To my friend, Jesus,
In biomedical ethics class today, I kinda snapped. I’m usually a
nice silent student who doesn’t cause much of a fuss because sometimes,
it’s just not worth it. I pick my battles. But I the
vampire finch just could not resist the boobie that was the fundie.
The topic was surrogate motherhood, but it doesn’t matter– because a
fundie can make a big deal out of anything. I’d been listening to
this classmate’s bullshit for an entire semester as she jammed up
critical discusions on the finer issues of the canadian health care
situation by throwing in a whole lot of hoofs from the trample of her
moral high horse, but then today, enough was enough.
So I raised my hand. “What you’re arguning has nothing to do with what
is right or wrong. What you’re arguing are values that are
fabricated by your religion, and are as good as arbitrary. So for
you to argue against the proposal is like grounding yourself saying
apples ain’t orange enough to be oranges. You’re missing the
point. It’s a non-issue.”
“But we’re talking about life here! We can’t just sell life as if it…”
“Are you a vegetarian?”
“No….”
“Are most of the good responsible people you know vegetarians?”
“No… but…”
“Well, I’m not a vegetarian either, but if you really cared about the
sale of life then maybe you should consider it. You seem to be
the better person here after all, I wouldn’t want your morality to be
stained with the sale of a living creature after all.”
“Now you’re just being insulting.”
“No, I’m highlighting that a lot of these fundamental values that
you’re falling back on have loopholes that allow for contradiction–
maybe even hipocrisy. So if I was health minister, you tell me to
base public health care policies on them, you’ll have to understand my
reluctance. You talk about deffending life, but all you’re deffending
are fabricated values. It’s just one interpretation. And
what we’re doing here is prooving that other interpretations that can
satisfy different values might even have more practical benefits– but
somehow, someone always manages to say that what’s efficient is
necessarily godless.”
I pause.
“And someone just manages to always say without saying it that what’s godless is bad.”
I won’t get into details, it’s a messy story.
At the end of it, she told me that I’d burn in hell.
Let me tell you about my friend Jesus.
When I was young, I went to church every weekend. I was even an
alter server. I had my first communion in a little white
gown. I learned things like the commandments. THere was a
time when I had a few chapters of the new testament memorized word for
word— even today, I still know all the passages, paraphrased in my
memory. You can’t read a passage from either the new or old
testament and I wouldn’t at least have a glimmer of recognition– you
basically can’t surprise me with anything in the bible because I was
religiously religious.
But that don’t mean jack all when it comes to my friend Jesus.
See, the way I see it. I can’t be blamed for having a hard time
beleiving; but i don’t blame this on God Himself and doing a bad PR
job. But I blame it on his fundies who can’t decide. And
who can’t come up with a campaign that *makes sense*.
A fundie might argue that I have to embrace god to get to heaven– but
i think doing good ought to be enough. If the God that turns out
to be real cannot recognize my best efforts regardless of my
alleigence, then fine, throw me to hell. I’m not doing good
because i subsrcibe to monarchy– I’m not doing good because you say
it’s good– I’m doing what I think is good because that’s all I have.
I made up some theories a long time ago about the ‘perfect human’ and
the theory goes along the lines of weeding out what I call ‘personal
treason’. Treason has connotations of a higher authority– a head
honcho. Someone who will reprimand you for your crimes, maybe
even cast you out.
Well, personal treason is when you betray yourself.
You don’t have to answer to anyone.
You answer to yourself.
And only to yourself.
And if God cannot be happy for you when you do what is right for
the sake of it being right, and if you don’t want to start putting a
little TM sign on everything saying “This goodness is trademarked by
GOD” well then hell. I don’t want to be God’s friend.
But if you were God, wouldn’t you agree?
When you have friends… you don’t just do what they say because they
say it’s what you should do. You do it because you agree it’s
what should be done.
And since God is the strong silent type, I’ll just have to fly my own path.
I think the thing I resent most about Fundies is that they treat God
like a baby. They speak for him. They play the parent for
him. Sure, baby jezus and all that– but afford the guy some
intelligence– don’t you think that if God is God, He’d look around the
world and see just what is good and what isn’t? Don’t you think
He’d be mature enough to accept that if people don’t preach, but are
still good people, that that’s a good thing, and that’s good enough?
The best way I can respect God is by respecting myself.
Just like how the best way for you to respect your friends is to respect yourself and make yourself worthy of friendship.
And what a bittersweet relationship to ourselves it is.
My prescription, from what I logically can figure– you don’t have to
beleive in God. But just do what you think is right. Not
because someone told you it’s right. But because you THINK it is
right.
No hard feelings, Jesus.
How different I
How different you
and how different the world
if for a moment of doubt
that would break our focus
only to allow us to see
dal niente 