DENY YOUR MAKER...

I'm the man in the box Buried in my shit Wont you come and save me, save me
Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut? Jesus Christ, deny your maker
He who tries, will be wasted Feed my eyes now you've sewn them shut

-Alice in Chains- "Man in the Box"

Yep, just what the world needs. Another overly opinionated person thinking that his thoughts and feelings are important enough to post on the interweb for the world to read. I've been writing a lot in recent weeks and felt that I wanted another outlet. Some days it will be about family, while other days it will be my ramblings about things I find interesting, offensive or both. Regardless, I hope you find it worth the occasional read.

So why call it "Deny Your Maker"? Some of you have seen it before. I have this posted as a motto of sorts on my Facebook page alongside my declaration of religion as "atheist". Together these have raised more than one eyebrow among old friends that knew me as the bible thumping, Stryper t-shirt wearing "Jesus Freak" I once was. "Deny Your Maker" is a lyric from a song called "Man in the Box" by Seattle grunge legends, Alice in Chains. It's become rather symbolic for me of what you might call my spiritual journey in life.

For a long time I've held some resentment towards my mother for what I perceived as the unfair religious environment of my youth. I vaguely remember a time when we attended church as a family. Somewhere along the way, Dad stopped going, but I never felt like that was an option. Church was just a part of life. It's what we did every Wednesday night, Sunday morning and sometimes Sunday nights. I still remember the friends made there and the fun that we had with great affection. However, once I left for college and was able to look at it in a different light I began to ask questions and research many things that I'd just always been told were the definitive truth. I spent time with more than one campus ministry group and investigated many different christian denominations but always left them feeling like they didn't provide answers but instead only created more. All that compiled with the historical reading I was doing for classes led me to the eventual conclusion that I don't believe any of it. That the truths of my youth were nothing short of mythology or allegorical tales rather than the literal interpretation of the Bible or the basis for a religion. While I'll now admit that to resent my mother for feeling it was forced on me is probably unfair. That is the faith that she's chosen and if that's what makes her happy and brings some measure of peace to her life then great. I can respect that and be happy for her, it just isn't for me. There in lies the deeply layered meanings of "Deny Your Maker". It represents for me my denial that I have a maker in the spiritual sense, a denial of the truths that I was led to blindly believe by my physical maker in the form of my parents, as well as an emotional connection to the painful emotional lyrics of the Late Layne Staley so much so that they will probably be part of my next tattoo.

Until next time...

S