An analogy

When some people talk about Christianity, or any other belief, they give their ignorance away. I don't mean to be too harsh, just get right to the point. People discuss faith as if it was like being part of a club, which has some traditions and rituals, but it doesn't necessarily change your the members' world view. When they're not at a club meeting they simply live like everyone else around them.
This is the analogy that occurs to me. A convinced theist, or believer in God, and a convince atheist are as different as two mathematicians working with different number scales. If you work with a number scale of ten, then four fives equal twenty. If you work with a number scale of five, four fives equal forty. The same data yields a different answer if your analytical thinking framework is different. If a person really believes in the existence of God, then God is a factor in all things, all issues and all equations about life. God is always there and always has to be considered. And God can make the impossible possible. God can, if He chooses turn water into wine. So God has to be remembered in all situations. Someone I once knew said "This has nothing to do with God," when telling someone else what to do. They were quite wrong. It has everything to do with God. The advice they were giving was not in keeping with God's teaching. But they were saying that in the real world you have to be 'practical', by which they meant do whatever worked best, and never mind if it wasn't the Christian thing to do. There is probably a great deal of that. This person called themselves a Christian but left God out of some of their daily decisions in life. God was only for Sundays or for making fine sounding speeches about when they were in the mood. Their faith did not transfer into daily life.
That's not all. Some non-believers, or agnostics, don't understand why Christians get 'hung up' about certain things. They don't see why Christians have to make an issue out of things instead of just fitting in. That is to say, they don't realize how real God and His teachings are to those who really believe.
Even though I personally do not follow the teachings of Judaism, I must respect the right of a Jewish man to wear a yarmulka, if he feels that's important a part of his belief. Some people propose to ban such things in public schools, because the school is supposed to be secular. But a Jew does not stop being Jewish just because they are in a public school.
And a Christian does not stop being a Christian just because it is not Sunday and they are not in church.
That is why they sometimes cannot fit in with the world. Jesus Himself warned His followers of that. They may be rejected and victimised by the world.
In the same vein, some people say the church should 'modernise' to fit in with the community it wants to connect with. That is putting the cart before the horse. The community needs to change to follow the Word's teachings - or else be honest enough to admit that they are not doing so. To say the church has to agree with society is saying that the church has no real beliefs, it just reflects social or political fashion. But some people can't see that because they do not really know what they are talking about when they discuss faith.

If you want them to come, build it right!

I saw a small flier about home schooling/unschooling in our town today. There seems to be a growing interest in it. I can imagine some teachers and senior education bureaucrates voicing their disapproval too, but there is a good reason why some people home school, or at least get their children out of state schools.
My only experience with schooling is in N.S.W, Australia, but it seems the situation is much the same in some other parts of the western world. The school is supposed to be there for everybody, but in fact it just does not suit some people at all. In this state schools teach a secular approach to life, and a tolerance of certain things, such as abortion, which contravene the teachings of Christianity and possibly other faiths as well. That is to say, the schools' position on some life issues is quite wrong to some people. Since we accept freedom of belief, and freedom of worship, the Christians can't impose their beliefs on others but others can't tell Christians - or Jews, or Hindus, or whoever we have - to their own. The state school system alienates some people by wanting them to keep their beliefs private while others are proclaimed as being 'right'. By whose authority are they right?
That's not the only reason why some kids do not want to be in schools, be they state or any other. Bullying has been a problem in school for as long as I can remember. Some individuals find a school to be a hostile place full of nasty hostility. In the last few years we've seen the pure horror of child or teenage suicide, the victim being driven to it by what happened to them in school. What's worse is, some school staffs appear completely unable to stop it - or is it unwilling, because it becomes so difficult?
Respect for the individual can involve accepting that they are different from a lot of people around them and need to live differently. I can completely sympathize with some parents who do not want their kids going to school, because they know just what hostile places schools can be for some people. There are times when school inmates gang up on a lone student like animals. That might be harsh, but look at what happens sometimes and try to be 'nice' about it. Come to that, this is just what sometimes happens. Excuses get made for the bullies, saying that they are victims themselves. Even is that is true, which I don't believe it always is, then saying it does not heal the injury done to the victims. It just gives people an easy way out. They excuse themselves having to confront the problem, and claim a superior social conscience at the same time.
If the community at large wants schools to be suitable for all, the community will have to run them properly. There needs to be effective measures taken against vicimisation that goes on, and an acceptance that kids do not have to deny their own beliefs and background when in school. Make schools work right, and at least some people who try to avoid them might like them better. That is NOT to say that everyone should go to school. Home schooling might really be better for a lot of individual kids. But for those who do go, they would be less off-putting if better supervised. Make them better, more people might like being there. Build them right and they will come to them.

Irony abounding.

In the U.K., the news says, atheists and 'free thinkers' have hired advertising space on buses to say: "There is probably no God, so relax and enjoy your life."
It is impossible to say in a few words how utterly self-contradicting and absurd that statement seems to me. It is meant to be wise and reassuring, 'freeing' people from worry. In fact, to think that there was no God would be one of the most terrifying things imaginable. To relax and enjoy life you would have to feel secure in the knowledge that help was available in certain situations.
If there was no God, who is there to turn to and seek help from? Would they care to tell me what they think about that? If they say 'human intelligence and people' they invite me to point out just how disastrously unreliable and wrong-headed human beings have shown themselves to be, so often through history.
I once asked a militant atheist who he put his trust in, what did he feel he could rely on for guidance and answers to problems in life. He said "Myself, and a select few others."
I could have told him that he was one of the people I would be least able to trust and feel safe in the hands of! Like so many hard-headed 'intellectuals' I've known, that man had quite a ruthless attitude to those he disapproved of. Given the chance, he would have run the world in a way he was sure was right, and look out any one who disagreed and got in the road. That was what happened in the regimes of people like Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and Mao Zedong. The leader and the little in-group round them made all the rules and everyone else had to just do as they were told. If the leaders got something wrong, no-one had better dare to critisize. And there is the irony. The ones who consider themselves fit to run the lives of other people are the ones who least inspire my confidence. To be that sure of themselves is a danger sign for a start. Note that I'm saying 'sure of THEMSELVES', not sure of what they believe. Such people feel they can assume the power of God to decide how life must be for everyone else.
It should be obvious that certain things are absolutely beyond human control and help. Can anyone prevent a tsunami? How about the emergence of new diseases, to which there is no cure? What about drought, or a collision between this planet and a meteor, or any other such thing that no human can prevent? It could be rather hard to 'relax and enjoy life' when there are so many uncertainties and dangers, that no human can protect us from.
It is an old saying, that 'there are no atheists on a sinking ship'. In other words, you can be complacent and think 'who needs God' when everything seems to be going well. When it all goes bad, and no human power can change the fact, how does the clever atheist handle that? If we live or die by blind chance, and there is no real fairness about life, how can you relax?
Atheists trying to sweep away belief in God make me think of ants trying to be elephants. They simply make themselves look ridiculous.
Of course, we all have a right to our beliefs. I won't start trying to persecute atheists. But do they know just how LITTLE they impress me with what they think is their cleverness?

By their words..

A columnist in Australia reports on some of the vitriol directed at Sarah Palin. I'm wondering if some of the hate-mongers who attack her know they are alienating people,
arousing sympathy for the ones they attack.
Since I don't live in the United States, it's not my place to say who the nation's elected leaders should be. That is for Americans to decide. What I'm talking about is the spite involved in a bumber sticker saying 'Abort Sarah Palin', or the comment from one Australian feminist that Sarah Palin was 'very, very dangerous. There's something wrong with her....she's post-feminist'. The point here is, the people who say that would no doubt insist that they support freedom of speech and belief; rights and freedoms for all; and then savagely attack those who exercise their freedom to believe something they disagree with. It's as stupid and obvious as a person calling themselves a vegan and then eating a beef-burger.It makes mockery and hypocrisy of the fine words they speak when they want to win friends and influence people. One feminist hard-liner was quoted as saying 'My head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull,' when hearing what Palin had to say.
The same sort of thing goes on in Australia. A certain Professor Wayne Sawyer apparently said that English teachers in Australia were not teaching critical thinking, because John Howard kept getting re-elected Prime Minister. In other words, he claims that anyone who thinks clearly would not vote for Howard's party. That is straight out argumentum ad hominem: attack the person instead of their argument. It is an intellectually dishonest way of contesting with someone. Rather than present arguments that rebutt their arguments, attack them personally. When being taught about flawed ways of contesting an argument, that was one of the classical examples shown to me. You can't beat their argument fairly, so attack them instead. A professor of English of all people should know that. And here's the irony. The people calling Sarah Palin dangerous are themselves dangerous. That they harbour such vicious spite against her for saying what she thinks, reflects on them. That a senior academic can forget all his own training to lash out at those he disagrees with, shows the frailty of human learning, and the unreliability of education as a way of making people 'good', whatever you consider that to be.
I've seen this before, too. The political left throw terms like "fascist" at people whose views are unlike their own. In so doing they exhibit a fascist attitude themselves: they deny freedom of thought and demand obedience to their own ideology, which is the classic tenet of fascism with its demand for complete obedience.
Some time ago now, I realized that one reason I looked to Christianity for answers was that the humans who most loudly claimed to be good were often the ones with the most hatred inside them. And there goes that irony again! A frequent attack directed at Christians is that they pretend to be better than they are. Nothing beats a 'progressive' political activist, with all their self-righteous claims to social conscience, for harbouring malice while claiming to care so much about humanity.
I've forgotten who it was who said: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him", but that says it all. When human beings try to run something relying entirely on their own wisdom and supposed goodness, the results are like disastrous. Feeling that they must get their own way, people resort to the bitterest rage when opposed. God and Jesus Christ be with us. We're doomed otherwise.
Speaking of words, which is the title of this post, here's an example of the misuse of language. A person is a traitor if they pretend to believe or do something, and then do another to attack those they pretended to side with. Sarah Palin has been called a traitor to women, by feminists (claiming to speak for ALL women, which is an arrogant presumption) because they say she is letting them down. Did she in fact ever claim to believe the things the feminists believe? Or was she always right upfront about what she believes? If so, she is NOT a traitor, she is an honest advocate of her own beliefs, which she has a perfect right to. Misuse of a term is the classic example of intellectual dishonesty - and betrayal of the principle that we should all speak the truth. The attackers are condemned out of their own mouths.
It must be a bitter disappointment to put your hopes in politics and politicians. They will always only be human. The more I hear angry people demanding my support or obedience, the more I know I can not trust or aid them.

What matters?

Did you ever see something like this? Someone who is supposed to come from an under privileged home, but they wear a Stussy cap and other brand name clothes. I can remember seeing that going on. Of course, sometimes it looked as if the brand name shirt was the only bit of clothing they had. It looked as if they slept in it! So instead of a number of clothes, cheaper to buy but not 'cool', they own one item of status gear and nothing else! Something strange is going on here. I know there are people who are hard up, there really is such a thing as poverty. The concern is that people might be compounding the problem because they get hung up on silly ideas about how to spend what they do have. It comes to a question of, what really matters?
Do some people get so caught up on image that they try to get their hands on a few things that are fashionable and supposedly give them status, and go without more important things?
In other words, what are they trying to live for? It could be really cruel if they get made slaves to the idea that without certain accessories, they deserve no respect.
When I was teaching, you never stopped hearing about what terrible problems some kids were supposed to have. Then a woman who had worked overseas, in a rural area where some kids hardly had enough to eat, said that kids in the Western world didn't know when they were well off. Some peoples' idea of poverty is not having cable T.V. It's true, life can be made too easy and people can become indulged, and jaded, like the proverbial spoilt kid crying for the moon. Whatever they have, they still want more. But then: when someone is surrounded by material things, and everybody boasts about what they've got, then having possessions can seem to be the meaning of life. Did we give people reason to think that wealth and trophies are what give them worth, and if they don't have them then life is not fair to them? If it works that way, then the message is: to have any self-respect they've got to have things, and show that they have them. That is the only way to get a life!
This is not original, I know. Thousands of people talk about 'the meaning of life'. But it's a continuing problem, like crimes of violence. So we don't have much choice but to keep thinking about it. What do people live for? Is it just to keep up with the 'trendies', the 'cool group', the smart set or whatever you want to call them? If that's how it is working, then people who fall for it are trapped on a treadmill that won't get them anywhere - because there will always be someone who has more, and it will torment them to know they haven't made it until they've got the same. Deadly!
So how can that be changed? Once again, this is not original. As the Scripture says, "What benefit is it to gain the whole world, and lose your soul?" The human being needs something to live for apart from the material world and its trappings. If that's all they can see, then like the horizon, what they want will always be out of reach. Don't worry, I know we need some material things. I love to eat, and more importantly, my children have to eat so I'd better make sure the food is there. The same goes for their clothes, and more besides. But life is more than that. It has to be! And realizing that is important. Failing to realize that can happen when people try to leave things of the spirit, the factor of God, out of the equation when they try adding up the sum of life. I can't tell everybody else how to live. They have the same right to their views as I have to mine. But is it right or not that, figuratively speaking, "Humanity does not live by bread alone." The body is not all. The spirit too has needs. Is the modern western world seeing that and telling its children in time?
Any thoughts and comments? I'm still learning.

World Youth Day

World Youth Day happens this Thursday, so already the Pope is in Sydney and all the security measures are happening. And what else? That's right, you guessed - protesters! There's one crowd that call themselves the No Pope Coalition, or sentiments to that effect. There are protesters handing out condoms to people attending the event at Randwick Race Course, when the Pope appears to the crowd. Some are wearing T-Shirts saying "There is no God." And all the rest. If anyone objects, they immediately start up about 'the right to protest.'
I know about the right to protest, I've exercised it myself. What I believe in is the difference between protest and harrassment.
If the protesters, or nuisances causing harrassment, hand out condoms it seems they are telling Catholics to defy the Pope. It could almost be said that they are trying to tell other people what their conscience should be.
The thing is, no one is forced to be a Catholic in the modern Western world- or at least no adult is. And the crowd celebrating with the Pope look to be mostly adults, not accompanied by large numbers of young children. They are there by choice. If they choose to practice the teachings of the Catholic Church, then trying to tell them not to seems like claiming you know better and are presuming to inform them. Either that, or it's just baiting them.
The right to protest can be used wisely and honestly or, in my humble opinion, it can be used cynically to cause aggravation. I'm not Catholic myself, although most of my close friends at high school were (I don't know if that's just coincidence or not.) If someone wants to tell me why the Catholics can't just have their event in peace, I'll listen to what they say at least. The big whinge is that it's disrupting the running of Sydney, with extra traffic, roads closed off and extra police powers for security. But the same applied when Sydney hosted the Olympics, and there wasn't nearly so much grumbling then. It's as if some people think sport is more deserving than religion. ( Actually, that is just what they do think!)
I do not deny the right of people to protest. It just seems to me that it is sometimes misused. Some people never organize anything themselves, they just wait until someone else does and then hang around it being a nuisance.
Part of respecting freedom of belief means that you respect the right of people to express their beliefs. So I wouldn't try to stop the protesters making their point, but I feel like telling them to go and get a life.