The other day, while waiting for the bus, I was audience to a man with a bullhorn standing next to the bus stop shelter, expounding upon all of the things we "sinners" do wrong, and exhorting us to come back to Christ.
During part of the diatribe, he mentioned the seventh commandment, "thou shalt not commit adultery", and expanded it to include any type of "fornication", or sex outside of marriage. As I got onto the bus he was proceeding to lump homosexuality in with fornication as covered under the 7th commandment, and I thought, "wait a minute...the only reason homosexuals have to have sex outside of marriage is because the church doesn't allow them to marry."
Which pushed me forward into thinking...what is is about "The Church" (in my case meaning specifically the Church of Christ, Temple Lot, but most of this can be applied to any Christian sect) that puts me so on edge?
The major problem for me is one of discrimination. The Church is sexist, homophobic, and in many cases racist, as well. As long as the Church excludes people from communion (and by communion, I mean the ability to partake in all walks of Church life, including being promoted to clergy) based on sex, race, sexual preference, or any other factors that I might be missing...as long as they do, it will seem to be that there is something fundamentally flawed that would make me a hypocrite to participate.
3 comments:
Everything you said is true...and I guess there is no way around it. Any time you try to make the world a "better place", you are enforcing on the world your own ideal of what a "better place" is. Does this mean we shouldn't do it? I don't think so...I can try to make the world a better place by railing against religious persecution and discrimination, and meanwhile Christians can try to make the world a better place by trying to convince homosexuals that they are going to go to hell if they don't change their ways. I have no hope of changing peoples' minds by my arguments, but I do have the hope that access to another point of view will stimulate thought and reflection, as it did for me on my life journey.
And the most liberal of the socialist-minded would define "kith and kin" as meaning "all the people in the world" or perhaps even "all mammals" or "all living creatures".
Also, it's a bit of an arbitrary decision that survival is the most important thing and somehow privileged...if you're a Christian, for example, the redemption of the soul is to be given higher precedence than mere survival, and there was a time when it was believed that saving a brother from death (by Martyrdom, for instance) would be equivalent from stealing their potential crown of glory in the afterlife.
So even the decision that "acting upon those beliefs should only be done to support the survival of you and yours" is a bit arbitrary, and it could be argued that there are other concerns more important that survival.
I'm not saying that I believe that, I'm just saying that there is a point of view from which that belief is arguable.
In the end, it's a bit of a subjective thing, dependent upon what you think is important. And what you think is important can be swayed by argument...so, while my Dad might think that assembling every Sunday to pray and worship God is important, I might think that organizing a non-profit group to feed starving Africans is more important...they're not necessarily incompatible goals, either, but the relative imporance of them is based on a subjective (i.e. personal) values system.
Yep, I agree.
I do also think, though, that it's good to be aware of global issues and try to do the little things you can to help...i.e. buy fair trade products, don't over-use gasoline, etc.
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