This Chik Phil A Day event, or rather, the facecrack, er facebook, PAGE about this event has been sucking up a lot of my time. (You can click that link and see the post I wrote about it on Sunday.)
I always want to see as much of the "Circle of Truths" in any situation. That Circle currently sits at 7 billion viewpoints. So I in this case I need to see the polar opposite of my viewpoint. That's the one that always the most difficult, or the most easy. It's usually the first one to attempt.
For one thing, as a writer of fiction, I would like to be able to represent this kind of person so accurately that they would see themselves in the character. I know I don't really understand them, because I cannot summon their reasoning organically. I cannot fathom what ridiculousness is coming next.
And I refuse to believe they are all "evil" or incapable of transformation.
And I would like to find a way that everyone could live on this planet together. You know, "can't we all just get along?" Everything starts with knowledge and understanding.
I really do believe that we are in the Dawn of the Age of Aquarius, the New Age of Electronic Fire, and the Age of Avatars. I think conservatives and zealots of all beliefs are NOT backward or the tail end. I think they are the wrecking ball and crew. The last vestiges of the old world are crumbling, and they are the ones running around pointing it out to us. In the New Age the conservatives and zealots are the guys that show up at the very end, to demolish the foundation and cart the stones away.
"Look! Look! Gays can get married! Oh no, marriage is over!! It's doomed!!!" The rest of us had figured that out based on the rate of divorce and people choosing to cohabitate or remain unattached. And gays, please dude, you just can't handle conversations about sex publicly, regardless of who is doing what to whom. Probably half the people reading that got hard or wet just seeing the word "vagina" and "asshole" come out of Robertson's mouth.
Get too reactive and just push against something like this and you can inadvertently strengthen it. To quote my own poem
I don't want to fertilize the weeds. Nor do I necessarily want to destroy them. I just want to know how to keep them out of my garden. Or how to use them to my advantage.
Or even get a few of these rigid zealots to question their own beliefs very thoroughly and deeply. Or even DEFEND them with any sort of logic I could understand. I have seen a lot of people "break out of hell" by arguing full force with someone that held opposing beliefs. Not always, but sometimes, a person like that is looking for a way out. They want you to convince them. But to convince them you have to understand them.
So that is something I have in common with these people. We both want to lead people out of hell. Although, of course, I also want to lead them away from a god that can send you to hell for eternity. But there is a parallel there. It is a start.
What is the highest possible vision I have of the "Born-Again", evangelical Christian? I am trying to go from what the purest, most ideal vision of their faith I can find.
They really see their "choice" to "accept" Jesus as their Lord and Savior as something they do out of "love". I have to put all that in quotes. Because my use of those words as they use them do not seem to match exactly.
But I am really trying.
They feel more fear at a world that doesn't have that god. I am afraid of that god. Whenever I have encountered him it has been out of fear of that hell, and also many times fear of what was happening in my own life, and not from feeling the overwhelming feeling of love and understanding and peace with the Universe.
It was always with the desire to find a certain and safe refuge from the things I found horrifying in the world. But I always found as much horror in those non-denominational churches and conservative Christian theology as I found outside.
But I can't assume that all of them feel that way. I have to assume that a God that offers everlasting reward and freedom from suffering and complete exoneration for every mistake or misdeed is the only thing they have ever found that gives them strength.
Again, being pushy, greedy, narcissistic, infantile, and ignorant, which I often think is the case, is not the highest ideal. Plus, all people can be those things, regardless of religion or ideaology. It's just that all zealots are so sure that they are right for themselves and for everyone else, that there is no room for diversity. Because everything that is different is a threat.
Satan is more important than God in their construct. Would they still love their God without Satan? We will never know. It just is, there is no questioning of it. Even entertaining the idea is too dangerous, because people already live in sin and to deny that even for a second leads to ruin.
Their God has given humans free will to choose, but only so that they can choose him. There is really no other choice that matters. Once you make the choice for Jesus to be your Lord and Saviour and do your best to follow the Bible based lifestyle, any mistake you make is forgiven.
But Hell is actually the lynchpin of the whole conservative Christian outlook. Everyone burns in hell without Jesus. No matter how much they love God, they cannot ever go back and look to see if they would love their God without Hell. Not even the smallest sins can be forgiven and hell avoided, without Jesus the Lord and Saviour.
But anything, no matter how evil, can be forgiven if you accept Jesus and the "traditional values" package.
On a personal note I realised that one reason this was bothering me so much is all the men I knew that were like Phil Roberston, and even looked like him. I watched that show once. It was enough. I was 13 and surrounded by older men that talked all that same macho, religious, racist, crap as the Duck Dynasty show stars. That show and that GQ interview were just way too familiar and painful to me.
Especially now that I live here again, and sometimes see one of them, or a brother, or a sign with a business someone still owns. And I all I can think is "yuck." And I just threw myself at them, because I was so desperate for any male attention, even wildly inappropriate and illegal. I had so many abandonment issues and felt so unloved and unlovable.
But if I'd ever gotten my wish that one of them would have done as I wished-- if I had in fact been one of those "15 year old girls that would pick your ducks"-- I would be stuck with one of them and probably have children with them. Some guy 10 to 25 years older than I was that got up and went to church with his family the morning after fucking me.
It's like I escaped from what have truly been a hell for me. Thank you birth control and abortions, women's equality, freedom of speech, and freedom of and from religion, that I was able to escape that fate and live to appreciate it.
But also I don't want to live in that construct anymore.
No matter how I wrap my mind around it, there doesn't seem to be any peaceful coexistence in the New Age. They either have to be completely ignored and/or completely out legislated. Because there is no middle ground with them on issues like abortion and gay marriage. Because no matter how lofty and ideal I try to go with their ideals, the bottom line is is White Might has been Right, and Manifest Destiny and our God told us to take this Land, and our God is the only God.
These people are losing their privilege in this world. And they are all about this world, regardless of what they say about how they are living for Jesus.
So I suppose we can look forward to some more of these shenanigans, and we shall all decide if we want to respond or not. And in the meantime just keep looking forward to the young people and the future.
Which seems appropriate for the last post of the calendar year. Been busy writing something book-length, so I suppose I shall continue to be sporadic.
Blessings Peeps!
One of my finer comments and replies:
Redneck Dog Maw = the bitch with the pups
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