I saw a sign off Hampden about leasing a church. Right there, on a crappy looking building, Lease A Church!

How great is America? You can rent your own church.

So, that got me thinking about starting my own religion. L. Ron Hubbard did. Joseph Smith did. Lady Gaga did. Oh, snap. Tom Cruisesists, Mormonists and Little Monsters, please forgive me.

Forgiveness. Let’s start there. We should forgive each other. Don’t want to be all hateful and resentful all the time.

Okay, so it’s a religion of forgiveness. Got that. Check that off the list.

What about an afterlife? Yeah, I don’t know about all that. Can we not have an opinion? I mean, Judaism is kind of iffy about the afterlife. And Buddhism is too. Let’s just focus on this life.

Okay, this life, this moment. We’ll focus on the here and now. And we’ll forgive each other.

What about sex?

Let’s be pro-sex. I mean, look around, most people are for sex. Though some aren’t. You have the sex haters. Sure. But my church? The Church of Leased Time? We’ll say sex is good.

Within reason. I mean, sex is a powerful thing. Simple, but powerful. I think that’s how it tricks people into taking too seriously, or not seriously enough. It’s simple, but powerful, and it’s not static. It changes, and changes things. A lot.

Sex is okay in Ritcheyism, as long as no one gets hurt. And we’ll use the laws of the land to govern the ethics of sex. An age of consent, no Shetland ponies, that kind of thing.

We dealt with the sticky issue of sex (don’t go middle school on me – no snickering), so now, we have three tenets : sex is okay, we’ll deal with this life only, forgiveness. We’ll forgive ourselves. We’ll forgive each other. We’ll forgive God. Because this world and this life can be oh so hard.

God. Is there a God? Well, any kind of God would be beyond our comprehension. We’ll say yes, there is a God, but we know nothing about Him\Her\It\They, only that it is a loving, sustaining Force that helps us make it through. So Jedi Knights can join my church. Which would be cool. Love me a good light saber battle.

What about Jesus? Oops, way too controversial for my little leased church. But we’ll risk it. We’ll say yes to the basic teachings of Jesus. Love, forgiveness, the kingdom of God, which is coming, but is right now as well. Which also means that God is in the moment. Which brings us back to where we started. Forgiveness and this life.

Now that I think about it, maybe I don’t need to lease a church. If you take out some of the more kooky theology, Christianity is about forgiveness, living in the moment, treating others with respect and love. The sex stuff, well, that and the afterlife-Heaven-Hell-Judgment stuff gets all murky in theology that probably won’t be around in another hundred years.

Yeah, I’ll stick with Christianity for now.

Until Joss Whedon starts his own religion. Then I am so there.