Find the religion that's right for you by answering these two questions: What do I want from God? and What does God want from me?

Whether you're a first time shopper or just no longer satisfied with your current spiritual affiliation, you need help. If you were looking for a new house or car your local bookstore's shelves would be filled with excellent choices to guide you. But now you face a much more important decision and those same shelves offer you nothing. MIKE'S BUYERS GUIDE TO GOD will take you by the hand and walk you through a process of self discovery as you begin to understand all the factors involved and determine which matter the most to you. You'll consider the old established religions, some newer models and what's involved in starting your own. You'll learn new terms like spinister and glossolalia, take a fresh look at the Ten Commandments as well as the Non Commandments, complete some fun and revealing homework assignments, and, in the end, emerge confident and eager to face the first day of your new spiritual life.

Introductions

Of all the books in the Mike's Buyers Guide Series, in this one we are the most well pleased. Compared to the Buyers Guides to Sports, Politicians, Children, Time, Food or Weather, even compared to the Buyers Guide to Nothing, there's just no comparison. Not that all those others aren't more than merely useful. Our Market Research and Focus Group experience tells us their readers feel they can't live without them. About our Buyers Guide to Politicians, George B., of Washington, DC, and somewhere in Texas, said exactly that. "They can't live without them." Of course, he might just have meant that people can't live without politicians.

But Angelina J., of six or seven different places, said the same thing regarding our Buyers Guide to Children and, through her tone of voice, made it clear she was talking about the book.

And Al G., who, asked about his hometown, responded "that still-beautiful Planet Earth," spoke specifically about our Buyers Guide to Nothing when he said "None of us should be living without it. Of course we should buy nothing at all because then we won't have to drive to stores and use fossil fuels and contribute to global warming. But I urge every one of us to drive wherever necessary to buy this book and learn how to break the terrible habit of buying stuff."

However, it wasn't until the testmarketing phase of the production of Mike's Buyers Guide to God that we first heard our readers proclaim "I would hate to think that I could have died without reading this book."

Now, isn't that the highest praise you could hope for?

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island, what five books would you want to bring with you?

Our readers are smart enough to just avoid that situation. Or so they tell us. There was, we admit, a very small percentage of the questionnaires we sent them that were never returned.

But when we asked our test readers this question: If you were taxiing down the runway on board a flight with The Afterlife your destination, what one book would you hope to have recently read? can you guess what they answered?

That's right. This one.

As pleased as we are to find you with your eyes on this page, we have to ask ourselves and you one question. Who are you? And why are you beginning to read this?

That sounds like two questions, doesn't it? But we believe, and the infallible and unerring scientific discipline of market research supports us in this belief, that if two questions have a single answer, they're really just one question.

Most likely you're reading this because you're already a religious person but you're having Doubts. Those Doubts led you to The Fray. But those Doubts also define who you are.

Anyone who buys a Buyers Guide has doubts but in most cases those are lower case doubts. Many want to buy a digital camera. They've gone to the store to pick up a roll of film and wandered up and down aisle after aisle without finding any and, finally, asked a clerk where they keep the film. The clerk, a typical teenager, had no idea what they were talking about.

Gently, friends brought them into the current millennium and explained that film and the cameras that depended on it are now as obsolete as the carburetor. Just get, they advised them, a digital camera.

Oh sure, just like that. And please, old buddy, tell me one more time, what is a megapixel?

There's a Buyers Guide buyer for that. For a first timer. A newbie.

So when someone purchases one of our products we often assume they have never before bought what we are trying to guide them to buy. We know we need to start at the very beginning. We need to introduce them to an entirely new vocabulary and explain to them all the options.

In your case, we understand you may feel we and you should skip the introductions. You may have been a proud and productive member of your particular current religion since birth or baptism or confirmation or being born again or confirmed again. You may once have been an altar boy, able to recite from memory whole phrases from a dead language.

As a matter of explanation to those whose current spiritual affiliation doesn't employ altar boys, the term does not, at least under the best of circumstances, signify a young male child being sacrificed on an ornate table. Any more than puppy mill means a tool designed for grinding up young canines.

Still, despite your many years in the service of your Lord as defined by the priests or elders of your congregation, we're going back to kindergarten. Remember, you're reading this for a reason. And, chances are pretty good, our compilers of such statistics tell us, you picked it up for a one-word reason. Guilt.

Guilt: If not an invention of religion, surely as powerful a weapon in its arsenal as an inquisition or an excommunication or the threat of damnation.

Guilt led to your doubts and your need to deal with them. We won't pretend to know what actions lie beneath the surface of your guilty demeanor.

But we would like to reassure you that your conviction that you've done some serious, if not lethal, wrong may have basis in fact and yet be understandable, forgivable and, this may surprise you, shared with millions of your contemporaries.

Does this describe your situation? You have never killed a single one of your fellow humans and yet somehow you sense the blood of thousands on your hands? You own neither a gun or knife of the kind designed for murder but your dreams are filled with more gore than a dozen Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger films and you know you are complicit?

Well, relax, or at least prepare to imagine that the day may soon come when you feel you have remedied the evil you've contributed to.

As Tennessee Williams used to say, You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? You put your faith in a religion with a superiority complex. It troubled you when that religion supported, if not demanded, killing innocent humans and you went along. You voted, as instructed, for George Bush and ignored all the evidence that his adventures in Iraq were criminal. You enabled his killing spree. Or you reached deep into your cloak or wherever you carry your cash and showered your Imam with the means to turn people and cars or trucks into suicide machines that converted each single suicide into the murder of dozens.

That's over, isn't it?

So, please, swallow your pride, it's not poison. Let's go to that kindergarten.

The House

Some people make things too complicated. If you want to buy a house, that should be easy. Just open up a newspaper to the real estate section and find a picture of a house that looks nice. Or, get on your computer and search for "nice house." But don't forget to include the city and state. If you don't find one you like, look for a house that reminds you of the one you were brought up in. That was a good house, wasn't it?

And financing? Nothing could be simpler. Go through that stack of junk mail that's sitting on your kitchen table. You're sure to find at least a half dozen offers with great interest rates for your mortgage.

I can just hear you saying, That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.

Buying a house is one of the most important things a person can do. You have to do your homework. You have to do your research.

You must consider the age, size, condition, color, type of construction of the house. You must hire a licensed, approved inspector to examine the plumbing, the wiring, insulation, the walls, floors, ceilings, the roof, the basement, the soil, the trees, the doors and windows.

You've got to get an appraiser to determine the value of the house compared to other houses of the same type, in the same neighborhood, painted the same color.

You need to find an expert in the art of feng shui who can evaluate whether light, heat, cosmic energy, and odors coming into the house intersect in the proper places and manner.

And what about the neighborhood schools, their teachers, the curriculum, sports, extracurricular activities? In the event of an emergency, can the local hospital's emergency helicopter land in your yard or on your roof? Is there a nearby place of worship, well-run and scandal free?

All true. Sad but true. Buying a house isn't easy.

Even sadder, but also true, many people will do all that italicized hard work because they assume the house that they are about to buy could be the one they live in for the rest of their lives. And yet, when it comes to another important decision, one that will last far longer than that, last in fact for eternity, they might as well be flipping a coin.

But not you. Before you flip your coin you're going to say a little prayer for some divine guidance or even intervention in making your choice.

Is that such a good idea? Sure, even if you don't get a clear answer you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. That's not the point.

If you wanted to find a good financial advisor to help you plan for your retirement would you pick up the phone, dial some numbers randomly and assume whoever answers will do a great job? Same thing, isn't it? You're going to kneel or otherwise assume the position (prostrate or lotus) and, aloud or silent, phrase your question or request. Then you wait for a voice or a sign of some kind.

Even if you had psychic Caller ID there's hackers out there that could get around it.

Anyway, is that how you want to set out on your new spiritual journey? Wouldn't you rather show a little initiative, do your own homework and enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done, as well as a competitive spiritual GPA that you honestly earned? If you were still in college would you be content to slide by with mediocre grades you only managed to get by paying someone to do your papers for you? OK, that was enough to get at least one president elected but that's not turning out so great, is it?