A couple of things are disturbing me today. I'll deal with the easiest first.
I was recently invited to join a Facebook group called "A petition to remove 'Soldiers Are Not Heroes' from Facebook." I declined.
Not because I agree with the sentiment that "Soldiers are not heroes." Quite the opposite; my dad and many members of my family and friends have served in the US armed forces, and I have nothing but respect for them. Volunteering to put your life at risk for something you believe in meets my definition of "heroism," even if I don't believe in what you believe in.
That said: It seems to me that what those soldiers are fighting for includes the right of free expression, and I cannot in good conscience participate in stifling that expression just because I disagree with it.
On this religion/christianity thing. Urgh. I have a good friend who has apparently undergone a "conversion" in the last couple of years. That's fine, you know, some folks like vanilla, some folks like chocolate, etc., cool with me.
What I find unfortunate is that with this conversion seems to have come many of the trappings of religion that I find disturbing and distinctly un-Christian. The insistence that if I don't believe the way someone else does, that I'm somehow wrong, in need of salvation, unhappy, or "not right with God." The anti-gay-marriage sentiment, which contains within it a multitude of sins and offenses to the teachings of Christ. The constant littering of speech with aphorisms and single-perspective invocations and beatifications.
Starting with the first issue: this is one of the things that has always ground my gears about the fervently religious - the insistent need to convert, the attitude that if I don't rush out and join your church as soon as you give me the "Good News" that I must have some kind of soul sickness and be in need of prayer and salvation. It's been said that each generation believes they are the first to discover drugs and sex; by the same token it seems that the newly converted (or in some cases, the converted, period) believe that they are the first to have discovered this "Good News," and everyone outside their church will surely fall to their knees in a beam of light and become SAVED if they only preach the Word loudly enough.
No. I went through multiple "conversions" and the like at a young age, and here's the bottom line: I don't do churches. Period. I have yet to see any church that did not have as a core belief the superiority of their own dogma and interpretation of scripture; I have yet to see any church that doesn't rely on a personalization of God to make themselves feel 'special' or 'saved' or 'gifted' or 'blessed' or 'redeemed' or 'chosen' - all of which translates to "better than you." The most entertaining of these churches will sit there insisting that this means no such thing while condescending to you or some other group or sect of "heathens" in the same breath, as best exemplified by the bumper-sticker sentiment "I'm not special, I'm just SAVED!"
I'm trying to tread lightly here out of respect for my friend, but having been there and done that and having spent a substantial portion of my life surrounded by these types of people, I find this attitude to be hypocritical and filled with delusion and self-aggrandizement. I'm sorry, but I don't believe that any human being or church has any kind of exclusive lock on TEH TRVTH, and that includes me. I try to be inclusive, if critical, in my selection of friends and my beliefs, but I find it hard to be inclusive to people who are deliberately exclusive toward me. I appreciate anyone who wants good things for me, even though I may not believe the same way they do. I do not appreciate being treated like an errant child, viewed as flawed (or 'more flawed than ME'), or treated as naive or ignorant because I choose to not limit my sources of wisdom to a five thousand year old book of fairy tales, myths, and man-made laws that purport to be divinely inspired. I find wisdom and truth readily available from a variety of sources - least often those who have an abiding belief in their own wisdom.
I'm not an idiot, I'm not a child, and I'm not a naif. I did not just wake up one day and arbitrarily decide to be non-religious. I have spent my lifetime examining, studying, and researching religion from both an historical and a spiritual perspective, and as of this moment my beliefs are what I believe in. I do not feel the need to pretend my beliefs are justified by fact; I do not feel the need to pretend that everyone who doesn't believe the way I do is flawed, ignorant, or in need of my boundless wisdom; I do not feel the need to explain or justify my beliefs to anyone, at all, ever (though this does not preclude discussing them, obviously).
If you need a structured religion to practice your spiritual beliefs, that's your business. I don't feel that need. That doesn't make me wrong, a sinner, ignorant, lost, or in need of salvation; it makes me, me, and I Am, who I Am. Jesus will not save me from having happy days and sad days; the Ten Commandments will not give me money or power or strength; the Gospels will not grant me magical wisdom and insight that I do not already possess. My rejection of religion is not a statement of atheism but of humility; to claim knowledge of the Will of God strikes me as arrogant and smug, and to claim a need for that knowledge in order to have purpose in life strikes me as horribly judgmental and far more reflective of the lack of a sense of purpose within the hearts of those who make such claims.
I don't believe in "gays are sinners" and "gay weddings destroy the institution of marriage." DIVORCE destroys the institution of marriage. Marriage is a religious ceremony, and the only truly constitutional way to handle it is to treat marriage - whether between a man and a woman, two men, two women, three men and one woman, one man and fifteen women, or an entire commune of free-love hippies - as a business contract just like any other partnership except the primary product of the business of marriage is children. Of course that's not romantic, but it's not the business of government to be 'romantic' any more than it is to be 'religious.'
I Am, who I Am. My friends and those who love me accept me as I am and don't place requirements on their friendship or respect that I worship their God, attend their Church, or see the world they same way they do. Those who do place such requirements on me make a conscious choice to devalue my friendship and disrespect me.
I don't urge my religious friends to forsake their church; all I ask of them is that they show me the same respect.