I'm in a weird mood tonight, so I believe I will share some of my past with you.

"Hi, my name is Kenny, and I'm a recovering Jehovah's Witness..."

I was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness, which if you aren't familiar is a Christian religion that preaches door to door. Now, some may say that "religion" is too strong a word for Jehovah's Witnesses. They number about 6,000,000 across the world (according to their literature), but I have to admit the organization is more of a cult.

As a kid growing up, I always believed that if a religion came along that could answer my questions better than Jehovah's Witnesses could, that I would switch. However, there are two things wrong with that.

• It assumes that another "religion" is the correct answer, and
• It assumes I could be objective

Jehovah's Witnesses attend "the meeting" (aka church) 3 to 4 times a week. Being immersed in a belief system to that degree will give you the ability to rationalize away any other religious belief. They are also very good and making bad things sound good (or at least acceptable). For example, I've always believed that men and women are equal. I've grown up with that as a common societal belief (oh silly me..). Jehovah's Witnesses do a very good job of sounding like they are saying men and women are equal, when what they are actually saying is "They are equal up until the time when a decision needs to be made, and then the man is in charge." That became painfully apparent when I tried to explain Witnesses belief's about gender roles.

As to the first point... It took me a long time to realize that the idea of "staying with Jehovah's Witnesses until a better religion came along" is the act of settling. I realized that I don't need to be a part of an organized religion to be spiritual. I know what you're thinking, "Well, DUH. Aren't you about a million years late with that bit of wisdom?" Hey, everyone has to realize it for themselves at some point or another. :)

At this point, I'm happy with my little set of religion beliefs, which are fairly thin at this point. I believe there is some higher power, but not neccessarily a traditional one. I also believe that higher power doesn't really have an impact on my day to day life, and that whatever I do isn't really going to offend it. Be happy and don't hurt others. That's about it in a nutshell.