Doncha love when Christians look right atcha, frown, and say “Love the sinner, hate the sin!”?
I read this as, “You are vastly inferior, but I am going to force myself to love you anyway.”
Here’s what I say: Ya gotta love Christians, hate Christianity. Love Muslims, hate Islam. Love Hindus, hate Hinduism.
All three are slaughtering religions. But that doesn’t mean people in them are unlovable. They’ve just been hoodwinked.
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Thnx, dslis, for the great Draculanian foto
5 comments:
I can love an ignorant Christian or Muslim because they only know what they've been taught. But the STUPID ones, who have access to better information and will stamp their feet and turn red if you mention a scientific or historical fact that contradicts their beliefs, are a little harder. I suppose I still love them, but I also want to slap them. Hard.
Although I haven't done a great job of it, I TRY to balance my diatribes against the Slaughtering Religions (my new epithet for xianity, Hinduism and Islam) with positive items about the Goddess. My view of Her is that She instructs us to love each other the way a mentally healthy mother loves her children. This is the mark I aim for. However, I don't always reach the mark, and I too sometimes have a strong desire to "slap someone hard." Especially those like Dobson et al who are damaging hundreds of thousands, and are literally helping to bring on "Armageddon" by their refusal to honor Mother Earth, their degradation of women -- the sex that could save the earth -- and their deep-core message, which is the slaughtering of all who refuse to bow to their religion.
Yeah, these guys I find hard to love.
But ya have to ask: what made them this way? They began as innocent kids. Something got to them. Inside there's still that innocent child, product of the Great Mother.
I'm rambling here, I know. I don't think "loving" everyone as a child of the Mother means that we necessarily become pacifists. A mentally healthy mother doesn't roll over and die when her children are being threatened. She fights. She can be terrifying. She can lift cars. She suddenly possesses the strength of 30.
On the other hand, The Mother to me represents peace and non-violence as a first principle. So the major question to me is, How does a non-violent religion protect itself when it's surrounded by violent religions that want to destroy it?
What does a non-violent religion do when it sees the world being eaten alive by the violent religions that have slowly but surely, through the millenia, spread like a cancer over increasingly larger and larger areas of our planet?
Or, how do you fight fire without using fire?
I'm reading a very good book now called The Skull Mantra, about how Tibetan Buddhists have handled this problem over the centuries. The book is a mystery novel, but I presume the author based it on fact. It won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The way the Tibetan's handled it is by hiding out until the danger's passed. in the novel they have literally carved out the inside of a mountain in the Himalayas, and this is where their monks live if and when they need to prevent annihilation.
My favorite non-violent group, the Semai of southeast Asia, do the same. They don't fight -- they run. They hide.
The problem today is, though, I think we're running out of time, and out of places to hide.
Whaddya all think?
Eruvande, Where are you finding your Christians these days? I’m not sure we have that brand – yet -- in the U.S. (the clairvoyant-occult kind).
Isn’t it interesting that the followers of a god who told that guy Abraham to slaughter his son Isaac – as a sacrifice -- would be pointing fingers at us?
Yeah, I guess you’re right about consistency. Thank the Great Mother for small favors. I don’t know who said it first, maybe it *was* Gandhi.
"How do you fight fire without using fire?" You throw a lot of water on it. Water is the Goddess' primary element, and it's usually best to use something that comes naturally to you.
"Love the sinner, hate the sin". Not possible in the case of monsters. And as for restraining orders, an iffy proposition at best in a society that refuses to police itself even at the most basic family level.
I'm reminded of an episode of Kung Fu where a man says that if someone hits you with a stick, you either take the hit, or hit him back, and Caine says "You could take away the stick." I have this crazy notion that if you show people the inconsistencies, the mistranslations, the absurdities, that maybe they'll make better choices.
I think most people want to be good, but they don't know any better. They're doing what they've been taught. I want to teach them another way. Of course, that can be tricky when they're trying to burn the teacher.
What do you do to get the "good Germans" to stand up to the Nazis? This question keeps me up nights.
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