rabble rabble rabble

For whatever reason I find myself in the mood to ramble on today.

It would seem that today is the day for holiday cheer and good tidings. Unfortunately you'll have to settle for the crushing weight of my ambivalence. Part of it is that I would classify myself as "spiritual but not religious" or something along those lines. Most of that is that I just don't spend my time worrying about deity. A loving deity will understand my drive to do good and reward me for it, and an unloving deity doesn't deserve my praise or attention. Instead I allocate my focus to actions and deeds, the part of any religion that should weigh most heavily on the thoughts of it's adherents.

What I see disturbs me. The religion of peace is locked in war with the religion of love, who in turn revels in fear and hate mongering. Major Christian religions support legislation against love, and our whole society still lacks any real devotion to unconditional love. This isn't the fault of any particular religion, or even religion in general, this is simply a fault in people. Every religion is purported to be founded on the principle of correcting that fault, yet most are caught up in tireless hubris, so convinced of their great purpose in changing the world outside them, they forget that their only role is to help this inside them.

I suppose I see no reason to celebrate the midwinter festival. I'm not a farmer whose life is in some way based around the seasons, nor do I worship the movements of celestial bodies. Perhaps, someday, when I feel that I'm with someone that I want to celebrate being with I may change my mind. I still won't ascribe it to the fake birth date, he was born in spring, of someone who tried to teach the world how to live a better life. If I feel the need to celebrate that, I'll do it by teaching people how to live better lives.

Something that has been on my mind lately is that if you're trying to help people you need to maintain focus on the message. A major problem with religious conversations is that people devolve into personal experiences and tend to approach the uncomfort zone of the person they are speaking to. The problem with that is that it's easy to attribute something to being "god's hand" in the situation, when to an outside observer, there are plenty of other just as plausible reasons for it to have happened the way it did. The message, though, is universal, do good to others, don't judge others, burn the heretics.