I find non Christians the most judgemental in my opinion and from my experience. Just the mean ones, but I've met some lovely generous Atheist people.
It helps to find something in common that has nothing to do with religion (or at least not directly to do with religion). I'm atheist (we don't capitalize the "a"), and have been able to have wonderful conversations with anyone who loves cats, no matter if they're religious or not (the humans, not the cats; my cat is a devoted fridge-worshiper because that's where I keep the cat milk).
Mind you, if they come out with some nonsense about black cats being evil, we're not going to get along. My Maddy is a basic black housecat and no more mischievous than any other cat.
I think a lot of Christians get bullied when it's not their fault other people have issues. It's up to Christians to offer compassion and to try and help but one can only do so much, the rest is on yourself. What *you* make of yourself.. becoming bitter is redundant.
Compassion is nice. Judgmental compassion is not nice, nor is it helpful to tell someone to "pray, and everything will work out."
All the prayer in the world won't make my dad's brain healthy again, or restore the memories he lost to dementia. But according to the pastor in the hospital when my dad was first brought in there nearly 10 years ago, everything would be better if I'd just sit and pray.
Nope, that's not how it works. Finding a cure for dementia and Alzheimers, on the other hand... that's what would work.
I think 'victims' become the bullies and all they can see is themselves. It's sad and I feel sorry for them but Christians have been persecuted for centuries.
Christians have persecuted each other far more than they've been persecuted by non-Christians.
Read your own history (I get the impression you're from the UK, based on some words and phrases you've used), specifically during the Tudor era. Henry VIII, Mary, Edward, Jane, and Elizabeth I were all either perpetrators or victims of religious persecution, depending on which brand of Christianity they believed in (one reason why Jane Grey was executed was because she refused to convert to Catholicism when Mary Tudor offered her that last chance to avoid being beheaded).
Add in the atrocities committed at other times and places in Europe (does the Spanish Inquisition ring a bell?), and it should be obvious that Christians have been persecuting other Christians (as well as people of numerous other faiths, or no faiths) for the vast majority of the last 2000 years.
And yet some anti-gay/anti-same sex marriage shopkeeper or county clerk in Kentucky starts whining that they're being "persecuted" because the laws no longer allow them to discriminate against people they have been taught to think are "sinful."
This whole "gay wedding cake" thing is just beyond ludicrous. The cake is not gay. To the best of my knowledge, cakes have no gender, no reproductive system, no awareness of any kind of sexuality. They're just cakes. So if someone wants you to make a cake, just make it and wish the buyer a happy (whatever the occasion is).
That's what I did when I had a craft business. Somebody asked me to make several dozen angel ornaments for Christmas. I didn't say, "Sorry, but as an atheist it would be against my personal worldview to make any religious-themed items." What I did say was, "Sure. How many would you like, when would you like them, what color(s) would you like, and which kind of trim(s)?"
It's called being a professional.
That's very true Jason. Same goes with an Atheist. You don't often read or hear of a criminal who is not Christian or Muslim defined in the media as the Atheist thief or the Atheist drunk driver. So there isn't a group degradation happening at the same time.
Do cops usually bother asking drunk drivers what their religion is? Honestly, that's not entirely rhetorical, as I've never had a driver's license and the closest I've been to drunk in my life was slightly giddy because nobody told me they spiked the punch at the SF convention room party I was at back in 1984 (vodka, I believe). So I've never been pulled over for bad driving, or even for a Check Stop.
That 'holiday' thing amuses. Like when people feel it is not religious of origin. I mean what part of holy day don't they get? Still it is also a day of simple recreation for many. It's like when people are scared to use the word man so they use person.. don't they see the word 'son' in person? Human has man in it.. time to rewrite the dictionary I think. Perhaps people are focusing on the wrong things?
I wonder if you would be as amused by an argument currently going on in Canada, over the lyrics of our anthem. With no hint of irony, the same people who rant about transgender people "magically" becoming whichever opposite sex they really are, are saying, "Oh, there's no point in changing the line "True patriot love in all thy sons command" to something gender-neutral because "sons" really means women, too."
Well, I am nobody's "son." And I do feel excluded from an anthem that assumes that only men (Christian men, btw; there's another line in there that makes it quite clear that the anthem doesn't refer to non-Christians) can be patriotic.
"The dictionary" has been tweaked already. And sometimes it takes a specific incident to trigger change.
Canada is a bilingual country, and we've had a female Prime Minister (Kim Campbell, in 1993). Her title in French was a question mark, because of how the French language works. So she was given a choice of whether or not she wanted the masculine (up to that point the standard) title, or did she want it feminized (
La premiere ministre)? She chose the latter, figuring that some day there would be another female PM.
I guess it depends on the Catholic but many Catholics highly respect the Pope.
It depends on which pope to some extent, doesn't it? To use { Emilia }'s example of Pope Benedict (aka Ratzinger, who inspired many comparisons with a certain evil Star Wars character), his past skeletons of involvement with the Nazis didn't inspire a lot of respect. Or that's the impression I got.
One of the things on Justin Trudeau's (our current PM) to-do list is to ask Pope Francis for an official apology for the Catholic Church's part in the cultural genocide perpetrated against the aboriginal people of Canada (kidnapping aboriginal children, forcing them into residential schools, and literally beating their language and culture out of them, while some were raped by the "Christians" who ran those places).
This apology is something that should have occurred to the Pope himself as being the right thing to do (any pope over the past many decades). Canada shouldn't have to go asking for it.
Celebrate the way things work for you.
No argument there.
I think Happy Holidays sounds kind of forced. I always think it flows saying Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
It's meant to be inclusive of people who are celebrating other holidays instead of Christmas, or other holidays in addition to Christmas.
Well I'm Australian so it's invariable shortened to "Chrissy". Have a good Chrissy mate! Whatcha doing for Chrissy? Done all your Chrissy presents yet?
Doesn't that get awkward if the person to whom you're speaking knows someone named "Chrissy"?
My father was an extremely religious person. (Still is, by the way).
He took it further in some phases of his life than in others, but there were times at which he believed star trek was a tool fashioned by the devil to gradually condition the unsuspecting audience into devil worship. Most notably them getting used to Spock as an image of himself (those pointy ears!) and different kinds of funny-looking aliens to facilitate the introduction of various demons into public acceptance.
Being an ardent star trek fan myself, it wasn't always easy to convince him perhaps the show
wasn't as devilish as it looked to him on first sight
Just point out the TOS episodes that are pro-Christianity (ie. "Bread and Circuses").
Funny thing, though, about the labeling of modern media and games as "devilish." I've been into Dungeons & Dragons (and similar types of RPGs) for about 35 years. I had my AD&D books on a bookshelf in the living room... right where anyone entering the house could see them. For some reason my grandmother suddenly got worried about what my clients would think (I had a home typing business at the time - mostly college and university students). They might think I was worshiping magic-wielding devils!
So I told her to wait a moment while I went outside and got something. I returned with some rose petals and sand, pointed to my grandmother while letting the items sift through my fingers, and recited "
ast tasark sinuralan krynawi". My grandmother sat there, obviously wondering wtf was going on. Then I told her that I had just recited a sleep spell (according to the Dragonlance novel
Dragons of Autumn Twilight). I asked her if she was asleep.
"Well, of course not!" she said.
I told her I didn't expect she would be. The fact that she didn't fall asleep proved that the spell from the novel was just a story. It's fiction. And like all fictitious things, it doesn't work. It's just a
story and isn't real.
So she stopped hassling me about the AD&D books, and went on with her dollmaking hobby. It did startle the clients to see small shrunken heads hanging in the kitchen (my grandmother was in her "apple doll" phase), and I just smiled and said, "Oh, I must have forgotten to mention that my grandmother is a headhunter."
It helps to keep a sense of humor about religion sometimes...
I sometimes wonder if religion would be good in schools but not if is used like propoganda but as something students could debate among each other with a neutral observer. I mean were else are young people going to be able to get a unbiased look at the subject?
Religion in schools should be limited to comparative religion classes (age-appropriate) and totally neutral. Of course that's not an easy thing to do, and will be misunderstood and some teachers could make a mess of it.
One of the major things in Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission's list of things to make it up to the FN people for all the crap they went through with the cultural genocide of the residential schools is to have more taught in Canadian schools about aboriginal history and culture. So one school decided to teach something about a smudge ceremony and one of the parents was livid, saying the school was promoting religion.
I had the benefit in college of a fantastic classical history instructor. He was upfront about his own religious background - he came from a Mennonite community but didn't have much to do with it anymore. He promised to be absolutely neutral when the time came to discuss the Crucifixion, and he said that in every class he taught, there were usually one ortwo people who got upset and walked out.
Well, sure enough, when he stuck to the bare facts and didn't say anything about divinity, resurrection, or anything else of that nature, two women did get up, stomped out the door, and slammed it very loudly. The rest of us just looked around, shrugged, and the class carried on.
I took an astronomy class as well, and at the end of it, one student tried to pressure the instructor into stating his religious beliefs. The student was upset that Genesis wasn't part of the unit on cosmology. The instructor told him that his religious views were nobody's business and didn't belong in a science class (he also taught chemistry).
Don't ever change, Coco Puffs.
) accountable for what they would have the opportunity to know, not just believing faith in Jesus Christ.
We're all sinners, nobody is perfect. So screw the Calvinists, let's party!
