It's Thursday, which means I'm getting ready to go to church for an 8-hour marathon. I love it, though. We have our 4-6 year olds choir, then our elementary choir, then we (my boss and I) go out for dinner and a planning session, then we come back for handbells and chancel (grownup) choir. I absolutely CHERISH every second with the children. They learn new music so fast that they remind me of a giant sponge. I can't feed them fast enough. My accompanist and I both laugh at how if I just mention the title of a song, they begin singing it with such gusto that it takes me five minutes to quiet them down and explain whatever point I was trying to make.
I have the sense when I'm with them that I'm doing exactly the RIGHT thing to do. It feels like I'm doing what I was designed by nature to do. It's a feeling I've really never had before in my life, and it's grand. (But it's a blessing I don't have to try to make a living doing it.)
I'm about to leave for the gym, and I've already been three times this week. I'm also doing very well with Atkins this time--staying on it effortlessly and having that curious energy that you get when you're in ketosis. So that's good.
I am a complete idiot. I'm involved in a gigantic argument on a message board. I am "fighting" with a bossy, Southern fundamentalist "Christian" man who thinks he is right, and "righteous" about everything. This argument got started, unsurprisingly, because of my feelings about Prop 8. He looks down on homosexuals, believes that the government should be Christian, believes that life begins at conception and that abortion is "murder" (I don't know why he thinks it's ok, then, to murder those innocent "souls" who are the product of rape. I guess they are less deserving than other fetuses.) He has a scripture to quote for everything. He has said that I don't know the Bible, that I "seem like an atheist." He is indescribably, infuriatingly smug and his reply to nearly all my responses, was "oh come, if you're such a Biblical scholar, you can do better than that." By the time I departed the argument, I was so upset that my hands were shaking. Why, oh why, do I get myself into these things? I asked him, as I left (for good, because he's not worth letting my day be ruined) if he thought that his behavior and attitude were worthy of Jesus, if he believes that he is helping others find faith with his words, since that is the primary responsibility of any Christian. I'd like to go back and see what he said, but don't let me! Please, don't let me!
Peace out.
10 comments:
hahah at least you are fighting for a cause im getting het up on a message board about whether Carla or Maria in coronation street loved Liam more and thats a weekely soap set in manchester
Yeah, but when you're all het up, does the subject really even MATTER? :D
Don't do it Verby, "christians" like him have their heads so far up their butts they couldn't see the truth if it was right in front of them.
I'm not at all surprised to hear that Nag posts on other message boards.
Well, I hope this doesn't open up wounds with you (just delete it if it gets you upset because this is not my intention). I think you are allowing him too great of power over you. Scriptures without context are useless and are like soundbites in my opinion. Now, I think he has a right to his opinion just like every other Christian and non Christian. And I don't necessarily think his opinions are any "less" Christian, they are just not how you see and live your faith. It is very much like two blind men feeling an elephant, one at the trunk, one at the tail. Each experiences something different, but we should try to spend our lives feeling that whole animal to get the entire experience (but we can't ever know the enormity of it). To me, and this is the really good news, man will not sit in judgement of us, only God can know our hearts. Again, all this is such a sensitive topic that you can delete it without hurting my feelings, as I hope I have not hurt yours. And hum a verse or two of KUMBAYA (ha).
I think all of us here can identify with taking what happens on the screen too personally. I know I can and like you, I have found myself completely shaken up by things that shouldn't matter so much. I would say that since you can't talk rationally to the man in question, it is best to turn away, other cheek style.
The music Thursday you describe sounds like so much fun. I would like to find something like that (not musical, but a some good way to spend my time). They are lucky to have you.
I recall getting into arguments with Fred and others years ago, and on Yugo (a now defunct message board) that would get me perfectly aggitated and even cause me lose sleep. All night, I'd imagine responses to a rebuttal I had made and then think through all the possible reactions to it and then their answers. And I hated it, it felt wrong. I didn't do it well. Mostly, it didn't feel like me. And yet it was a good exercise, all things said, to step outside myself that way. It forced new ways to communicate and to write. It asked that I formulate harder positions on matters I was previously dreamy or just lazy about (even when my take was purely imagined, especially then). I still don't much like direct arguments or confrontation, written or otherwise, but I am better at them for the experience.
i try not to ask people what they think about things like this because i'm not going to change their mind and they aren't going to change mine. i don't like to get upset like that at all, so avoidance is the key for me.
jilly
What nice responses! Thanks to each and every one of you.
This is why I love you broards. And Bert and Ded.
Verbie,
You cannot argue with people who think they have God on their side. They are demented in that they think God speaks through them.
Just call this guy a Crybaby Asshole and be done with him.
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