Get Out!

"To the Atheist watching this telecast if our belief in God offends you, Move!... We don't want you and we won't miss you." John Hagee

I've been silent here for well over a month for personal reason I won't go into too much detail. Let's just say that I had to part ways with an unnamed major cellular company. I worked at their call center for the last year and a half before the stress got to me and I snapped. I am going back to school in the fall to get my M.S. in Computer Science so I'll have a bit more free time to post. One video posted yesterday by Vorjack at Unreasonable Faith (love these guys) caught my attention this morning.



Hagee and the rest of his Super Best Friends are in their death throes clawing and gnashing at everyone and everything that doesn't fit their version of Christianity. What can you do when the latest surveys and reports in the last few years state that churches across America are hemorrhaging young people? Shut the door, plug your ears, and yell. They feel that their existence is in peril, and it is unless they change. And since change is seen as a threat, as polluting the holy, it is out of the question. To them it is much easier to tell your neighbor to move than to shake their hand. It is easier to ignore their existence and even threaten them than to coexist with them. Why? Because they, Hagee and friends, are so stuck on the idea of exclusivity that reality becomes a cosmic battle of dominance. It is either us or them, only one side CAN win. Like the dwarfs sitting in a pitch black stable in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle some (not all) evangelicals would rather live in their version of reality than embrace the possibility that our neighbor may not be the boogie men some megaphone-mouthed pastors portray them as, but may even be *gasp!* human. What bothers me about this video is not Hagee and his comments, but the audience's overwhelming support. It's the everyday people and their support of these unloving comments in a "house of love". I'm sure at some point the congregation sang a hymn about how much God loves everyone. An ideal which unfortunately has been sacrificed for the temporary survival of the group.

As the shift continues towards more non-traditional forms of spirituality (or even None at all) the fundamentalist theists will get louder and more violent in their rhetoric. The non-theist, agnostic, atheist and non-traditional spiritualist must hold our ground not in fighting fire with fire but to extinguish hateful words with love and understanding. Our goal should be to lessen the suffering of others not add to it. And for those still in a religious group like this one who feel uncomfortable I urge you to leave, not to convert you to my side but to urge you to find your own path, your own cosmic song to sing. Get out and follow that which inspires you to be a better you.

Savage Morality

It's videos and stories like this one which make me giddy about the interwebs.



What Dan Savage is doing is not "attacking" the Bible but tearing down the self imposed veils of ignorance and hypocrisy when it comes to what the Bible actually says. Some students who came to the convention thought they were going to hear about anti bullying and walked out when they felt their beliefs were under attack. I have yet to find a full clip of his speech (I'd like to hear it in its entirety) but the kids who walked out missed the point that you have to attack the source of bullying. What is fueling bullying against gays? It's not the Bible (which only has a handful of references to homosexuality) but the people using the Bible to bludgeon people different from what they consider the norm. Andrew Hackman (Welcome Back!) at Hackman's Musings summed it up best with the following:

 The anti-homosexual position does not belong to a deity.... it belongs to you.

 

Incuriosity

Daniel Florien from Unreasonable Faith shared this interesting quote a few weeks ago by Stephen Fry.

"The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is."

—Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

[ Marks at Parent Teacher by David Hayward, The Naked Pastor. If you haven't visited his site or seen any of his art or cartoons then you're missing out.]

To play a bit of devil's advocate I would add some people may not have the time or luxury to be curious. I'm extremely curious and love exploring new ideas and concepts but I barely have time to even blog let alone time to myself for imagination and curiosity. Regardless I still agree that you must have a thirst for knowledge to be knowledgeable. What bothers me the most are so called experts on a topic in which they've only studied the facts that support their own claims (e.g. the "experts" proclaiming in 2010 that Muslims are attempting to take over America with mega mosque training camps). I love wrestling with  questions, especially questions I myself can not answer. I love it when I come across a new term or idea I've never heard before.

I can't imagine not being curious, not asking questions even of beliefs I (currently) hold to be true. I don't question my traditional religious backgrounds to be rebellious, because I love sin, or because I hate God and Christianity. I continuously question everything because I find it more spiritually rewarding. When I use the term spiritual I use it to describe my humanity, my humanness, my weaknesses and my strengths, all that makes us human. I believe we are born curious (note the word believe) and that as we grow we are raised to avoid asking certain questions and avoid giving certain answers to our children. If I don't know an answer to a question my children ask of me I tell them there are some things daddy just doesn't know. So then we sit down and try to discover the answer together.

What I believe people fear the most is not so much the mental taboo of asking difficult questions but what to do with the new knowledge once Pandora's box is opened. I can't unlearn that men of the church, not God, decided which books were to become the Bible. The mere notion that there were other possible book candidates for the Bible must be mind blowing enough for any regular church going Christian. It's easier to not ask certain questions, to not open certain door which may lead us to doubt. But then avoiding questions I believe stagnates spiritual (there's that word again) growth. I'm not saying that questioning your religious traditions and background will lead you directly into the pit of Atheism, but asking questions will lead you to discover a bit more about who you are and our relationships with each other.

It's a Trap!

I had a sudden urge to make a picture of Admiral Ackbar warning Jesus of his crucifixion but then I realized I have access to the interwebs. I bet someone already has, and lo and behold...

(by Linkakami on DeviantArt)

Happy Easter!

The Choice

So as I was perusing through the Sunday morning preachers on TV this morning I tuned into Charles Stanley preaching about the loving choice God gave us in the garden.

God gave Adam and Eve a choice which was an act of love on his part. You love me because you choose to, not because you have to, that's not really love. So he gave them a choice. They made the wrong choice and notice what he said: the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.  

The topic of choice had me thinking of the Wheel of Fish scene on UHF (yes that UHF) where the contestant had a "choice" between their weight in fish or what was in the mystery box.



To Phyllis, the game show contestant, it truly did appear as if she had a choice, and who would pass up a mystery box anyway? From the perspective of the game show producer there was only one right answer, the other making for some humorous TV. The point where Christianity falls apart for me is the choice between eternal love/bliss or eternal damnation. No one in their right mind would choose damnation, but with damnation as one of the two choices is it really a choice? Even though I'm not a Christian I love the symbolism of love and redemption found within the faith but I believe Christianity can evolve (yes religion does evolve) if it moved away from the choice between Heaven or hell/ obedience vs. disobedience and focused more on love for our fellow man. So now when pastor Stanley, or any Christian for that matter, tell me the choice given at the garden was a loving choice I can't help but think back to that empty box.