(no subject)
Nov. 30th, 2015 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nobrandheroA family member shared a most distasteful tirade on holidays and religion on Facebook today. (She is not the dude I linked to. He just seems to be the origin of the now-viral post.) Given the extensive amount of time and effort I put into rebuking this embarrassment, I wanted to keep a copy somewhere more reliable and consistent than Facebook. It is incredibly long and touches on some sensitive topics, so I'm putting it behind a cut.
tl;dr: Refusing to accommodate non-Christians and trying to blame tragedies on the lack of prayer in school is not Christianly at all.
Now for the long version. (I might be making alterations as I get the chance to share this with friends for outside opinions.)
The large majority of this is falsely attributed to Ben Stein. The first few paragraphs are a mix of mostly-accurate and paraphrasing, while the rest is purely made up. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/confessions.asp) Stein was also not speaking about the White House's usage of "Holiday Trees" in the first place, as the White House does not use that term. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/christmas/ornaments.asp)
"I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat."
This part is accurately attributed to Stein and I strongly disagree with his ideas here. Christians make up about ~70% of the people in the US. It's very difficult to "push around" a majority population. (Jews are a different story, but Jews are in general less likely to demand, for instance, that public schools cater to their religion and I'm fairly certain that Christians were the main audience nodding along with Stein, so I'll be addressing the Christian side of things.) However, it's not unfair to ask that the majority respect and acknowledge the ~30% who do not follow their belief system, especially when that majority's primary directive is "love your neighbor as yourself."
As Christians, we should be going out of our way to accommodate and be hospitable to those different from us. It doesn't matter if they're 30% of the population or 2% of the population; when it's feasible, we should make concessions to be more welcoming and open to them, instead of digging in our heels on matters that we know make our neighbors uncomfortable, whether they're non-religious or practice another faith.
As Jesus taught in Matthew 5:43-47, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" (http://biblehub.com/matthew/5.htm#38)
Moving on, this next bit is paraphrased:
"Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to."
The primary difference is that Stein focused on two specific 2005-era celebrities and not just the entire vague category, but I find it an odd sentiment regardless. There are no prayers given to or churches built for celebrities. Humans have always loved gossip; it's just recently that we concocted the means to send and receive it on such a mass scale.
"In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking."
As detailed in the above Snopes article, this is the part where the words no longer belong to Ben Stein in any way, shape, or form.
"Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'"
First, this is largely a paraphrasing of Anne Graham Lotz's words and not a direct quote. (http://www.snopes.com/rumors/wheregod.asp) However, the general gist of it remains accurate, aside from the fact it was in response to 9/11 and not Hurricane Katrina.
Second, the god she describes sounds like a petty jerk and he's not the god I believe in. Did God not agree to show mercy to Sodom and Gomorrah if the cities contained just ten righteous people? Did He not send His angels to warn Lot and his family to seek safety when ten righteous people were not found? Did Jesus not keep company with the prostitutes and other undesirables, then cause scenes in temples? Would that God really go "Hmm, I could save New Orleans from a horrible disaster, but some people in this nation don't want religion discussed in school, so I think I'll just let that destruction happen." Does He do that with other disasters? Are Christians being slain in Iraq because they don't pray enough in schools?
And if God wanted to turn His back on us, why wouldn't He have timed it during our religious institution's far worse stunts? Perhaps during the crusades, for instance, when Christians murdered and plundered indiscriminately in His name, when Christians used "die as a martyr to skip Purgatory and go straight to Heaven" as propaganda to recruit average men into armies that murdered their Muslim and Jewish neighbors to take their land and make their kings wealthy.
If God did not smite us then, why would the last straw be a lack of religion in the US government? Is the Bible not full of stories of people who had to pray in secret because their environment was too dangerous to do so openly?
"In light of recent events... terrorist attacks, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK."
Her name was O'Hair, not O'Hare, and she didn't want public schools forcing non-Christian students to participate in Bible readings after her son was bullied by students and teachers for opting out. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O'Hair#Atheist_activism) Keep in mind that this happened in the early sixties, when many schools were legally REQUIRED to read from the Bible every morning regardless of the religion of the teacher or students involved.
O'Hair actually had nothing to do with the removal of prayer from public schools, as that was a separate ruling. It's also worth noting that students are still allowed to pray if they so wish, even in organized groups, and the law only affects how teachers are allowed to broach religion with their students. These rules also prevent a teacher who practices, say, Satanism from lecturing the classroom on their religion.
Lastly, humans are capable of morality systems sans religion. Philosophers have been discussing the basis and roots of morality in humans who don't believe in divine punishment for literal centuries.
"Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said okay."
Hitting a child doesn't impart morality, if that's what the writer posing as Ben Stein is trying to get at here. It does, however, teach children that it's okay to strike someone if they've been "bad enough," which is probably a bad takeaway.
It's a lie that Dr. Spock's son committed suicide. (http://www.snopes.com/medical/doctor/drspock.asp) That said, it wouldn't matter even if it was true. More often than not, suicide and self-esteem are not even related, given that the majority of suicides in the US are caused by depression, which is a disease that chemically alters a person's brain regardless of their upbringing or environment.
"Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves."
Since when does "religion=morality" and "no religion=amorality"? Was the man who shot and killed three people in his attack on Planned Parenthood not Christian? Where was his conscience? Why didn't he follow Jesus' command to turn the other cheek, or the Commandment not to murder? Abortion isn't even touched on in the Bible, and yet he decided he had the right to execute people who had the unfortunate luck to be in the vacinity of a clinic that sometimes provides medical abortions.
Religious people have proven time and again that their belief in and championing of the Bible does not exempt them from performing evil actions. In fact, churches need to talk more about the atrocities that Christians committed during the crusades and inquisitions: own up to that history, discuss its implications, and commit to preventing such meaningless cruelty from occurring again. There is a damn good reason our Founding Fathers utterly refused to allow a state religion.
There is also nothing about non-Christians that results in a lack of compassion. "I believe the purpose of life is to make other people happy" were words spoken to me by an atheist who was raised by atheist parents.
"Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says."
What do the newspapers say that we should be questioning? "Cloudy with a chance of rain"? "New restaurant opens in town"? "Car thefts on the rise"? I don't understand the point they're even trying to get at here.
Newspapers deliver information on modern day occurances and they bring sources and photographs alongside them. The Bible was written millennia ago in cultures unrecognizeable from our own, compiled into a full manuscript by biased humans, translated into German by biased humans, translated from German into English by more biased humans, and the end result is a tome detailing outdated practices that requires much study to fully understand. In short, newspapers and the Bible are as comparable as apples and oranges.
"Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing."
Perhaps because some of us are well aware that our religion has been used to justify slaughter and discrimination for centuries, and we don't wish to upset our non-Christian friends with a reminder of their bad experiences.
Besides which, I find the "Yay God, yay God, yay God!"-style religious memes that go around Facebook cheesy and distasteful. They take a heavy and complicated issue such as faith and condense it into bite-sized chipperness.
"Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace."
How are these related? There's shopping on cyberspace and geometry in schools, there's books in Barnes & Noble and Blurays in Best Buy, there are pews in church and beds in homes... They are two very separate spaces that have little to do with each other.
"If not, then just discard it.... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what a bad shape the world is in."
This mindset is incredibly insulting to our entire nation and the diverse peoples within it. The argument hinges on victim blaming individuals for the actions of an entire nation -- actions which supposedly caused tragedies and destruction that have been repeated on worse scales throughout the history of humanity. Even if I rarely see eye-to-eye with Ben Stein these days, I'm relieved that the large majority of these words are not his own.
tl;dr: Refusing to accommodate non-Christians and trying to blame tragedies on the lack of prayer in school is not Christianly at all.
Now for the long version. (I might be making alterations as I get the chance to share this with friends for outside opinions.)
The large majority of this is falsely attributed to Ben Stein. The first few paragraphs are a mix of mostly-accurate and paraphrasing, while the rest is purely made up. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/confessions.asp) Stein was also not speaking about the White House's usage of "Holiday Trees" in the first place, as the White House does not use that term. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/christmas/ornaments.asp)
"I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat."
This part is accurately attributed to Stein and I strongly disagree with his ideas here. Christians make up about ~70% of the people in the US. It's very difficult to "push around" a majority population. (Jews are a different story, but Jews are in general less likely to demand, for instance, that public schools cater to their religion and I'm fairly certain that Christians were the main audience nodding along with Stein, so I'll be addressing the Christian side of things.) However, it's not unfair to ask that the majority respect and acknowledge the ~30% who do not follow their belief system, especially when that majority's primary directive is "love your neighbor as yourself."
As Christians, we should be going out of our way to accommodate and be hospitable to those different from us. It doesn't matter if they're 30% of the population or 2% of the population; when it's feasible, we should make concessions to be more welcoming and open to them, instead of digging in our heels on matters that we know make our neighbors uncomfortable, whether they're non-religious or practice another faith.
As Jesus taught in Matthew 5:43-47, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" (http://biblehub.com/matthew/5.htm#38)
Moving on, this next bit is paraphrased:
"Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to."
The primary difference is that Stein focused on two specific 2005-era celebrities and not just the entire vague category, but I find it an odd sentiment regardless. There are no prayers given to or churches built for celebrities. Humans have always loved gossip; it's just recently that we concocted the means to send and receive it on such a mass scale.
"In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking."
As detailed in the above Snopes article, this is the part where the words no longer belong to Ben Stein in any way, shape, or form.
"Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'"
First, this is largely a paraphrasing of Anne Graham Lotz's words and not a direct quote. (http://www.snopes.com/rumors/wheregod.asp) However, the general gist of it remains accurate, aside from the fact it was in response to 9/11 and not Hurricane Katrina.
Second, the god she describes sounds like a petty jerk and he's not the god I believe in. Did God not agree to show mercy to Sodom and Gomorrah if the cities contained just ten righteous people? Did He not send His angels to warn Lot and his family to seek safety when ten righteous people were not found? Did Jesus not keep company with the prostitutes and other undesirables, then cause scenes in temples? Would that God really go "Hmm, I could save New Orleans from a horrible disaster, but some people in this nation don't want religion discussed in school, so I think I'll just let that destruction happen." Does He do that with other disasters? Are Christians being slain in Iraq because they don't pray enough in schools?
And if God wanted to turn His back on us, why wouldn't He have timed it during our religious institution's far worse stunts? Perhaps during the crusades, for instance, when Christians murdered and plundered indiscriminately in His name, when Christians used "die as a martyr to skip Purgatory and go straight to Heaven" as propaganda to recruit average men into armies that murdered their Muslim and Jewish neighbors to take their land and make their kings wealthy.
If God did not smite us then, why would the last straw be a lack of religion in the US government? Is the Bible not full of stories of people who had to pray in secret because their environment was too dangerous to do so openly?
"In light of recent events... terrorist attacks, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK."
Her name was O'Hair, not O'Hare, and she didn't want public schools forcing non-Christian students to participate in Bible readings after her son was bullied by students and teachers for opting out. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O'Hair#Atheist_activism) Keep in mind that this happened in the early sixties, when many schools were legally REQUIRED to read from the Bible every morning regardless of the religion of the teacher or students involved.
O'Hair actually had nothing to do with the removal of prayer from public schools, as that was a separate ruling. It's also worth noting that students are still allowed to pray if they so wish, even in organized groups, and the law only affects how teachers are allowed to broach religion with their students. These rules also prevent a teacher who practices, say, Satanism from lecturing the classroom on their religion.
Lastly, humans are capable of morality systems sans religion. Philosophers have been discussing the basis and roots of morality in humans who don't believe in divine punishment for literal centuries.
"Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said okay."
Hitting a child doesn't impart morality, if that's what the writer posing as Ben Stein is trying to get at here. It does, however, teach children that it's okay to strike someone if they've been "bad enough," which is probably a bad takeaway.
It's a lie that Dr. Spock's son committed suicide. (http://www.snopes.com/medical/doctor/drspock.asp) That said, it wouldn't matter even if it was true. More often than not, suicide and self-esteem are not even related, given that the majority of suicides in the US are caused by depression, which is a disease that chemically alters a person's brain regardless of their upbringing or environment.
"Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves."
Since when does "religion=morality" and "no religion=amorality"? Was the man who shot and killed three people in his attack on Planned Parenthood not Christian? Where was his conscience? Why didn't he follow Jesus' command to turn the other cheek, or the Commandment not to murder? Abortion isn't even touched on in the Bible, and yet he decided he had the right to execute people who had the unfortunate luck to be in the vacinity of a clinic that sometimes provides medical abortions.
Religious people have proven time and again that their belief in and championing of the Bible does not exempt them from performing evil actions. In fact, churches need to talk more about the atrocities that Christians committed during the crusades and inquisitions: own up to that history, discuss its implications, and commit to preventing such meaningless cruelty from occurring again. There is a damn good reason our Founding Fathers utterly refused to allow a state religion.
There is also nothing about non-Christians that results in a lack of compassion. "I believe the purpose of life is to make other people happy" were words spoken to me by an atheist who was raised by atheist parents.
"Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says."
What do the newspapers say that we should be questioning? "Cloudy with a chance of rain"? "New restaurant opens in town"? "Car thefts on the rise"? I don't understand the point they're even trying to get at here.
Newspapers deliver information on modern day occurances and they bring sources and photographs alongside them. The Bible was written millennia ago in cultures unrecognizeable from our own, compiled into a full manuscript by biased humans, translated into German by biased humans, translated from German into English by more biased humans, and the end result is a tome detailing outdated practices that requires much study to fully understand. In short, newspapers and the Bible are as comparable as apples and oranges.
"Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing."
Perhaps because some of us are well aware that our religion has been used to justify slaughter and discrimination for centuries, and we don't wish to upset our non-Christian friends with a reminder of their bad experiences.
Besides which, I find the "Yay God, yay God, yay God!"-style religious memes that go around Facebook cheesy and distasteful. They take a heavy and complicated issue such as faith and condense it into bite-sized chipperness.
"Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace."
How are these related? There's shopping on cyberspace and geometry in schools, there's books in Barnes & Noble and Blurays in Best Buy, there are pews in church and beds in homes... They are two very separate spaces that have little to do with each other.
"If not, then just discard it.... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what a bad shape the world is in."
This mindset is incredibly insulting to our entire nation and the diverse peoples within it. The argument hinges on victim blaming individuals for the actions of an entire nation -- actions which supposedly caused tragedies and destruction that have been repeated on worse scales throughout the history of humanity. Even if I rarely see eye-to-eye with Ben Stein these days, I'm relieved that the large majority of these words are not his own.
