more simple lifestyle. I live with a small group of people, which allows us to keep our rent low by sharing the costs. My transportation is either biking, hitchhiking, or getting rides from people who are going in the same direction. All of my clothes are second-hand from thrift stores. Sometimes my food is not so glamorous as my more well-to-do friends who buy all organic, or eat out at restuarants, while I dine on bologna sandwiches or spaghetti.

But even though I live in circumstances that might sound miserable to some people, I can honestly say that I am perfectly happy and content. My stress level is practically non-existent, since I do not have a lot of things to worry about. I am able to keep up with all of my monthly bills by working minimum wage at various jobs such as dishwashing, which require little effort. In my spare time I read, write, go on hikes, or work on art projects. Basically I live within my means and keep my pleasures simple.

I do understand that some people have children and might need to have a car, or work longer hours in order to feed more people. My friends who do have kids all have cars, which complicates things a little more, but these same friends are working on ways to lower their costs where they can by simple things such as growing gardens, using WVO for fuel, and recycling gray water (which goes to the gardens).

Some of these things that we do to keep our cost of living down are, according to current California laws, illegal. For example, using gray water, which is basically taking the water that runs down your sink drain and diverting it into your garden to water your plants. Sounds harmless right? Well, it is, but it is also against the law. So is using Vegetable oil to fuel your car, unless you are keeping track of every gallon you use and paying taxes on it. Another one is HitchHiking (in certain spots which vary by county, state and whatever officer of the law who happens to spot you.)

None of these things are harmful in any way. As a matter of fact, by hitchhiking, I am able to have one less car on the road polluting the environment. By using gray water, less water is going into the sewage system and instead is helping to grow food. By using waste vegetable oil instead of fossil fuels to power your vehicle, you are recycling a waste product, driving a cleaner burning car, and helping our country reduce its dependancy on foreign oil.

There seem to be all sorts of laws that prohibit or at least try to foil such lifestyles as we try to live. It almost seems that the only way to be on the correct side of the law is to live in  family per house (even if the house is bigger than the family needs), buy all of your food from a sanctioned grocery store owned by some corporation, drive a car everywhere you need to go (fueled by big money gas) and flush all of your water down the drain into whatever sort of sewage your area uses.

All of these laws are issued under the guise of protecting us, (from what I am not certain..dirtiness maybe?)  but a careful look will see that many of these sort of laws really protect the interests of large corporations: the ones that own the gas pumps, wal-marts and chain grocery stores; or the interests of those who own property and don’t want the “value” of their property diminished by the appearance of poverty.

Somewhere along the way, it has almost become illegal to be poor. Living outside of the norms is not only frowned upon, but certain laws prohibit trying to live more simple and less wasteful lives.

If being poor sometimes brings one to gray areas of the law, then being homeless is almost a crime in itself. In my travels (by hitchhiking chiefly,) I have found that being homeless immediately makes you eligible for search, humiliation, arrest, and harassment. There are laws in many cities where it is illegal to sleep outside. If you are homeless, you break the law as often as you go to sleep. For this crime you can be ticketed and fined. If you have no money and do not pay the fine than you can be subject to arrest. I am making it sound bad, but that is because it is bad. For those homeless people fortunate enough to have a car, there are still laws that make it illegal to sleep in your car, and often police will violently wake you up and force you to “move on”  in the middle of the night.

I am not sure what the premise is behind these laws. Do lawmakers think that by driving away homeless and poor people then there will be less homeless or poor people?  Will one day there be areas where admittance is gained by proof of income? Hopefully not, but if these types of laws continue, and the type of thinking that values the accumulating of wealth over the  individual person, then there will certainly be such things as cities restricted to the wealthy, and prisons for the poor.

If our country’s recession continues, there might be a lot of people who start discovering these things. Maybe then there will  be more of an outcry about why such laws belittle human lives. For this reason, I have hopes, not that our country will collapse or go into another depression, but rather that people will be forced to reconsider their lifestyles and take into consideration methods that the poor have already been working on, even though they have been made outlaws for it.

“To hold to a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by. If a man lives by the love of God, and obedience to God’s law, as far as he has recognized it, then whatever wrong opinions the man holds are outside of him. They are not true, and they cannot really be inside any good person. At the same time, no matter how many correct opinions another man holds, if he does not order his life by the law of God’s love, he is not a child of God. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks.”

This quote sums up much of what I believe.  A person can hold many opinions about what is real in the spiritual world and what is not. Some people do not think there is a spiritual world.  My personal thoughts on the matter are that there is a God, and that humans are spiritual creatures who will live forever; however, what I think is not the most important thing. It is how  I live my life on a regular day to day basis that really matters.

If I bring up Christianity often, it is because when I was growing up, I had quite a bit of training in that particular religion, and as a result I have a fairly good grasp on contemporary Christian thinking. I am not anti-Christian; however, I disagree with much of what is currently held as Christian doctrine. I feel that there are many errors being taught as solid biblical teachings that are not really in the bible, but are rather extreme slants and interpretations.  For example: A very common and widely held Christian idea is that unless you say a certain prayer that goes something like “Dear Jesus, I accept you as my Lord and Saviour and ask that you forgive all of my sins.” then you are not “saved” and you will go to hell forever when you die.

This idea is a very strong drive for the people who hold it to do as much as possible to convince other people to accept it as true, and to say the prayer so that they won’t go to hell.

In my own studies of the bible, I have not found this idea. I think  that it comes from incomplete understanding of what Jesus taught rather than a deep grasp on biblical teachings. Specifically, there is a verse in the new testament half of the bible that says something like: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Even if you accept this verse to be 100% correct, it does not follow that people who have not accepted Christianity will be going to hell. The idea is far too problematical.  I can think of, off the top of my head, 3 different situations where it would be simply ridiculous to think that God would send people to hell simply because they did not “accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior”

1. what if a child dies before it learns to speak. Will that child be doomed to hell?
2. What about all of the humans who lived before Jesus was ever born, or, lived on a continent where it was impossible to have heard about Jesus?
3. What if a person’s only information about Jesus comes from a psychopath who has a completely skewed version of Christianity and as a result, that person rejects Christianity on the grounds that it is the ravings of a lunatic and cannot be the true teachings of a loving God.

In each of these situations, it would be difficult for any thinking individual to imagine that a God who is based on love would send someone to be tormented forever simply because they were not “Saved Christians”

Yet, many many people hold to this very idea. They may come up with some clause that exampts certain instances, such as saying that children under a certain age are not responsible for themselves, or that people who were born before Jesus will be given a special chance to become Christians.
But to me, these clauses are stretches that are simply trying to enforce the basic idea that you have to hold to a certain opinion of Christianity are else you are doomed to hell.

Really, what all these clauses reveal, is the fact that it is impossible to attribute unfair practices to an all-powerful God while at the same time saying God is Love. The two ideas simply are at odds with each other. There is no stretch of belief-system that can make these two things dwell together happily.

What I have gathered from the Bible is that Jesus taught that if you live a certain way, you will come to develop a love for your fellow humans, and as a result, you will come to love God.  When this happens, it will be like being born again, because your life will take an entirely new meaning: where before you may have been a selfish, greedy person, you will now try to think of other people. Where before your main worries were to accumulate money, you now trust that God will take care of you, and that the more important thing is spending time with people.

So consider for a moment that Jesus really did teach living a certain way as a gateway to knowing God. What would that lifestyle be? Loving others as yourself, Give to the poor, Don’t commit acts of violence, Trust in God to take care of your needs. These are all very basic teachings, but imagine if people  started to live these type of things on a daily basis.

This brings up other religions. If other religions teach similar things, and Jesus taught that living like this was “following him”, then it could possibly be surmised that people who were making an effort to follow after these type of lifestyles might actually be living like God wanted them to be. Still further, God could be just as pleased with a Muslim or Buddhist who was living a certain way as a Christian who was trying to live a good life, or even an atheist who rejected the idea of God complelety, but still held to core beliefs that his own appetite was less important than other people not going hungry.

Would being a Christian suddenly be invalidated if all this were true? I do not think so. Spiritual beliefs are what guide us through our everyday lives; but if these same beliefs become a tyrannical idea that rejects everything else, then it may be time for a re-evaluation.  Christianity is not the only religion prone to this sort of fault. For almost every opinion out there, there is always some person who starts thinking that everyone else needs to be converted, and that they hold the key to ultimate truth. Fortunately, we are not subject to these tyrants in our inner-selves.

“.. we are in no way bound to accept any explanation of God’s ways and God’s doings, if the explanation does not commend itself to our conscience.”

-George Macdonald

At any rate, it was a nice change to read Jon’s article and get a different slant from a Christian’s perspective on this issue. The comments on his post had some interesting perspectives as well. I really liked the idea someone mentioned  about the state only handling civil unions, instead of making laws about marriage. That way, marriage would belong to each church or group of scientists or whatever organization  you belong to. If you marry under a certain church, then your marriage is based on that churches concept of what a marriage is.

This idea to me seems the most fair and equitable to everyone. Each group can formulate their own beliefs on marriage, yet at the same time there is a general consensus that people living together have certain rights.
It’s a mystery to me why this simple solution is not immediately adopted by all states, as it has such a simplistic yet powerful ring of fairness to it.