"Christians"
04 December, 2004 :: 1:02 p.m.
Lacey has mentioned several times lately that she's sick of this country and the way that every special interest group/minority/what have you gets catered to, but the minute talk of Christianity comes up, people get pissed and start talking separation of church and state and all of that...
Now first off, I know where she's coming from...I mean as a non-Christian, I fall into that group whose blood pressure raises and negative thoughts fill my head as soon as the C word is mentioned...but even I have limits. Do I think California should have to remove a cross from its state symbol? No, that's totally pointless and ridiculous. Do I think "one nation, under God," needs to be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance? No, I personally feel the pledge is stupid and if you don't like it, don't say it...I don't believe the words ever needed to be added, but they're there, so fuck it, just don't say it. I don't believe that we need to go overboard with removing anything Christian from schools...personally as long as kids are given the choice, I say let Christian groups and groups of every other religion have their time for a prayer or whatever; if they want to meet as a club, that's fine too...as long as it's not being pushed on people, who the fuck cares? Taking steps to remove Jesus from Christmas--now that's just about the stupidest thing they've tried yet. If Christmas to you means time spent with family, giving gifts, putting up decorations, but you want to leave out the Christ part of it at home, fine. Have the decency to recognize that the holiday is about him for a lot of people though.
All of that being said, I don't really feel sympathetic for Christians in this country. Why? In my experience, most of the people in this country view themselves as Christian in one form or another; in my experience most of these people are about as far from actually being Christian as those of us who don't call ourselves Christian. I've met a few dozen people in my life who are legit Christian in my book, who try to live their lives the best they possibly can by the set of rules and beliefs of their particular branch of Christianity...these people are sweet, caring, giving...the things that someone following the teachings of Jesus should be. Most "Christians" though fall into the group who interpret parts of the Bible to mean what they want, they are super judgmental towards those who don't agree with them (even if it's just a different branch of Christianity with slightly different beliefs), in short Bush is a model of the modern American Christian. Lie, cheat, steal, use whatever power is at your disposal to silence those who don't agree, to squash those you feel threatened by. Let's be real: America calls itself a Christian country founded on Christian ideals, but in reality the religion of this country is Capitalism--why do you think so many people are worried about they dropping value of the dollar? This is the false god they pray to in their private lives. Why, if this is a Christian country, is it so hard to find real Christians? How can you have a belief in a higher power, in God of the Bible, and act they way you do? What kind of arrogance do these people have that they can fool a Divine Being? Do they honestly think God looks down and takes a head count to see who is attending church each week and pays no attention to how they act the rest of the week? Even as a kid I noticed the hypocrisy and that's part of why I walked away from Christianity--that and my beliefs the older I got just stopped meshing with anything they said. If I could see it when I was 10, how do these people think they are actually fooling God? And maybe the backlash against Christians is because they've had their run...they have been calling the shots for centuries and look at the state of the world. I have nothing against true Christians, the few that I've met personally anyway and I know that there are other people out there who want to do good and make the world a better place, but fuck you to all the phonies who worship capitalism for all but an hour or two out of the week and want to call themselves Christian. You reap what you sew and you've been sewing your intolerance for years, so what did you expect?