Poop Shute

I am not religious

It often frustrates me to see religious people use their beliefs as an excuse to judge, invade, persecute, degrade, slander, rape, murder, terrorize, etc etc.

I recently called out a friend on doing a thing from that list. To me. After roughly seven years of loyal friendship he made some very heavy-handed judgments about me based on one conversation. As if a small handful of unfortunately misunderstood words can undo a sea of shared experience. At first I tried using reason to appeal to him. I tried reason good and hard. He would not listen to reason, so I lost my cool. I will admit that in my anger and hurt over the situation I used... colorful language, but I spoke the truth. He took great offence and said he'd prefer not to see or hear from me again.

I do not bare him or his religion any malice. In fact if christians actually followed the teachings of Jesus, I think the world would be a better place. Wonderful maxims like "hate the sin, but love the sinner" and "judge not, lest ye be judged" get overlooked all to often in favor of cynicism and hate.

Jesus preached forgiveness and love. It pains me that so many "christians" would rather do quite the opposite.

An Extremely Related Tangent

At the ripe old age of twenty-five I'm beginning to see why so few people stay friends with the ones they knew when they were young. I've come up with a theory. I think it's a two-pronged attack by Life. Ah, Life. And I mean the one with a capital "L" and a heart of pure black.

Prong one: you've got the inescapable fact that we all change as we grow older. Some of us will change careers. Some of us will end up in relationships that rearrange our priorities. Some of us will find and/or lose their faith. The fact of the matter is our minds are continuing to grow and change structurally and chemically throughout our entire lives. Through this process some of us will grow together, but the majority of us seem to grow apart.

Prong two: there seems to be a gradual homogenization within social circles. After a group has been a group for just so long, the real differences (and I mean the real ones, the deeply ingrained ones that are defining personal characteristics in each person) really begin to stick out. A sharp corner of fundamental zealotry here, or a rough edge of radical liberalism there and you've got yourself some friction. Social friction. Like sandpaper, it will eventually smooth itself out, but these defining edges and corners of each of us will not. So, in general, what gives in then to restore equilibrium? People leave the group. It's inevitable. Most of us can only rub ourselves raw so many times before we just give up.

End Tangent

This theory is something I've been kicking around for some time. I am seeing now that this event in my life may be one or both prongs at work. It's funny how being keenly aware of the "why" behind something sh;tty doesn't comfort one at all.

Not even a little.