I’m gonna rant for a bit, so if you don’t mind, I need you to make an assumption for a second.
Meaning, can we drop the religion thing for a second? Just for a minute or two. I’ll hold on to it for you. I promise I’ll give it right back, pristine and exactly the way you gave it to me. Granted, a few things have broken in my care, but I promise your beliefs are special to me. I’ll make sure my daughter doesn’t get to them.
Thank you, that’s very trusting.
Now that we have that on the table and out of the way, I’d like to talk to you about this concept you have about sin. Namely, that I think it’s complete crap. Sin doesn’t exist. It never has, and it never will.
For example, if I decide to hang out with a bunch of friends, drink to excess, swear like a sailor, and blow money on trinkets I’ll just break in a week, am I sinning? Excess, profanity, vanity and greed; I’d say that by religious standards I’m pretty far along on the railroad to Hell, right? In fact, I think your religion just twitched a little bit. It’s okay. The twitching just means it’s working properly.
Well, within the time I was drinking, I made memories with my friends. We were rowdy, sang songs until the bar sang with us and bought drinks for people I didn’t know. We swore and drank like Norseman ready to go to war. For that night, we were warrior poets lamenting a life we were running off to protect. Then we went to the outlets and bought thinks that caught our eye.
A four-piece Pac-Man glassware set, fuckin’ check. That will look amazing next to my Vulcan oven mitt and R2-D2 measuring cup set. Book about Elvis for my wife? Hell, yes. Put that bad boy in the bag too. What is this? This is a pooping dog keychain. Seriously, this is a keychain that has a dog, that looks like he’s pooping.
Well, looks like the kid has a new pet.
I’m convinced that the same people who were eying us at the bar and silently wishing they had the balls to complain were envious that we were enjoying our lives. “Eat, drink and be merry folks.
“Sins” were created to give people a self-righteous reason to feel like they can judge others. Judging others isn’t even really that big a deal. I’m guessing the guy who wields a machete in his front yard doesn’t get a lot of Girl Scouts knocking on his door as a result of this mechanism.
If there is a replacement concept for “sin” I suppose it would be “reciprocity.” You know, the golden rule thingy. Truth be told, it’s found in the Analects of Confucius before the Christians picked it up, dusted it off and decided to completely ignore it. Don’t get me wrong, the other religions have gotten it completely wrong, too. No religion has nailed it. Because religion is just that, “religion”. A set of beliefs, rather than rely on the idea that being a dickhead to someone you just met might just be a crap idea.
When did we mutate from a placid society of ideas to a bipolar-country defined by rigid beliefs in a never-ending contest of one-upmanship?
I even got into an argument about how prepared a steak should be done. Personally, I like the cow to be making noise as I’m eating it. Give it a name like “Happy”, sear it, run it through a warm room and stick that bastard in my face. I don’t care if you like yours burned to a crisp. I don’t think you’re a bad person for it, I don’t care if you want it medium and like the best of both worlds, and none of these viewpoints are worth getting our blood pressure raised.
These days it’s all about everyone being right. You wanna be right, don’t you? You want it so friggin’ bad. You want to be right more than I want sex or alcohol. I don’t really know which one of us has the bigger problem, but between the two of us I’ll leave YOU alone about the things you enjoy. I won’t stick my bloody, still mooing steak in your face and demand you take a bite, and I expect you to not stick a piece of charcoal on my plate and insist I eat it. Life isn’t about forcing everyone to do what you want them to do, it’s about enjoying the experience of being alive, WHILE you’re alive.
I’ve only forced someone to do something twice, and I hated it both times. I felt like I was subverting their will, probably because that’s EXACTLY what I was doing.
At the end of the day, we’re all looking for meaning in this world. We’re all looking for one reason to get up in the morning, and one thing that makes it feasible to wake up to do it all again.
Maybe, just MAYBE your reasons are not compatible with mine. In your eyes, mine are as sinful as murder. In my eyes, yours are boring as hell. The only difference is that I won’t use religion as a vector to judge whether or not I’ll share a steak dinner with you
You treat me like a human, and I’ll treat you like gold. It’s just that simple.
You can have your religion back now. Don’t worry about the stain it left on my table, that stuff cleans up real easy with a little bit of premarital sex.
—
Photo: Getty Images
Good points! Why is the world so judgmental? What happened to live and let
live. Life is too short and for most of us, there will be plenty of painful events,
so why add to it?
I really don’t care how you eat your steak, or the fact that you eat steak. As long as you do not abuse women and children, you are probably adding to
the good karma.
Cheers and make merry, Patricia. 🙂
Just curious … when you give your daugher direction, are you judging her? What do you or will you say when you see behaviors in her that can be destructive? Are you forcing her based upon YOUR beliefs?
You appear to have painted people of faith with a narrow brush based upon what you have chosen to identify as negatives.only.
“Just curious … when you give your daugher direction, are you judging her?” When my daughter passes the age where sticking shit up her nose is seen as a viable choice, then she can develop her own preferences. But, I don’t really parent this way. I enforce things like “don’t touch the electrical socket”, not “avoid churches and seafood”. Again… safety, not preference. “What do you or will you say when you see behaviors in her that can be destructive? Are you forcing her based upon YOUR beliefs?” That would depend on what I see. Again, safety not preference If… Read more »
What do you think about waste not want not? It’s very trendy now to be zero waste or what about the diet proscribed in the Bible. Eat of the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the grains. No mention of red meat, which seems a healthy diet. Drink of the fruit of the vine, which science is now telling us that grapes are great for circulation and digestion. The Muslims and some Christian won’t drink caffeine, which isn’t good for you. Sloth isn’t good for you. You should get exercise, etc. Much of that is… Read more »
Good question. I suppose the answer would be if a Christian or a Muslim told me that I shouldn’t drink caffeine. I’d probably utter something that contained a lot of swear words. If I don’t have at least 2 cups of coffee in the morning, you don’t want to know me. The line would be, if someone is doing something that makes them happy, then they shouldn’t have to hear anything about it. I’m fine with everyone doing their thing, but the second I get a dirty look for drinking and carousing, I will consider it an invitation to start… Read more »
OK, I’ll bite. Hillary and her crowd spent an inordinate amount of time, energy and money criticizing Trump for his many sins. The basis for their judgment and condemnation was – wait for it – the lefty civil religion of feminism. Were they right…or were they wrong…by your own philosophical standards? I would argue that having an ethical bias – and an ethical basis for your own life – is not really optional. If you don’t have one, you are in danger of simply being a utilitarian psychopath. Now, a lot of people find their ethics in their religion, if… Read more »
Oops…I meant “principled pacifists”.
First, I am so sorry that I didn’t see this comment until just now. I didn’t really think this post was political, but I suppose it could be bent that way. I wasn’t really, nor am I currently a fan of Hillary, or any of the Clintons. I simply deplore smug people in the top 2 percent. Criticism of Trump doesn’t come from the “lefty civil religion of feminism”. It comes from a place where people despise bullies. Well, most people despise bullies, and you can often tell who each side votes for. He personally lost my respect when he… Read more »