I Make a Distinction Between Religion and Spirituality

At the age of about 19 I could not wait to move away from my parents. I had seen them fight a long and acrimonious divorce in the days before Australia adopted pan- American no fault divorce. There was no "winner" except the lawyers who "won" all their money in fees and expenses. To gain a divorce in the Supreme Court in those days, "blame" had to be proven. The divorce had to be someone's "fault". Savvy couples who were wise to this ruse would agree on nominal blame and they would manufacture sufficient supporting evidence before going to court. i.e. The man may say to his soon to be Ex "you can say you caught me in the act of adultery" and they would go to court with photos of him in bed with a "strange" woman both of them with a mortified expression on their face at the unexpected appearance of "the wife" who "just happened" to arrive home early one day carrying a hi- res. camera and powerful flash attachment. The smart ones would sell the family home and divide all their assets fairly among themselves (this is not a crime unless it involves insurance fraud or some other form of cheating). They would formulate a mutually acceptable agreement on custody, access and financial support of their children and commit this agreement to writing. They may present a joint bank account to the court containing a mediocre amount of money maybe $100.00 or even a monthly paycheck as their only "joint" asset which the court would divide between them as it saw fit. With no prevailing dispute between them needing to be resolved their brief appearance in court would be an open and shut case with nothing more for the court to do other than dissolve the marriage which it always did, all the necessary conditions having been satisfied before the unhappy couple even appeared in court. Unfortunately my parents were not that shrewd. Acting on the adversarial nature of their respective solicitors they fought tooth and nail every step of the long drawn out process and appealed every decision of the court on one technicality or another until their financial reserves were exhausted. They stopped going back to court because they simply could not afford to, they had lived separately for 12 years, their youngest child (me) had reached age 17 and was too old to be the subject of a custody dispute and they no longer had any jointly owned assets for the court to divide, the family home having long ago been sold to cover their separate legal expenses. This costly and nerve-wracking 12 year ordeal was not uncommon before no fault divorce began in Australia in 1975. Every member of this family suffered close to unbearable stress including my older brother and I. My older brother began drinking at age 13 and 40 years of it was enough to kill him. I started getting into all sorts of petty strife simply out of boredom and because I lacked the common sense to avoid it. I was really lost and I knew it. I had given up on ever finding something that would sustain hope, but HOPE had not given up on me. I continued to roam aimlessly about the countryside looking for whatever work I could find with no direction or purpose in life at all until, seemingly by sheer chance before I knew it I was surrounded by Jesus Freaks, many of them ex. hippies like me, former drug users and other social outcasts. They took me under their wing and I felt more security and love than I had ever felt before even at home which had become like living in a war zone. They said to me "when the student is ready the teacher appears", and I was sure ready. They showed me the way to a whole new life and I knew it was real because these Jesus freaks had done many of the things I had done and I could see for myself that they felt renewed inside, instead of feeling drained of hope they felt recharged, re- energised. This was nothing like the religious instruction I had received at school when I was a kid. This was a quantum leap into a whole new orbit of reality and existence that I had previously not thought possible. I had taken a few weird trips before but they leave you feeling drained and wasted. After forty years this "trip" keeps getting better. The Jesus freaks encouraged me to read the historical source material about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ foretold in the most ancient parts of the world's all time best seller, the Bible, and it seemed to come to life in a new and living way. If you have never known the extraordinary experience of salvation you probably think I'm a freak and [i]I have to agree with you[/i]. This experience is definitely otherworldly. I got baptised by full immersion in a Four Square Gospel Chapel in Greenacre, Sydney Australia in 1973 when I was 20 years old, because that is the method used by the disciples in new testament times to identify with the death and burial of Jesus in the hope of sharing in his resurrection. I tried to explain to my older brother but he just thought I was off with the fairies. My dad being a drinker took a less courteous view of it. My mum was glad to see her "long lost" son again and the first time she saw me after 2 years away we went to a local charismatic church that very weekend and she she renewed her faith in Jesus after messing with spiritualism and finding nothing but lying spirits and disillusionment in it. There is a difference between the form of religion and the empowering spirit behind it. The form without the faith is dead. I found the spirit first and returned to the form because it provides an outward structure to my relationship with others. Those with no interest in the spirit usually have no interest in the outward form either unless they have been a Christian for so long it is just a habit to them snd they have forgotten how to really believe.