unamaga | this is not directed at anyone in particular

I'm sure it'll come of no surprise to anyone that I have little patience for people who are closed-minded. It bothers me to a degree that I can't even describe that people aren't willing to accept that not everyone is the same. Why is that such a hard concept to understand? Just because you might enjoy peaches doesn't mean that you expect everyone else in the world to - why is that different than any other part of your life? Shouldn't it work, then, that you don't expect everyone else to believe in God the same way that you do?

I understand that maybe someone can find solace in religion, or even true happiness, and want to encourage others to find that same kind of joy. But when you force your beliefs to the forefront of everything; when you judge people on the basis of whether or not they regard God in the same manner as you, regardless of their actual personality and worth; when you relentlessly proseletize - that's when I start to resent what you're selling.

I'm not a religious person, and I never have been. I don't knock religions. I don't judge people based on faith or whether or not they're "Jesus Freaks", or based on what they even consider a god or goddess. Whatever you believe is what you believe, and if it gets you through life that much happier, great. There's a limit to how far you can push my tolerance, though, and lately I've found it being pushed closer and closer to that edge. I am not a charity case. I am not yours to "save", and your intervention isn't appreciated in any way. Just because I'm the token non-Christian of our group of friends does not give you the right to constantly implicate that you are berating me for my ungodliness.

I am not a sheep tuning out God's Will and flicking my tail in his face just for spite. I am a young woman who was raised Christian and knows just as much as you do about religion, but despite that, chooses not to believe. Your irrational arguments and morality plays are never going to move me - I've read "Sinners of the Hands of an Angry God" and if that isn't going to do it, your disapproval sure won't.

Gays are not catching; homosexuality is not a disease and it is not wrong. You're always saying that God has a plan, that he is all powerful and all knowing, right? Why is it, then, that being gay is wrong? If it was really such a bane, such a black spot on God's creation, he could smite it down, up, sideways and backwards. You praise the gospel, you quote passages, but the New Testament's message is love. Are you sure you're following your God's teachings by spreading the word of hatred and prejudice?

Maybe - this is just a thought, but maybe you could look your neighbor in the eye and recognize that life is life and love is love. Embracing someone and telling them that you will always love them isn't hard to do. Just because you don't agree doesn't mean that you can't still be who you are to each other. That girl at school with the nose piercing isn't necessarily a devil worshipper; that boy who sometimes wears pink isn't going to try and sodomize you in the bathroom if you say hey, how you doing; that jewish boy down the road who wears his hair strange and has a funny hat isn't any less likely to be a good person than you are.

Love and tolerance aren't that hard to practice. Just see what you have in common with someone; it might turn out to be more than you'd have thought.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I totally agree. *sigh*

I was born Christian going to church every week but now I just don't really believe anymore. But I do believe the new testament is all about love and kindness and there are so many "religious people" out there who preach so much hate against anyone who is not like them.

Yeah, like Fred Phelphs, who is a complete demon.

I couldn't agree more.

well put, m'love.

*snugs*

OMG! OMG!

I want to KICK Someone

OMG!

SO MAD

*GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*

I'm going to SCREAM

IT just makes me soo sad *cries*

*huggs*

oh babe

Fucking word. To everything. All of that. Well said. ♥

Thanks, hon. *hug*

I totally agree with you.

Thanks! ♥

Dude. I went to an all-girls anglican school. I'm sooo totally there with you, honey. (I'm agnostic, btw)

*sigh*

There are some people I've met, some people who are devoutly religious who believe in exactly what you described; love. They don't judge i HATE THE FUCKING ALL-THE-TIME JUDGING and they don't preach, they just try to be good people. And then . . .

There are those OTHERS. There's just no talking to them, and nothing riles me up spikier or faster than their condescending HYPOCRITICAL bullshit. I'm not sure WHY they're like that, it could be fear, fear of the unknown or a deeper seated fear of their own self-worth, but either way? not worth my time.

I really think that sort of hypocritical behavior is a question of nature vs. nurture. How often do you thank your parents for how you were brought up? I know that I sometimes say I hate my mother, but she and my father did the best they could raising me - they never told me what to believe or how to believe it. I found out for myself what 'gay' meant, I found out for myself whether or not I believed in God.

Those people, though. People like Rev. Fred Phelps, who lead lives filled with hate and judgement, I think there's something in them - whether it sprung how they were brought up, or just from fear, I don't know - that allows them to see the world in black and white, and makes it hard to understand the concept of different not being wrong.

And that raises the question of whether or not such a narrow world view directly correlates with how educated someone is. Personally, I think that less educated people are more likely to be bigots, but, y'know.

Man, I'm with you one hundred percent. The one that gets me is I still don't fancy letting on to a girl who considers herself to be my best friend, that I sleep with my boyfriend, because I don't want her to go all God and Judgey on me...when it's like, look, I just disagree with the laws that people set down; God never told ME anything so all I've got to go on is what people say, and that's what so many people do and it GETS me so much!!! You're supposed to put your trust in God and God alone, aren't you? But I see so many people just blindly going along with what other people say about God, and that's where my little objection comes. It's like, you can't trust someone else to tell you how to run your life. Grrr! And I've had a large bone to pick with God ever since I started working in schools and my friend keeps telling me all this crap about free will and offering peace afterwards and it's like...that doesn't hold with me. I get free will but some of the kids I've worked with would rather God had made sure nothing bad had happened to them in the first place, rather than get offered some sort of calm off him afterwards. If you were God and you saw something awful happening and no-one else was there, you'd step in, wouldn't you?!

ESSAY RANT ESSAY RANT RANT!!!! Sorry! Heh! Anyway. I agree. People who force their ideas on you are bad and ignorant and uncompassionate (incompassionate? im?? confuzzled) towards your own thoughts ideas and feelings the end I stop ranting now hooray.

:0P

I agree with everything up there. It's like, why do they know exactly what God wants, anyway? Got his phone number, do they? It's a ridiculous show of arrogance to decide that you know exactly what God wants and what he thinks when, in actuality, you're just a tiny spec of nothing next to his Awesome Power, or whatever. He's supposedly omnipotent and omnibenevolent and all those other things - obviously, humans are not those things or we wouldn't even have a concept of sin, pain or pleasure. Everything here on earth would be perfect and sunshine.

It's the fact that we have free will that gives us joy and despair, hunger and fullness. By telling everyone else that they're wrong and going to hell if they don't do what you tell them to, you're interrupting the process of free will and pretty much pretending at being God yourself. That certainly isn't going to guarantee you a spot in heaven, now is it.

We just need to go:

*ahem*

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHH

And staple things to their heads, and that.

YES YES YES AND YES.

You have covered everything so perfectly here - it's exactly everything I feel about religion and prejudice and pressure from Christian people that I know. I have been in and out of Christianity for the last few years and I've tried it over and over again and it just doesn't fly with me.

And yeah, if God is all powerful, why can't he just get rid of what he doesn't want? Why can't he make us all believe? People say, "Oh because he wants us to CHOOSE." Well, I CHOOSE to write what I write on my free time. If he wanted us to all believe in him, he could just make us. We wouldn't know the difference.

Also, God knows everything about us and what will happen in our life before we are born. He MAKES US GAY. Okay? Do you get that? He KNOWS. Even if it is the Devil's work, HE. KNOWS. And he can change it, but he doesn't. And you, the believer, still expect me to CHANGE and conform to the "right way" and just give up what I am from birth. My interests, my hobbies - you're basically asking me to put on a mask and just grow into it, to be what you want to create me as. I am not a blank slate or a problem for you to solve.

I have come out to my Christian friend and told him what I do because I thought him, of all people, would be the most accepting. Love your neighbor and all that? He did, but I know he's grossed out a little and he keeps trying to lure me back to church. Yeah, like a building will make me change my mind about being gay.

In the end, I have found that many of my Christian friends are hypocrites.

Like I said to Lucy right above here, the free will argument isn't exactly helping their case. If free will is something that He has granted us, then your interruptiong is certainly an act of arrogant insubordination. Choke down a slice of humble pie and recognize that even though you are only trying to "steer" us in the right direction, your intervention is certainly not going to grant you a spot right next to God's throne.

According to Christianity, He is all powerful, all knowing, all compassionate, and He can smite you with his pinky finger if he wants to. If God is so upset with how civilization is tending, where is the flood of biblical proportions? Where is the brimstone raining down from the heavens? And I won't even go into the fact that the religion contradicts itself in saying that God is all compassionate but he will mess you up, bitch.

this is not directed at anyone in particular

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject