A Curious Girl: What I've been doing lately, and Ian's reponse...

I know it's been ages... This has been a difficult week for me in a few ways. Someone said something to me that hurt and confused me but for various reasons I couldn't type it up, when it was all that was on my mind. I had an exam and I've been helping Ricci convert his 'Toast' story into a script. It's quite amusing :) Although it makes fun of anyone and everyone.

It's been taking quite a while and I still have lots to do! I also went up to the mall where my work is located with Christina yesterday, to drop off the new times I'm available. Also I checked my schedule for this week... and I missed a training session. Again. I was both angry and worried by this news. I phoned work yesterday and Adgie was ok about it, she said I'd have to wait a few weeks. Wouldn't it be typical if I worked for them nearly a year and never finished my training?

I also bought some cute flip-flops and a present for someone ;)

Frank is doing well (which reminds me, I must water her...). I bought her a pot and some compost on Monday - lugged it home and then discovered that we had a huge bag of compost already. Oh well, at least it was good exercise. She's now outside, but she hasn't grown much so maybe she's not a sunflower after all. Her leaves look a little less curly now.

Mum revealed this morning that her bonsai tree is named Harry. I wasn't sure how to respond to that... and then she revealed that 'he' has always been called Harry... :D my family is mad. She had a bonsai tree at work called Harry, apparently.

On Tuesday I had my last exam - Chemistry. It went all right. I stayed at school after that for a bit because the Year 12s are back. It was nice to see my friends again. Although Rory was quite quiet, I think he really doesn't like Ricci - which, from his point of view, I can understand. Ricci and Mark (Mark especially) often seem to be making fun of him. Ricci asks me why Rory won't star in 'Toast', but it seems pretty obvious to me. *sigh* I like Ricci though, life is so confusing.

I went around James's for Bible Study. Tricia (James's mum) talked about the difference between being religious and being Christian, and Stuart (James's dad) answered a question on homosexuality. I'd carefully thought about my views on this prickly topic the day before, and he successfully crumbled their arguments... or that's what it felt like.

Anyways, I promised Ian a response to all his religion entries. Having thought long and hard about all of them, I have a feeling that in most of my response I will sound too agnostic to be Christian and too Christian to be agnostic. *sigh* Knowing and loving God is one thing, the views you're supposed to carry are another. How do you reconcile belief with these people who've taken practically every bad word said about wrongdoers in the Bible and applied it to gay people? (There is a long list of things that 'sodomites' are, taken from Bible verses mostly out of context.)

Anyway, I promised Ian a response :) Ian, I hope you won't mind if I quote from your diary? It makes it easier.

All right, from his first entry entitled 'Religion'...

science has destroyed a lot of things that people took for granted and belief is a matter of choice not fact. And what happens when you give people choice? They decide not to do stuff.

I found this interesting, as it's actually sort of similar to the argument as to why there is still suffering in the world. People have a choice, to do right or wrong. If people have a choice, they won't necessarily choose the right thing. I know that people now have much more of a choice whether to believe in God or not, and I'm pleased about that. You can't force belief onto anyone, the more rational consideration there is, the better. I know that the belief in God seems irrational, and it's sort of hard to explain, so maybe I'll leave that to the philosophers (I never took Religious Studies)... Much of science is taken as true until proven otherwise, and I guess it's the same with belief in God.

Whilst people do choose not to believe in God, it's not like that choice is as much of a dissention as it used to be. In the UK at least, the decision to follow God can cause just as much (if not more :) ) of a stir than the decision to be wholeheartedly atheist. I wasn't forced into belief - I chose to become a Christian when I was eleven years old. There have been plenty of times since then when I've evaluated that choice and had to make it all over again. There have been lots of challenging times :)

Jesus has never given me anything, he didn't die for our sins, he died 'cos he got caught, and it didn't really change shit, did it? He doesn't help me get through, I get through on my own, I have to.

I think we could argue on this one until (if you'll pardon the cliche :) ) the cows come home. I can understand why you believe that, I know I'd be hopeless trying to convince you otherwise. I think that Jesus could have escaped if he'd wanted to. He shows a pretty good history of getting out of tight spots. There's an incident where a Pharisee asks him if they should pay taxes to Caesar - because if he said 'yes', the people would not listen to him, because he would be teaching them to be subservient to the Romans, and if he said 'no', the Pharisees could report him to the Romans as a rebel. So Jesus said, 'Whose face is on the coin?' ('Caesar's,' they replied) 'Pay Caesar what is Caesar's and pay God what is God's.' It was a pretty clever answer, considering that the Pharisees considered the Roman coins unclean for use within the Temple. Jesus was a clever guy and I think he would have realised the trouble he was causing - and he would have known that there were people after him. I don't think that he would have got caught if he hadn't intended to be caught.

Also, I think it did change things. For one thing, there's a whole faith dedicated to him. Many of the laws in the UK are based on the teachings of Jesus. There were people who believed he'd been raised from the dead who went around preaching this in places where you could get killed for saying that the Roman Gods were not the true ones. If it had been a lie, I don't think that they would have preached it... however I'm well aware of all the 'deluded/hallucinations/hysteria' arguments... we go over them at Church every Easter :)

Religion is the cause of more deaths than anything else ever

Well, bubonic plague hasn't done badly... *grin*. Yes, I know lots of people have been murdered in the name of God. But to say they were murdered because of religion is a bit like saying money is evil. Religion is the excuse. The average Christian identifies as much with the Crusades as the average Muslim identifies with Osama bin Laden. I get depressed by religious wars. To me, they have nothing to do with God. The situation in Northern Ireland makes me really mad. Plus I think people get very fond of saying that religion causes wars and death, but people often don't remember the good things that 'religious' people have done. Work towards abolishing slavery, ending racism, helping the homeless, helping developing countries... - a lot of that was started by Christians like the Salvation Army, Christian Aid, Mother Theresa, William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury etc.!

Having said that, I haven't got anything against anyone else believing it, people can believe what they want to believe. If they believe it, then to all intents and purposes, it's true.

*smile* thanks. It's great to be in a country and among people where it isn't a crime to exchange opinions. Yay for tolerance :)

From Ian's second entry entitled 'Religion...'

But look around you, we're all still a badly behaved bunch of scallies, and getting forgiven isn't as easy as that. We do bad things, we go to Hell. This is what we get taught. By Christianity.

God knows we are fairly apt to mess up. Being forgiven by him is surprisingly easy. 1 John 1:9 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.' If you want to be with God, you can be, no matter what you've done. If we reject God, then he'll honour that choice. But life without God is hell. I'm not sure how it works out post-death - I think it's nothingness, destruction. I don't know. But if we accept God, he accepts us.

I also believe that organised religion, while not only "making a mockery of humanity" (Guns N'Roses), is an ancient way of keeping control of, and installing fear over, the masses. As Napoleon put it: "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." It is slowly being killed by science, and replaced by democracy and propoganda.

I have trouble arguing with this because in many ways I agree. As Karl Marx said, 'Religion is the opium of the people' - something that made people accept things as they are and do nothing to change things because it's all part of a great plan... that's probably what Napoleon believed too. There's a difference between the establishment and the faith.

Is the poor not murdering the rich really such a bad thing? As much as we may deserve it, I don't think that being slaughtered by the populations of angry and exploited Third World countries is really on our agenda. I know the Bible does say, 'turn the other cheek' and 'obey the authorities' but it also has some pretty strict instructions for leaders and on how to treat the poor. If religious leaders aren't following the rules of their own religion, then they're hypocrites. If the leaders aren't following God, then the believers should not follow them. The Bible teaches us to do whatever we can to love one another... We've all got to do our best to make the world a better place.

"God is dead" - Nietzsche

Nietzsche also said, "In woman, a slave and a tyrant have all too long been concealed. For that reason, woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.... Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or, at best, cows". But then, Martin Luther said that "Women...have but small and narrow chests, and broad hips, to the end that they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children." Still, I admit I don't have much respect for Nietzsche. Reading this I don't have much for Martin Luther either - just goes to show there are twits on both sides of the fence I guess :)

From Ian's third entry entitled 'Religion 2'

Helly - if you don't want to go to Church in the morning, don't go. Go whenever you want to, not because you feel you have to. If there is a God, do you think he'd want his minions (sorry, 'creations') to stand there feeling bored because they've got to worship him for creating them? No, he'd want them to be out enjoying themselves, doing what they want, not wasting their time worshipping him.

I suddenly have the urge to quote Alice Walker's The Color Purple. So I'm going to :)

'Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.'

'You can just relax, go with everything that's going, and praise God by liking what you like.'

I do enjoy church in the morning, and I'd sooner go then than not at all. If I got nothing out of it, I wouldn't go, honestly :) It's an opportunity to spend some uninterrupted time with the big guy himself ;) and also to share with other people, to help each other. I find it easier in the evening because the songs often touch me more, they feel more relevant - the worship is often more 'serious', there's more space for contemplation. I think that if worship is boring then we're doing it wrong. I think that enjoying life is a way to worship, but we've got to give credit where it's due. Also, God is a person and being a Christian involves letting him know our appreciation! :) It doesn't have to be falsely cheerful though, plenty of the psalms are full of stuff along the lines of 'I'm depressed, God where are you?' It's about being real with God.

Like Helly's friend's comment about the Church being homophobic, which Helly had no answer for, understandably, because her friend's right, and Helly can't admit that, in this at least, Christianity isn't being very nice, and isn't loving it's neighbour

I have to admit, that comment from Ricci completely floored me. I agree that sex should be after marriage, but it never occurred to me that this is homophobic... basically I've lived in ignorance and known very few gay people!

Homosexuality is a source of great confusion for me. The Bible (both new and old testament) says that homosexual sex is wrong, whereas society says that to even suggest such a thing is a great crime. It might be because in those times, homosexual sex mainly happened in the context of paedophilia and exploitation (which is also taught against in a heterosexual sense) and that homosexual sex with mutual consent is all right. Then the whole pesky marriage issue gets in the way. Should gay relationships be celibate? Should gay people be allowed to get married? I honestly don't know.

As I said in this entry, I don't understand what it is to be a lesbian or bi, I've never had those feelings myself. If you can't help it, it's not a crime, surely? And if it is a sin, it's got to be pretty low down on the wickedness scale. Surely just saying something a bit nasty to someone is more harmful than mutually consenting to sex. If two people are having sex that is in the exact context God intended it (ie. fully loving, chaste etc.)... but they're of the same sex, it has to be pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of 'sin'. I disagree with homophobia - as far as sins go, the church views most of them as business between a person and God. When everyone's a sinner, setting them apart because they're gay/lesbian strikes me as a bit ridiculous.

I don't think it's homophobic to believe that homosexuality is wrong any more than a vegetarian would be considered intolerant for believing that eating meat is wrong. I'm not saying it is wrong (because I don't understand it at all - how can I judge what I don't understand?), but I think that we should make our own decisions. If you believe that someone's doing something wrong, that doesn't mean you should love them any less - that's hypocritical... unless you're perfect of course :) We all do wrong. I think it's between gay Christians and God... if they believe they're doing right, how can they be guilty? If they think that God believes their actions are wrong, and they want to follow God, they should act on that. I'd pray for them but I wouldn't preach to them... I've probably made it quite clear that I don't know what I'm talking about :)

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