Religion crutch explained

  You see, sometimes people use religion as a crutch as I explained in a previous blog, but that's sort of okay.  Helps you through tough times?  Sure.  There's another, more sinister thing I see every day, and that's when people use religion to cover up their inner selves in the same way someone paints over a rusty car (when cars were made of metal in the '70s).  The rust percolates, thrives, and comes through, eating from the core, outward, until there's nothing left, bubbling up over the over-coat of paint.
  One good example of this is an acquaintance of mine who seemed a bit.. effeminate.  More so that he should for 1997 USAF standards.  He'd wear women's jeans (buttoning on the other side as woman's jeans do) because the "cut" was better.  Hm.... really now?  Anyway, it's pretty obvious he was gay, but in denial.  Gays often resented their mothers, and I believe it to be a bit of a psychological disease, but hey, that's me, and that's them, and, well, whatever.  People are broken everywhere, all the time.  To compensate for this feminine issue, he'd try to date the most beautiful girls, only to do nothing with them.  Quite brave to ask them out, buy them flowers, etc.  He'd never do anything physical though, as if it repulsed him inwardly somehow.  He was surprisingly a devout Catholic, performing the required Days of Obligation and knowing Catholic Law and Ritual very well.  We'd banter the Seven Sacraments and other logistical Catholic requirements few new about (I was at one point pretty gosh darn Catholic, as I wanted structure, order, and the right path, Catholicism being one of the toughest to maintain correctly.  There's a lot of rules in Catholicism, to include a mandatory Virgin Mary (aka tween slut) homage on Saturday mornings that's quite time consuming.)  He loved Catholicism so much, though he had a Bachelor's Degree in something or other, he was going to get ordained as a Catholic priest once he did his USAF time as an enlisted (yeah, there are those weirdos that come in with a Bachelor's Degree already and come in enlisted instead  of being an officer, which is odd as all frack but whatever). [Hi, Dave. (weirdo, tapping the Coke can like an OSI officer)].  Oh Esss AYE!  Ching Chow! 
  Oh, I strayed a bit there.. sorry.  Kay.. so anyway this guy was obviously gay but covering it up with all sorts of everything else to make it not true.
  Catholic priests have been in the public eye for the last 20 years or so as gay child molesters as well.  Who knows what percentage?  Scary thought.  I think these guys were a bit messed-up to begin with, using priesthood as "car paint" to cover that rust, instead of dealing with these issues before-hand, perhaps seeking law and structure to sort of front-end-alignment their brain-heads.  Doesn't work, obviously.  It's just covered-up.
  I've seen several folks using religion as a car-paint cover-up.  A lieutenant was hyper religious, had a gorgeous wife, but still was using my PC at work at night to browse kiddy porn on the internet for several months.  He got an Article 15 (about as bad as you can get for USAF without being kicked-out or jailed).  I think his punishment was mild.  Still, they let him stay in.  His wife was a goody-goody too.  I can only imagine how she dealt with this.  When I was leaving that remote duty station, I asked what he was going to do for his church he went to before he PCS'ed (left to a new assignment) which was in a few months.  He remarked he'd do an "interpretive dance" to my horror.  I actually saw him a few months later and asked how that "interpretive dance" went.  He said he performed randomly and silently in front of about a hundred people for about an hour with no music, he then stopped suddenly and that was it.  No applause, just silence. 
  Yeah, I meet people like that.

  So, I figure if you got issues (who doesn't?) you should deal with them first instead of burying them deep inside and covering it up with religion.  I see this buried denial all the time and has anyone noticed the most religious folks are the most fracked-up sons-of-biyatches?  Yep.  Car paint.  Get rid of the rust first, God'll help you sand it down, then get all religious if you need to.  You'll find you won't have that glassy-eyed glazed-over look when you talk about God and being "saved", etc.  It'll just be matter-of-fact and people will see you're sane instead of that you're burying some inner evil rust.