I have little patience for stupidity or wilful ignorance. I have always known this, and yet some kind of underlying masochism in me requires me to occasionally engage with idiots over the internet. I think it must be some kind of catharsis for the frustration I don’t often get to express in person, being the nonconfrontational sort that I am. Either way, I find myself every now and then getting really sucked in to heated “discussions” with people who are in possession of roughly the intellectual capacity of an iceberg lettuce. I don’t fully understand why I do this to myself, but I do.
Part of the reason why I find myself in these situations, though, is my few remaining links to the church group I used to go to – it is populated by some of the most breathtakingly vapid people I have ever known, and their interpretation of “Christ’s love” and “Christian charity” are nothing short of mind-bending. I am about to provide you with an example of this.
While I was a Christian, I always found it odd that of all the Biblical characters, Jesus was one of very few I actually felt an affinity to. He cared about the poor, he had his priorities straight. I could *identify* with Jesus. I got him, and I liked him, as a person. He challenged people who felt they had some kind of status in society, and propagated equality among all people, even in ways that made him less than popular. He actually talked to women like they were human beings. If he saw a need, he met it. He never lost sight of what was really important, and he had compassion. Other Biblical characters like Paul, and the apostles I could not relate to in the same way. They were too dogmatic, and I felt like they really lost sight of what was important. They had their eyes so firmly fixed on the “spiritual” that they neglected the practical. Jesus, in my eyes, didn’t do this – and even now, when I no longer consider him the son of god – it still frustrates me when those who claim to want to emulate him instead parrot his dogmatic early followers.
Example time now!
I have a number of FaceBook “friends” from my old church who have thus far failed to block me. I usually try to ignore their status updates, as they are almost universally saccharine enough to make you feel an actual ache in your pancreas. There are only so many consecutive exclamations of “I love Jeeeeesus” and “The lord is so good!”, because apparently you prayed for your car to start and – hey presto! – Jesus worked his magic juice on it, that I can bear without wanting to embark on a Columbine-style rampage at their next coffee morning.
About 2 days ago, one of them I had failed to notice was pointed out to me. One of the girls, let’s call her Sarah, had a photo of what looked like an ice cream van up, with this message:
So excited to go out tomorrow and show God's love to people. Heading to X Park with [girls’ name, let’s call her Claire] and we will be handing out free tea and coffee. Thanks again to [boys’ name] for his coffee van! Its kinda like this one in the picture. :) Its so cute!!! :D
Underneath the photo, someone made the excellent suggestion of charging 1 euro, or even having a collection there for the victims of the floods in Pakistan. This idea was immediately dismissed, based on the reasoning that god had “spoken to them”, and that apparently this was what he wanted them to do, because god was using free hot beverages to “bring people to him” - cue smiley faces. Passive aggressive, much? Anyway, I felt obliged to respond by pointing out that it was in fact an excellent idea, and that I couldn’t quite understand someone who claimed to model their worldview on that of Jesus considering offering free hot drinks to a Cork population already drowning in Barry’s tea more important than ameliorating the immediate suffering of the extreme poor after a natural disaster. Long sentence I know – but the response I got was thus, from Claire:
"Because i am called to be a servant to the Living God and do whatever He asks of me not what the world asks of me. Sorry that you don't understand this Grace but I'm living the impact and change God has had on my life so it is very importnat to me that those sick and dying in their souls know He can save them. :)"
I have a number of problems with this, but I feel it is necessary to be fair here and point out that I know this girl quite well, and the response was possibly not *quite* as passive-aggressive as it may appear. She’s actually very nice, and I feel somewhat disappointed that I must take such vehement issue with her approach. But I must, so I do. It’s not even the fact that they refused to organise a collection that annoyed me. If that just wasn’t the point of that particular event, OK – fair enough, I guess. I wouldn’t like it, but it wouldn’t annoy me half as much if they hadn’t more or less dismissed the plight of the Pakistani people as being less important than that of Corkonians to accept the Lorrrrrrrrd into their life. Just how far up your ass does your head need to be, in order for your set of priorities to be that arseways?
First off, the obvious. How precisely does bribing people with hot drinks – on a warm summer day, no less - ameliorate their “spiritual health”? Corkonians drink tea and coffee like fish drink water, and knowing them as I do you’d nearly have to tie them down to listen to a sermon while they drink it. They’ll just take the drink and fuck off. Why not do something even vaguely useful? For me, gags like this in the absence of any kind of collection for charity, etc., completely removes any facade of altruism and reveals these people for what they are – relentless proselytisers who want nothing other than to add more sheep to the sheep pen.
Secondly, the very idea of meeting the “needs” of those “sick and dying in their souls” before those of people who are literally sick and dying strikes me as bordering on farcical. It encapsulates the problem I had with people who neglected real issues for spiritual ones. I guess you could argue that the entire point of religion is to neglect the real for the “divine”, but in this case it irks me particularly, because this logical fallacy results in people dying. It’s just so, so irrational. I can scarcely get my head around it – I mean, even if it were purely levels of faith and “spiritual health” you were concerned about. I would imagine that watching their loved ones die for lack of basic food, sanitation and shelter in conditions scarcely fit for rats to live in would adversely affect the “spiritual health” of the Pakistani people.
The church is SURROUNDED by Cork people. They have their whole lives to meet Corkonians’ non-existent need for tea and coffee they can easily afford to buy anyway. The need of those suffering in the wake of the disaster in Pakistan is urgent and immmediate. If the church really cared about the poor and needy, they wouldn’t be wasting their time throwing hot drinks at bemused Cork people.
Also – seriously, would it be that much effort to have a collection there? Even if they didn’t charge for the tea and coffee, they could just have had a collection box for people to donate as and if they wished. All it would involve would be punching a hole in a box and writing on it. It would certainly involve far less manual labour than organising and setting up a hot drinks stand. It would literally cost them nothing to incorporate something like this into their event, and it would do so much good.
Even from their own perspective, at least pretending to care about Pakistan could benefit them. I for one would sure as hell be far more open to chatting to someone about anything if I felt they were supporting a good cause, even Jesus. If someone just bribed me with a drink to preach to me about the Lord, I would promptly explain that I needed the lord in me about as much as I did the beverage. As in, thanks, but not at all. It just makes them more credible as an organisation if they are seen to be doing something with an actual point. Other than shoving the love of Jeeeeesus down our throats with our hot tasty beverage.
To me, it just encapsulates everything I now hate about organised religion, especially the one I left. Even for those, like the girls above, who are relatively well-intentioned, the whole dogma of the religion removes their focus from the “world” – i.e. the problems right in front of their faces, and causes them to believe that the relationship some comfortable Westerner has with an questionably existent deity is more important than the constant, agonising suffering of people who are watching the people they love die unnecessarily. I mean, the disparity should be immediately obvious to anyone with a jot of empathy, or even logic, but both of these attributes are clouded in those who are devoutly religious by the need for “spiritual” issues to trump all others. As Claire rightly pointed out, it makes no sense to me – and to be perfectly honest, I’m fucking glad of it.
