From His Book, Life After God

"And there were Christian radio stations, too, so many many stations, and the voices on them seemed so enthusiastic and committed. They sounded like they sincerely believed in what they were saying, and so for once I decided to pay attention t these stations, trying to figure out what exactly it was they were believing in, trying to understand the notion of Belief. The stations talked about Jesus and salvation and I found it was pretty hard listening because these religious types are always so whacked out and extreme. I think they take things too literally and miss too many points because of this literalism. This had always been the basic flaw with religion - or so I had been taught, and so (I realized) I had come to believe. So at least I knew one thing for sure that I believed in. The radio stations all seemed to be talking about Jesus nonstop, and it seemed to be this crazy orgy of projection, with everyone projecting onto Jesus the antidotes to the things that had gone wrong in their own lives. He is Love. He is Forgiveness. He is Compassion. He is a Wise Career Decision. He is a Child Who Loves Me. I was feelings a sense of loss as I heard these people. I felt like Jesus was sex - or rather, I felt like I was from another world where sex did not exist and I arrived on Earth and everyone talked about how good sex felt, and showed me their pornography and built their lives around sex, and yet I was forever cut off from the true sexual experience. I did not deny that the existence of Jesus was real to these people - it was merely that I was cut o ff from their experience in a way that was never connectable. And yet I had to ask myself over and over what it was that these radio people were seeing in the face of Jesus. They sounded like their lives had once been so messed up and lost as they spoke; at least they were no longer so lost anymore - like AA people. So I figured that was a good thing." from pages 182-186, Life After God by Douglas Coupland