kattitudes

In 1999. with the onset of Kattitudes, I took to the internet and started to meet a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. Paying a lot of attention to the upcoming American election, I realize how many people I have talked to online that profess to be cheerleaders for the whole Jesus train. I consider myself uniquely qualified to enjoy chatting with these people, having been raised in an apocalyptic fanatical fundamentalist neo-christian separatist proselytizing cult.

Yes. I meant to put all those words together. I know.

I know.

I would rather not know about you and your relationship with Christ, thankyouverymuch. But I particularly do not want to know about you and your forced march with the man if your march really has little to do with the walk He was supposed to have walked. And don’t quibble with me about what walk Jesus would have walked as I am plenty old enough at this point to have made my decisions about those questions. Don’t quote your scriptures or cast your aspersions. I. just. don’t bother with the details anymore. I. Just. Don’t.

I have put in my time. And I do not just mean during the weeks and twice on Sundays. I mean living all the many thousand fun and exciting childhood benefits that you can only get growing up in an apocalyptic fanatical fundamentalist neo-christian separatist proselytizing cult. Whoo doggie.

There are just a lot of things I see, in our online conversations and in the news. People freaking out over issues of religion like the end of the world was going to be here yesterday (which according to at least half the people, I am sure it was supposed to have been. See what I mean?).

Here in Atlanta, one Jesus preacher husband put the smackdown on his preacher wife and she has since inferred or said outright, I didn’t follow closely enough to tell, that it wasn’t their first smackdown. Humph. But I have been reading our local newspaper’s open comment section where rival religious factions seem to be telling each other what for. Oh my goodness.

When I was growing up, Christians were known by their actions. And I don’t just mean the love thy neighbor, blah blah blah. I mean those were the people you felt deep embarrassment (not camaraderie) if a curse word slipped out when you with them. That is not my current experience.

When I think of a Christian, I think of my Grandma. I cannot remember Gram ever voluntarily attending a single church service on her own, but she always ever so politely attended every religious event of all of her grandchildren’s lives with as much respect as possible (you already read about half her grandkids, the other half went here. Yeah. Another whoo doggie.). That wasn’t what made my Grandma a true Christian to me.

Every day, she got up, got her children ready for school, her husband ready to run his own business out of their home, left for her 40 hour a week job in downtown Seattle, came home, took care of her children, fed her family, did the books and paperwork and office work every night for the employees of her husband’s business, prepared her home for the next work day, went to bed and got up and did it again. That wasn’t what made Grandma a true Christian.

What made my Grandma a Christian is that every night of my life after she finished cooking, for the all the years that he was alive, she sent over a plate of dinner for the widowed next door neighbor gentleman so that he would never go hungry.

I don’t even know how that tradition started, but it was long before I made the scene. I just know that it was as constant as the moon, as steady as the tide, as much a part of my vacations at Grandma’s as sleeping in the iron beds in her attic.

So, thinking on my childhood and on my Grandma, I know that there are basic values that can guide so much of what we do in life.

Based on my recent experiences online:

If you are a Jesus fan, please do not call out another Jesus fan for not following your private Jesus fan club rules and regulations closely enough. Mean. There is no need to be mean.

If you are a Jesus fan, do your conversations with other people always seem to degenerate into the re-ascension of anyone to the cross? How often do you hear things regress to “you attacked my belief in Jesus, how dare you? Because my belief in Jesus is my entire life. I don’t just visit church, I live my faith every day”. Stop and hear that question without your indignation.

Someone is questioning your belief in Jesus. Now is the time for action, not reaction. I was taught that “an answer, when mild, turns away rage”. I see people interested in scoring a point against their debate contestant, sometimes at any cost. Where did this bloodlust come from? I just left an online community that never offered a kind word when an insult would do.

If you find yourself in a receiving position of that bloodlust conversation, go with Eleanor Roosevelt, always a popular quote on online forums, who told us that “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. As hard as it is, sometimes it is best to turn the other cheek, even if that cheek happens to be on your tush as it walks out the door. After the ‘07 Summer of Sin (it is a tongue in cheek name for what happened in young Hollywood in the past few months, but I am going to stick with it), raising the bar (and my standard) doesn’t seem like such a negative concept any longer.

But back to the bloodlust arguments - I have seen (in more than one online discussion arena) this bloodlust referred to as honesty, as if giving it a benign name might gloss over the blood letting it has become. It masquerades as compassion, as if we have “love for one another” by ripping each other down in public.

No. Honesty is supporting people with honesty, not sarcasm. Honesty can be brutal if necessary, but brutal honesty calls for compassion. Sure you can do it without, but why? If you are really interested in building someone up with honesty, you can tell them what improvements you have for them between you. and them. Not you and the viewing public. That’s compassion. You and the viewing public? That’s called readership, and it’s fine too, but call it what it is. It is not friends and it is not family.

There are two ways to communicate with people; you can build them up or you can tear them down. And they remember.

I keep wondering what has happened to the value on kindness and adherence to common sayings like “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.

And while I recently chose the “not having anything nice to say” path to finish a conversation, I kept thinking about why I made that choice. I was told that the concept of questioning someone’s religious dedication was akin to attacking their children. I still think that statement is probably worth having to hold my tongue.

Adults choose their religion. Children are born into their families and their religions. Adults choose their behaviors. Children are taught by example. We do not look to children to exemplify Christian living, as they are forming their behaviors and their values and they are usually parroting what they see and hear at home. Adults choose their religion and their behaviors, children have them chosen for them.

If one person can say, “I thought she was a Christian”, it should drive you to action. There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.

Sphere: Related Content

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 6:07 pm and is filed under kat chat, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.