| Current mood: |  pissed off |
Values
I have a friend who bashes Christians a lot. As far as I can tell, his barometer of Christian values is any value any major Christian figure espouses that is not one he holds. Being a non-Christian, I suppose any common values he may have are not exclusively Christian, and thus are not Christian Values. So anything some hated figure like Jerry Falwell or other televangelist says is used to tar the idea of Christianity as a whole.
I'm not religious. I have no use for religion at all in my life. But I do recognize the social utility of religion. Lord knows there are enough people who need the promise of heaven and the threat of hell to to keep them from being a danger to society (and thus, me.). *grin*
Frankly, I usually find the antics of the liberal anti-religious fanatics more annoying.
But not this time.
It's the Proselytizing that bugs me. And I don't mean the door to door stuff. I mean the recruiting in bathrooms.
"Huh?" you might say?
A few years ago I was going into the bathroom at a local Wal-Mart (Not the one I usually go to) and this older man is rushing out, looking somewhat furtive. When I get to the urinal, there's this carefully folded slip of paper designed to look like a quartered $10 bill. If you were to pick it up and look at it, it would unfold to say something like "Disappointed? Jesus won't disappoint you...." and further blah blah blah. This flier was pretty old, since it hadn't been updated to look like the new $10 bill. The man had placed one on each urinal and stall.
These things annoy me for a couple of reasons. First, they must think I'm really, really stupid, and that all they have to do is TRICK me into reading their text and I will magically be transformed. I'm sorry, but if you have to trick someone into believing (that is the idea, right?) then that says very little in favor of your faith. The second is "You're soaking in it". These little tracts are written in such a way that they sound absolutely convincing to someone who is already a believer. But if the intended audience is someone who does not believe in God or the Bible, citing the Bible as proof fails. It's a circular argument, and only succeeds for those already inside the circle.
They also annoy me because they aren't even as inadvertently entertaining as a Chick Tract.
But yesterday I ran across one that REALLY pissed me off. I went to the bathroom at an Office Depot I was servicing, and there on the floor was yet another little religious come-on, titled "Under Attack" On the front was a picture of a New York firefighter looking over the rubble of the twin towers. You can already tell why I'm pissed. I may not be religious, but if there's one thing sacred to me, that's it. Using the tragedy of 9/11 to try to sell people on your church is lower than low.
It then goes on about how we're all going to die some day, and how we must accept Jesus to be ready for death. Remember what I said about circular arguments? The people who write these things fill them up with phrases and Cant that only have actual meaning to those who have already accepted it. Stuff like "the gift of Eternal Life through Jesus" is probably very meaningful to Christians, but without all the background, it's just as nonsensical as "There's no Prob with Bob."
And in fact, I kind of disagree with the premise of belief in Jesus as a sort of holy "Get out of hell free" card. I mean, if I'm going to be judged and held responsible for my actions, then *I'M* the one responsible. Punishing someone else for my "sins" is wrong, and telling me it's already been done 2000 years ago only compounds the injustice. (It also brings to mind the Jules Pfieffer (?) quote "If Jesus was sacrificed for our sins, do we make his sacrifice unjustified by not committing them?"). I'm sure it makes perfect sense to Christians, but it's nonsense to me, and I don't choose to believe in things that don't make any sense.
I know I have some Christian friends who read this. It's not meant to be an attack on them or their faith, but just on these creeps who use this technique of evangelizing. And don't try to explain Faith to me. If it were explainable, it would be Reason, not Faith. the closest you can come is Pascal's Wager, which I guess I've come as close to as I'm going to get by simply not being a rotten person.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mauser) wrote,
