Tag: Religion | The World According to MEH

Religious Rapture, Part VII

Posted on May 18, 2009 by admin • 4 Comments

agra Ok. We are at the end of a week of religion-based entries, and this is the final installment. No, this doesn’t mean I will never write about religion ever again–only that I have other things about which I want to blog, and a week solid of any one topic is more than enough (except, of course, chocolate and Alan Rickman).

So, how am I planning on tying up the loose ends from my previous six entries and summing them up in one neat, coherent, thought? I’m not. I’m just going to ramble on some more, as is my wont, and then come to a screeching halt. I will say one thing in advance of the verbal torrent, though, I want to discuss the impact of religion on my personal life and the impact of religion on my political life. For the purposes of this blog entry, I am going to assume the two do not overlap.

First up, religion in my personal life. My friend, Natasha, says she doesn’t take offense at the religious people in her life because they are trying to save her from eternal damnation. In their minds, her soul is at peril, and they are trying to save it. I actually agree with this. I don’t particularly care if people (like my mom) want to pray for my soul. In fact, it’s sweet when my niece tells me, her eyes wide with concern, “You’ll go to hell” (because I don’t believe Jesus is my savior).

Religion and Reason, Part VI

Posted on May 17, 2009 by admin • 2 Comments

Ok. I had it all mapped out in my mind how this entry was going to go. Wouldn’t you know it? President Obama beat me to it. He gave the commencement speech at Notre Dame today amid controversy and a few hecklers. Here is Part I:

Now, in case you don’t know, the talking heads were all up in arms (figuratively, and perhaps, literally) over the idea of a pro-choice president speaking at a Catholic university. Oh, the horrors! Newt Gingrich weighed in. Bill Donohue weighed in. Pat Buchanan weighed in. Oh, and he got smacked down by Larry O’Donnell who wasn’t having any of Pat’s nonsense. Other Catholics weighed in, but I don’t have the stomach to list them all. When I Googled Obama, Notre Dame, and students, the first gazillion links are about protesting Obama or the controversy over his invitation, as it were. Mostly, the indignation has to do with the fact that Obama is pro-choice and pro-science. Anti-life, as it were.

Faith No More (Religion, Part IV)

Posted on May 14, 2009 by admin • 2 Comments

the_crystal_ball So. My “Fuck You, God” phase did not end with a bang, but with a whimper. It’s difficult to maintain that level of rage for any sustained amount of time. Besides, I had pretty much done all the experimenting I wanted to do at that point–and there was still an emptiness inside me. What to do?

I started taking a tai chi class. It was taught by my friend, and I was intrigued. It’s where I met Natasha, who I started calling Sis. Our mutual friend, let’s call him Glen, was an excellent teacher. Unfortunately, the class only lasted six weeks, and then I had to move on to the main teacher. Let’s call him Robert, because that’s his name.

He set off my creepy meter from the start. The first time I met him, I knew there was something very off about him. He had the typical predator/con man vibe, but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt for Glen’s sake. Robert was very New-Agey, and he exuded the smarmy smugness of an snake-oil salesman. I stayed with it for over a year, despite my misgivings, until I just couldn’t shake the heebie-jeebies any longer. Every time I went, I had to erect mental barriers so I wouldn’t be bothered by Robert’s energy. He liked to claim that he and his teachers knew when not to touch someone during practice, but they certainly didn’t know that with me. In addition, Robert had no concept of personal space. In other words, major creep.

Losing My Religion, Part III

Posted on May 13, 2009 by admin • 4 Comments

question mark Looks like this is going to be a week-long series, bitches! Oh, sorry. That’s how we greet each other over at Balloon Juice, and I quite like it.

So, in college, religion was put on the backburner as I spent more and more time discovering, well, me. And my boyfriend, D, but that’s not really the main part of this blog entry.

So, after we had sex and I wasn’t struck dead by lightning, I began to wonder what else I had been taught that was not strictly true. You would think at this point that I would have went wild with the booze and the drugs, but my breeding still held. It wasn’t just being raised Christian, though, it also had to do with being the daughter of immigrants who came from a more puritanical culture (at least on the outside). I did start thinking about what I actually believed, rather than what I’d been told.

I believed in keeping abortions legal. It was never something I discussed with my parents or with teachers in school. I have always been pro-choice–even before I knew what the phrase meant. Likewise, I have always been a Democrat. I grew up, for the most part, under Reagan, and I never understood what people saw in him. Every time I looked at him, I was always struck at how empty he was. There was no there, there.

My Life as a Christian, Part II

Posted on May 12, 2009 by admin • 0 Comments

yummy priest So, when we left off, our intrepid heroine (me) was heading off to college. I had planned on going to college in CA, but I changed my mind at the last minute. Instead, I ended up going to St. Olaf, which was closer to home–but not too close. For the first time, I lived away from my family. For the first time, I wasn’t being given rules and regulations to follow. For the first time, I had to make all my own decisions. It was scary as hell, but also a bit thrilling.

I became good friends with a few girls in my corridor (we had corridors our first year, and each corridor had to Junior Counselors (JCs) who helped us first-years navigate the waters), and I became tight with many guys. In my younger years, I found it easier to relate to boys than girls. My female friends in college used to ask me how I got to be friends with so many guys. I said, “I treat them like people.” Most of my female friends never quite understood what I was saying.

I quit going to church the minute I went to college. I had to take a few religion classes, but I dealt with that. I really liked one of my religion profs, John Barbour, if I remember correctly, because he had fun questioning the creeds and the tenets. I had him my junior year, and he told the class that he liked to start out his first-year classes with this thought: “God committed infanticide.” The minute he told us that, he had me hooked.

The Fragility of Religion

Posted on May 11, 2009 by admin • 2 Comments

buddhist-prayer Go see Religulous by Bill Maher if you haven’t. Go. I’ll wait here until after you’ve seen it. Seen it? Good. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Today’s topic up for dissection is religion. I know it’s a touchy subject, which is exactly why I’m tackling it today. You see, I was raised Evangelical, so I do know a little something about Christianity from the inside. So, I’m going to start with a personal story, and then I am going to branch out into more general territory.

Once upon a time, there was an island named Formosa. Most of the inhabitants on the island were Buddhists. However, the Dutch people, then the English Presbytarians, then the Canadian Presbytarians sent missionaries to the island. So now, even though the vast majority of Taiwanese are Buddhist, Confucian and/or Taoist, approximately 5% of the population is Christian.

My mother is one of that 5%. She was raised Christian. My dad is one of the 93% that is Buddhist/Confucian/Taoist. He was raised Buddhist. My mother went to church and prayed to God. My father went to his ancestors’ graves and paid homage to them. They met in Tennessee, and my father converted to please my mother. He has never been what I would call a spiritual person, so I suspect it was easier for him to convert than for him to convince my mother to convert.

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