May I talk to you about changing your religion?

Has a thought ever crossed your mind like "Is the religion within which I was raised a load of crap?"  We aren't always told the philosophically astute 'secrets' of the founders of our religion and sometimes most of what we here is the bullshit made up by people too apathetic, ignorant or lazy to take the necessary steps to understand what the scriptures that they sometimes revere actually mean.  Perhaps what is practiced in the mainstream really has nothing to do with the original intentions.

Imagine, for example, that your part of some small group of people and the charismatic leader of the group tells you that it's your turn to go kill a bunch of people.  You might be in the cockpit of a plane heading towards a skyscraper or merely running into an abortion clinic with a bomb strapped to your back.  And then a crisis of faith, troublesome thoughts like:

What if there was a meaning behind the story of Lot appealing to God to not nuke those cities?

What if there was a meaning behind the story of Moses appealing to God to not kill all of the Hebrew people just led from Egypt?

What if God doesn't really want us to murder people without questioning authority and trying to negotiate out of it?

Some people might do an online search for "tests religion" to find some personality tests and see which of the world faiths merit further, intense study, so that you could find a suitable replacement.  If you're like most people, you have no intention of making a legitimate effort to contemplate the deep, philosophical meanings of various religions or even to study enough to have a list of really good questions that you would like to ask the founder of whatever it is you thought you believed.  And even though you're no longer going to take up swords against the infidels, you might not feel like exchanging one load of crap for another.

So what should you do?  Be honest with yourself.  In other words, if you're not going to make the effort to become a Buddha or a Saint or something like one, why not do something that won't hurt anybody and might even be fun?

Become a Jedi.  You won't be alone:

"Seven people in every thousand in England and Wales gave their religion as 'Jedi' in the 2001 Census.
The Census form's question on religion - the only question where a response was not compulsory - offered a series of tick-boxes for the major religions in the UK (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh); a tick-box for 'none'; and a free space to write in 'any other religion'. This was the first time a religion question was included in a Census.
A campaign on the internet claimed - wrongly - that Jedi, the belief system at the heart of the Star Wars films, would receive official government recognition as a religion if enough people quoted it on their Census forms. An email in support of the campaign, quoted by BBC News, invited people to 'do it because you love Star Wars... or just to annoy people.'
Just over 390,000 of the 52,000,000 people in England and Wales wrote in 'Jedi' on their census form. "  http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=297&Pos=&ColRank=2&Rank=1000

The Jedi "religion" combines several Eastern philosophies, recognizes the sanctity of all life, and encourages universal goodness.  It isn't as philosopically refined as these religions, but what do you expect, George Lucas is a film maker, not a God nor even a Jedi Master, and if what you were taught isn't as good then you might as well convert until you find something better.

You don't really need a lot of trimmings and trappings to have spirituality, but if you want the look, and patterns by "Simplicity" don't satisfy you, I recommend the following sites for inspiration:

http://www.jedi-academy.com/ 

http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/index.html

http://www.geocities.com/mrsmayimnaar/Jedi_Robes.html

http://www.knowledgehound.com/topics/character_costumes.htm

http://darksidetroopers.com/links.php

and for good measure: http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Things/FCloak/FCloak_pattern.htm

There are actual groups of people attempting to turn the Jedi 'beliefs' into a legitimate religion, but if you're not going to go to the trouble to find something more profound, why bother?  Read a book or two on Taoism, Buddhism, Qui-Gong, and Akido, take a sword fighting class, and you're in business!