College Confidential

I watched a very intriguing documentary last night, called The Devil's Playground. I can't say for sure that it was 100% accurate because the situations it described seemed inconceivable to me but who knows. It was about Amish teenagers. I've always been interested in exclusive religions, especially the Amish and I've been to the Amish parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania several times. Anyways, when an Amish person reaches the age of 16, they have the chance to live like "normal" teenagers. Evidently this entails drinking copious amounts of alcohol, getting addicted to drugs and sleeping with lots of people. Hmmm. I don't even do that and I'm in college. I do not understand why this is encouraged by the Amish community. They say it is to give teenagers the chance to experience life before they decide to join the church for good. I do not believe that you have to basically destroy yourself in order to make a decision though. I knew from day one I did not want to be a Mormon even though my mom was and I never did anything that was discouraged by the religion until I was in college and hadn't been going to church for 3 or 4 years. This includes cursing, watching R-rated movies, wearing bikinis, drinking alcohol, using drugs and having sex. Sure I like to go to parties and drink alcohol and I sure as hell love wearing bikinis but if I never did any of those, I would still know I never wanted to be a Mormon. It's the true nature of the religion I don't like...their social norms just happen to be an annoyance too. So, in my mind, if the Amish like the principles of their religion they should have no reason to go off the deep end socially in order to decide whether or not to officially join it. JMHO. It was still a very interesting documentary though.

And about that Israel/Lebanon conflict. I don't have a tv with channels on it so I can't watch the news. I really have no idea of the severity of this thing. The articles on the Internet make it sound not too bad but my friend, who is into Poli Sci/History thinks it's going to start WWIII. My Army guy said the same thing. Wonderful. See all the problems religion causes?