[ That brings Matt some comfort, though not very much. He can make a lot more sense of the part of the local religion that isn't tied to a living figure. It just seems so ... like money in politics. A conflict of interest.

That could, of course, be his own cultural lens talking. ]

Really interesting, [ he muses. ] Sometimes I wonder how I'd understand all this if I'd been raised here. Though then I come back to, I was raised in a pretty Christian society and I still turned out like this.