I am a middle-class, white Christian girl. While I may be part of the 1% (globally anyway, of that I am sure), I’m not blind to discrimination towards people of ethnicities, social classes, genders, and religious backgrounds different than mine. But I cannot write on the discrimination I’ve felt on my ethnicity, because I am privileged. I cannot write on the discrimination I’ve felt in my social class, because I am privileged.
But I can write about the discrimination against women, and I can write about the discrimination against Christians-and religion as a whole-because I have experienced it. Laugh all you want about how privileged and first-world that sounds, but last time I checked, discrimination against anyone was unacceptable. What has been said to me about something I hold quite close hurt. A lot. It brought me anguish, tears, and even half way to multiple existential crises. To say that this should be allowed and even promoted, as I have heard people say, is no better in my book than those who say homophobia is okay, Islamophobia is okay, or transphobia is okay. Hate is hate, and ignorance is ignorance. I know I will never (most likely) be killed for my choice to believe in my religion, unlike many unfortunate others. I know I will never be lynched, stoned to death, amputated, genitally mutilated, burned at a cross or stake, banished, sent to a camp, or smothered in an oven. I know I am privileged in this way, but maybe I can use this freedom to express my opinion without fear of rebuke or punishment in order to make a difference by helping people to think better of those belonging to my faith. I do not like or want non-Christians to immediately condemn us for crimes either people of our faith hundreds of years ago committed, or for crimes that crazy people in specific sects, like the Westboro Baptist Church, commit. We are not universally responsible for evil acts, like some sort of Borg-ish high mind who all agree to go bomb somewhere while twiddling our fingers maniacally like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. We’re not cybermen who delete people who don’t conform [anymore]. We’re people. Just like you. We deserve respect. Just like you.
I hope to get us all a teeny bit closer to that.
In an increasingly secular world, religion’s influence and favor are waning. Many magazines and newspapers from Time to the Huffington Post, are saying so. One of the goals of this blog is to actually call out a lot of the fallacies, paradoxes and failures Christianity presents in both its text and its followers, because I feel that many use the Holy Bible as a safety blanket when they should actually educate themselves with science and common sense. Since both science and common sense are becoming more prevalent with the new technologies and experiments coming out exponentially faster than ever before, I think there’s no better time than to explore some of the faults in the system that, while successful for over a thousand years thus far, isn’t infallible. There are outdated ideas that are beyond antiquated that people are harkening back to, because they can’t face the idea of change. I believe that Christians are hiding in their churches where they shall “see no evil, hear no evil or speak no evil” when what they should be doing is learning to live in the present and be able to learn and adapt. William Ellery Channing, one of the biggest Unitarian preachers the US saw in the 19th century, once said “Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” Sitting comfortably in a bubble of naivety is no longer an option as our culture goes global. Many think their minds are at capacity full of only the Holy Spirit and thus reject anything that does not abide by their rules and hard-set ways. If you can’t tell, I find this incredibly harmful to the growth of humanity and to the United States as a country.
However.
The second goal of this blog is to attempt to educate what Christianity really is, how it developed into the system we know it today, and how it can be implementedin order to help people. I believe that Christianity is a system that can work, so long as it is given time to grow and mature. The Bible is a dense, complicated book composed of hundreds of writers and editors – much like Wikipedia – so anyone who wishes to live by its rules is forced to pick and choose. I think people are choosing the wrong things if they believe they can use the Holy Book to hate people and justify actions that are cruel and unconstitutional.
Discrimination, I think everyone in the world can agree, is bad. But not just bad: poisonous. Poisonous for people and for society, and since we are an increasingly global one, I think it best we make some changes for the positive and antidote that shit before the venom damages the planet. I wish to help alleviate some of the suffering that people experience because of ignorance and misguided resentment, and some of this ignorance and resentment is thrust towards a religion which does not inherently preach hatred, but one which is also unable to physically condemn those who do…since it is an abstract system whose punishment complex is based on a theoretical existence after death that cannot be verified. You can see how this is problematic towards keeping any one set or interpretation of “the rules” dominant, and thus why so many sects came into being. Take Christianity’s flimsy enforcement rule and pit it against, say, the United States government which has judges to deem the interpretations, enforcers to find and condemn wrong-doers, and procedures to either punish or rehabilitate them. If we had Christian police officers catching people doing “Evil” and “bad” stuff, believe me, our jails would explode…assuming they haven’t already.
Safe travels, readers.
Adam & The Atom 