Losing My Religion part 2

Back in part one I talked about how I grew up very religious and I touched on my up bringing.  I started to get into how I wasn't able to live up to the standards I was taught.  I wasn't and didn't.  Looking back over that time I realized that my main motivation was the fact that I enjoyed rebelling against my parents and those in authority more than I actually enjoyed sinning.  That may seem strange but it is true.  For example the last time I got drunk I was 22 or 23 years old.  Going to the bar lost its sense of excitement as soon as I turned 21.  Getting drunk lost its appeal shortly after.

After I got married there was pretty much nothing left for me to do in the category of fun sins.  I still told lies and cussed and stuff.  I've laughed at and told dirty jokes and acted like a general heathen, but I was still what folks would have called a good guy.  I settled down to attending church and even teaching Sunday school.

That's pretty much how things went until I lost my hearing.  I didn't lose all of it.  The way my ears work now I can only hear out of one ear.  Things like music don't sound right, but I can generally make out what folks are saying if I can see their lips move or if there isn't much background noise.

After losing most of my hearing things changed for me.  I quit listening to music because it sounded strange to me.  Songs I used to love and remember no longer sounded "right" because I couldn't make out some of the music.

With nothing better to listen to I turned to the local Christian talk radio.  Which was a all sermons all the time format.  At first it was fun to listen to because I could pick out what was wrong with it.  After awhile it was a fun intellectual exercise to see how different hermeneutics produced different points of view on scriptures.

The more self righteous you are, the easier it is to avoid the reality of your own sins.  Which is why even though I was in church and even going above and beyond what other folks did, I was still basically sinning and not becoming what they call "Christ Like".  The word used for this is "hypocrite".  Which was what I was.