Oh! The Humanity!
This morning I opened my email and found a message from my friend, Michka. He had forwarded a link to me of a CNN news interview with Victoria Jackson, a former Saturday Night Live actress. I took the time to watch the interview.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2011/03/22/sbt.victoria.jackson.hln?hpt=T2
I know this is a controversial subject. I have many friends in the church I used to attend that would wholeheartedly agree with her. But there are flaws in their logic, the same flaws in Ms. Jackson's logic.
Michka was complaining that he did not understand where in the bible Ms. Jackson could find verses condoning closed-mindedness.
They do exist, but they are rather vague. They leave themselves open to personal interpretation. This is why there are so many interpretations. My problem with these verses is that none of them were written by Jesus. There's not even any claim anywhere in the Bible that anything written in it was authored by Jesus. All the claims of authorship lie with other individuals, and regardless of whether those authors were or were not the actual apostles, the entirety of the Bible was authored by others, and from their points of view.
I can't tell you how loathe I am to look up verses and quote them. I gave up believing the Bible quite a while ago. There are many who want to see the actual verses quoted, and I'm not going to do this. But if any of my readers want to look them up, I'll give you a few starting points. First there is a story about Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, this story has many vague points. I say it's vague because there are other reasons why these cities may have been destroyed, assuming it was not just a moralistic story made up to just make a point. For example, the men in the story roaming the streets looking for fresh meat (meaning other men) to sexually assault, they were not just looking for someone to have sex, they were looking to rape someone, which to me is far more serious an issue. Then there's a matter of them looking for someone they did not know, which implies they were not looking for a one-on-one committed relationship. That right there raises some serious emotional red flags.
May I add that Lot's response was no better than the men looking for some male to attack. Offering his daughter as a better potential rape victim was in itself a hideous thing and speaks volumes about Lot's attitude toward females. Also, I would like to add that he recognized the two strangers as being sent from God. It is entirely possible that he was only protecting them for that reason and not because he saw homosexuality as such a bad thing. The story never directly addresses these issues and we are left to make our own assumptions as to what the destruction was attempting to fix.
Other verses in the Bible regarding closed-mindedness can be found in various books of the old testament, and most of them in the book of Exodus, where Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land. These verses specifically tell the Israelites to remove themselves from all people and situations involving non-Israelites. These verses were never aimed at Christians. Judaism had not yet evolved into Christianity, assuming that these books of the bible were actually written during the time period they claim to have been authored.
I would like to point out the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans were not Israelites and predate the Christians. The Sarmaritans were not generally known during their era as being kind or generous people. They were known for their harshness, their coldness. Kind acts were never to be expected from them. They had a bad reputation. A Samaritan in this story finds an injured stranger along a lonely road, takes him in, and helps bring this stranger back to health. The Samaritan does not require from the stranger a conversion to the Samaritan's religion, whatever that was. The Samaritan does not require any acknowledgment or "lip service" to the Samaritan's religious beliefs. And the Samaritan does not require anything in return.
Some would call the Samaritan's act human secularism. He showed humanity without the constraints of religious banter. To me, showing humanity toward others, even in the face of the other person being obviously from a religion you don't agree with, or acceptance of people who do things that from a religious standpoint you don't or can't understand, is the true meaning of Christianity.
There are too many Christians giving Christianity a bad name, and a bad reputation.
Back to Ms. Jackson, she went on to bash the idea of human secularism. She put it down like it was a bad thing. She made it very clear that she was very much on the side of preaching her version of Christianity to anyone with a set of ears, regardless of whether or not they wanted to hear it. She picked up her handy-dandy Bible, which she conveniently brought with her to the CNN interview and promoted it as if she was Jimmy Swaggert, himself. She started trying to quote Bible verses, as if the CNN interview was the proper forum for preaching. I believe she was looking for just that, a platform from which to preach. I have to give credit to the CNN interviewer for redirecting the conversation away from quoting the Bible.
Aside from the fact that she was just looking for a way to bash homosexuality, which she did, and claims that television shows that depict homosexuality among teenagers is just trying to turn teenagers gay, which again she did, and trying to quote Bible verses to uphold her views on homosexuality, I find that she does not understand human secularism. She believes that human secularism is just the devil's means to eliminate God. I know this to be the view of the church I used to attend. But I disagree with the meaning of that term. Human secularism is nothing more than taking action of doing the right thing for other people, regardless of who those other people may be. Being an example of your beliefs speaks more loudly than any verbal preaching. Verbal preaching and shoving your religious beliefs down other people's throats also speaks loudly, but it does not exemplify what you intend but rather shows very clearly the hatred instead. Which again, she did. Her hatred of gays was loud and clear.
I find it amusing that 1) she claims she has many gay friends and 2) she claims that shows depicting gay teenagers would turn children gay.
I have news for Ms. Jackson. 1) If she thinks she has gay friends, she's not being a friend to them with her gay bashing, and they won't be friends to her after this interview. And 2) shows that depict gay behavior don't turn anyone gay. You're born that way. There may be some people who may disagree with me on what I say next, but I feel I must.
Some years ago, I did some studying into rape and the after-effects of rape on the victims. My focus at the time was the effects on females, but the results of what I found would apply to males as well. Sex as well as rape involves the stimulating of the central nervous system. When the nerves are stimulated, it really doesn't matter what stimulates them. The stimulation can come from hate, rage, fear, terror, love, sexual arousal, or any other human emotion. If it's a strong enough emotion, and it really doesn't matter which emotion, that nerve stimulation can display itself in a number of ways including loss of bladder control, loss of bowel control, stuttering, hysterical blindness, trembling, asthma, headaches, muscle spasms, and genital arousal and orgasm, among many other effects. It is very common for rape victims to have an orgasm during an attack, and feel very confused, disoriented, and guilt-ridden for that physiological response they had no control over. Many rape victims have been known to commit suicide because they thought they had committed some egregious sin against God for having an orgasm as a nervous response to being attacked. Victims often refuse to admit there was an orgasm because orgasms are associated as always being pleasurable. That is categorically not true.
I can easily see how a man who has been attacked can have a physiological response and think afterward that he must therefore be gay even though the experience was not a pleasure.
But I am in no way saying that all gay people have been sexually abused or raped.
There is no explanation as to why people are attracted to the ones who attract them. Why do some become more attracted to blue eyes and others find other eye colors more attractive? Why are some attracted more to fat people, and others to thin people? It is no different when it comes to what gender a person finds more attractive. Attraction is part of the hard wiring specific to each individual.
There are verses in the bible that stand absolute against homosexuality. However, there are many verses in the Bible that stand against many other things. They are often unfairly slanted toward one group over another. As an example, there are verses that command a death sentence against prostitutes. However, men are exempt. There are verses that command a death sentence against girls who disobey their parents. They don't apply to boys. There are verses that allow men to marry multiple wives, but women were never allowed multiple husbands. After being taught these things all my life, I finally came to the conclusion that even if some of the content of the Bible was inspired by God, there is so much of it that was written purely for the convenience of the human author, or for whomever the author was trying to help, that I can't tell which parts to believe and which parts not to believe.
I can't help wondering what the motivation was behind the gay bashing verses. Were they more interested in making sure that all sex could possibly end in pregnancy? I also can't help but wonder where all those bible thumpers are on the subject of polygamy and why they are not all part of the Mormon offshoot cults that still insist on demanding their men marry multiple wives.
There are too many people who live in absolute misery their whole lives because they attempt to deny who they are, and try to live their lives according to what society expects. There are too many people who commit suicide because they are convinced by the people they respect the most that there is something wrong with them and that God can't love them because of the way they are and they can't change. There are too many people who are damaged because they live their truest sexual lives in secret and don't take the precautions that need to be taken because they are afraid that if they try to get help, they will be discovered and discarded as so much trash by their friends and family.
So you want to call yourself a Christian? Then be one! Don't just seek your platform and preach to those who don't want to believe the same as you. Be an example. Show God's love through your behavior. Be that Samaritan and don't require conversion to your beliefs as a prerequisite for your love and generosity.
There is more to the Bible than just verses listing all the things that can be considered evil. There are also verses about mercy, and forgiveness and understanding. It seems that people like Ms. Jackson conveniently overlook those verses!
We live in a different age. I'm not saying that morality is an outdated concept. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, we know far more about the human body and the human brain than people during the "olden Bible times" ever did. And we are no longer a world that needs to rely on every person contributing to the human population growth.
I am reminded of when I was growing up. I recall seeing an advertisement on television sponsored and produced by a Christian outreach organization. It was geared toward providing food, clothing, shelter, education and clean water to starving children in third-world countries. They were asking for donations so they could provide these things. As I watched the advertisement, a fellow member of my former church was watching it along with me. I remember being told that it was un-Godly to give money to help these starving children because starving a child was God's punishment for their parents for not believing the same as our church.
I can't begin to tell you how much more Christian human secularism looks to me.
March 23, 2011
1:29 p.m. CST
Updated March 23, 2011 @ 8:50 p.m. CST
