In England, it's Boxing Day, in Canada, it's also Boxing Day. Here in the US, it's merely the day after Christmas.
When we were young, we often celebrated on January 6, the Epiphany, or "Little Christmas." We'd leave the tree and other Christmas baubles up until then, and just use the day to close everything down for the new year. Right now, it's merely the sales day, more potent than the day after Thanksgiving, because a lot of stores just want to unload a bunch of stuff and sell it quickly. In my estimation, this year, the stores are probably packed to help many actually spend the money that a lot of people didn't get to spend on the holiday itself.
I mention all this because some religious folks on the right blame secular beliefs for creating the commercialism of the say they consider most holy. I contend that these folks are just addled in their brains. You go into a store and you find chaos and mayhem, and if you asked them if they believed in a god, and they would say, yes I do. Then they're off to purloin some items with a deep discount and they think nothing of it. I contend that the day after Christmas has nothing to do with religious beliefs, just people eager to spend the money they didn't spend before the holiday.
Gonna fly now--spending a little, but not much. I simply don't have it to spend. But that's okay. The essentials are just as important as the frills. Perhaps even more so.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
No Right to Judge
I'm going to get this blog going, by reprinting articles from my other blogs, hoping to boil it down to one blog. It's easier to live with one, than try to keep up with more than one!
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Let's say you're my friend. You have just suffered a loss, a deep personal one, and you are grieving. I come to you, sit down, and I listen to you and help you achieve catharsis. When you are done and it's time for me to contribute to the conversation, I simply tell you I care, that I will try to understand as best as I am able, and I let you know that you can come to me anytime you need to talk, and I will listen.
Fair enough, right? I've done what a friend would do most of the time for their friends--be there for them when the need arises. I don't judge whether the loss was something you could have prevented, I don't lecture you on why you should have done something different and I don't try to put my values, moral or otherwise, on you.
Now, let's say the reverse happened. I'm the one with the problem, and you come to me as a "friend." So you listen (at least I think you're trying to listen, even if you interrupt me endlessly during my talking), and then you take my hand in yours and you say, "I will pray for you, you know; I won't let your soul suffer as I will seek a blessing from Jesus for you."
That's well and good if it's a person from your church who believes the same things you do, or if it's a family member who shares your faith, but this kind of response is completely wrong for someone who doesn't share your beliefs. And nowadays, that is often the case.
I'm an atheist. But I'm also secular and a humanist, and I try to keep religion out of discussions in which a difference in beliefs might make some awkward moments. That's how I try to deal with people for the most part, and how some of my dearest friends have been in the past, including one close friend who was a devout Catholic, but who never pushed it on me, despite the fact that I grew up Catholic and "escaped" from it!
But if someone has to inject their faith into any conversations they have with others, especially when they know definitely that the person they're speaking with is not of their faith, how much of a friend are they? If they try to negate the part of you that is either not religious or of a different belief, they cannot really respect you for being who you are--instead, they are transferring their values onto you, and thereupon find you lacking by their moral standards.
I'm pregnant, and I want an abortion....by my belief system, it's got nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with me, a woman, making a choice. By your belief system, I'm going to hell for killing a "baby!" So you feel morally superior to me basing my choice on your rationale.
I'm gay, and I love my partner, with whom I've spent more years than you have with your spouse. By my reasoning, why would you have anything to say about who I care to love and want to spend my life with? You, on the other hand, see nothing wrong with having multiple partners, or multiple spouses, but have a problem with two people with the same equipment caring and loving each other. Again, you are transferring your moral judgement on my life.
I'm for gun control, you love to shoot guns. I don't eat any animal products, you crave steaks about every 20 minutes. I believe that it took many millions of years for this world and all the life on it to evolve into what we know today--you believe that a lot of begatting only took about 10,000 years, and that when your ancestors were little, they used to have Dino the Dinosaur as a family pet.
It doesn't matter. It really can't matter when you come right down to it--no single person on the face of this planet (except if you are one of an identical twin) has gone through the same experiences, has the same genes, or even the same ideas. And that's the joy of being who we are. We are the world (and no, don't cue up the Michael Jackson song, either!) and we are a world of differences. If we were all the same, we might as well be robots or clones, because innovation, ideas and inventions would never come, would never be able to discover the joy at finding out about another person.
I confess: I still have a lot of fury at a former friend because she chose to let her religious beliefs come between us. She always injected her fundie beliefs and values into conversations, and then she got offended the day I told her that I couldn't stand her and the "fucking fundies" she was part of. But during a particularly desperate year in her life, I was there for her, talking about everything in the world (as long as it didn't involve religion) and tried to listen to her without making any moral assumptions. And as a thank you, I had to listen to her rants about gays being evil, about those who had abortions being whores and worse, about how my soul was headed straight for the deepest bowels of hell, and about her being morally superior to me because she had been "reborn" and brought Christ into her life. Oh, and yes, I almost forgot: how Muslims worshipped the "anti-Christ."
I don't ask the people I meet for the first time about what they believe in. It's immaterial, and it isn't any of my damned business. I will argue with you if I find you voted for GWB, but that's far more important than whether you have a personal "savior" or are Wiccan and keep an alter in your bedroom. Who is to know if Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus Christ, or Zeus is the better idol? Who is to question whether you are a better human being if you worship cows or eat them? That's your choice, and I've got mine. Mine says that I have a right to mine, and you have a right to yours. But if yours says that you have a right to yours, and that I have a right to yours, I will surely find you morally repugnant for not extending the same courtesy to me that I have extended to you.
The fact is, we're all right, and we're all wrong. We come at decisions from different viewpoints, we come with a set of values which we inherited from our ancestors, and we will add some new values through our own experiences. If we or our children go to a public school, there is no room--none whatsoever--for religion to be part of a mandatory curriculum. On the other hand, if you or your child goes to a private or parochial school, or if you are homeschooling your child, you are paying or playing to impart to them whatever you want.
I could never be considered shy, nor am I ever anything less than outspoken. But if you give me no reason to attack you on any of your beliefs, you should accept the same from me. Don't tell me smugly that my "god is less than your god," because so help me, I'm to the point where if you do, I will seriously contemplate hauling back and breaking your nose. Treat me as you wish to be treated: nothing less than that. How much simpler can my argument get?
____________________________________________________________
Let's say you're my friend. You have just suffered a loss, a deep personal one, and you are grieving. I come to you, sit down, and I listen to you and help you achieve catharsis. When you are done and it's time for me to contribute to the conversation, I simply tell you I care, that I will try to understand as best as I am able, and I let you know that you can come to me anytime you need to talk, and I will listen.
Fair enough, right? I've done what a friend would do most of the time for their friends--be there for them when the need arises. I don't judge whether the loss was something you could have prevented, I don't lecture you on why you should have done something different and I don't try to put my values, moral or otherwise, on you.
Now, let's say the reverse happened. I'm the one with the problem, and you come to me as a "friend." So you listen (at least I think you're trying to listen, even if you interrupt me endlessly during my talking), and then you take my hand in yours and you say, "I will pray for you, you know; I won't let your soul suffer as I will seek a blessing from Jesus for you."
That's well and good if it's a person from your church who believes the same things you do, or if it's a family member who shares your faith, but this kind of response is completely wrong for someone who doesn't share your beliefs. And nowadays, that is often the case.
I'm an atheist. But I'm also secular and a humanist, and I try to keep religion out of discussions in which a difference in beliefs might make some awkward moments. That's how I try to deal with people for the most part, and how some of my dearest friends have been in the past, including one close friend who was a devout Catholic, but who never pushed it on me, despite the fact that I grew up Catholic and "escaped" from it!
But if someone has to inject their faith into any conversations they have with others, especially when they know definitely that the person they're speaking with is not of their faith, how much of a friend are they? If they try to negate the part of you that is either not religious or of a different belief, they cannot really respect you for being who you are--instead, they are transferring their values onto you, and thereupon find you lacking by their moral standards.
I'm pregnant, and I want an abortion....by my belief system, it's got nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with me, a woman, making a choice. By your belief system, I'm going to hell for killing a "baby!" So you feel morally superior to me basing my choice on your rationale.
I'm gay, and I love my partner, with whom I've spent more years than you have with your spouse. By my reasoning, why would you have anything to say about who I care to love and want to spend my life with? You, on the other hand, see nothing wrong with having multiple partners, or multiple spouses, but have a problem with two people with the same equipment caring and loving each other. Again, you are transferring your moral judgement on my life.
I'm for gun control, you love to shoot guns. I don't eat any animal products, you crave steaks about every 20 minutes. I believe that it took many millions of years for this world and all the life on it to evolve into what we know today--you believe that a lot of begatting only took about 10,000 years, and that when your ancestors were little, they used to have Dino the Dinosaur as a family pet.
It doesn't matter. It really can't matter when you come right down to it--no single person on the face of this planet (except if you are one of an identical twin) has gone through the same experiences, has the same genes, or even the same ideas. And that's the joy of being who we are. We are the world (and no, don't cue up the Michael Jackson song, either!) and we are a world of differences. If we were all the same, we might as well be robots or clones, because innovation, ideas and inventions would never come, would never be able to discover the joy at finding out about another person.
I confess: I still have a lot of fury at a former friend because she chose to let her religious beliefs come between us. She always injected her fundie beliefs and values into conversations, and then she got offended the day I told her that I couldn't stand her and the "fucking fundies" she was part of. But during a particularly desperate year in her life, I was there for her, talking about everything in the world (as long as it didn't involve religion) and tried to listen to her without making any moral assumptions. And as a thank you, I had to listen to her rants about gays being evil, about those who had abortions being whores and worse, about how my soul was headed straight for the deepest bowels of hell, and about her being morally superior to me because she had been "reborn" and brought Christ into her life. Oh, and yes, I almost forgot: how Muslims worshipped the "anti-Christ."
I don't ask the people I meet for the first time about what they believe in. It's immaterial, and it isn't any of my damned business. I will argue with you if I find you voted for GWB, but that's far more important than whether you have a personal "savior" or are Wiccan and keep an alter in your bedroom. Who is to know if Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus Christ, or Zeus is the better idol? Who is to question whether you are a better human being if you worship cows or eat them? That's your choice, and I've got mine. Mine says that I have a right to mine, and you have a right to yours. But if yours says that you have a right to yours, and that I have a right to yours, I will surely find you morally repugnant for not extending the same courtesy to me that I have extended to you.
The fact is, we're all right, and we're all wrong. We come at decisions from different viewpoints, we come with a set of values which we inherited from our ancestors, and we will add some new values through our own experiences. If we or our children go to a public school, there is no room--none whatsoever--for religion to be part of a mandatory curriculum. On the other hand, if you or your child goes to a private or parochial school, or if you are homeschooling your child, you are paying or playing to impart to them whatever you want.
I could never be considered shy, nor am I ever anything less than outspoken. But if you give me no reason to attack you on any of your beliefs, you should accept the same from me. Don't tell me smugly that my "god is less than your god," because so help me, I'm to the point where if you do, I will seriously contemplate hauling back and breaking your nose. Treat me as you wish to be treated: nothing less than that. How much simpler can my argument get?
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