And now for something completely different!

I was reading a blog post (http://jackbootedliberal.com, check it out!) and in commenting on a certain post I realized how much I'd written! I said to myself "Self, you should post this on your LJ!" So, I am!

Just a note: I don't hate Christians, or anybody for that matter. Please don't think that I do :(

His post was pointing out a hypocrisy in that billboards that say things like "What part of 'Thou shalt not...' did you not understand" --God, are allowed to be put up but if someone puts up a billboard advertising an athiest group's website, then the billboard receives all kinds of media attention and is then usually forced down.

I’ve always disliked billboards like the second one for the reasons you’ve stated as well as my belief that they devalue the religion as a whole. I feel this way anytime I see a sign or bumper sticker that uses some clever-but-not-really pun or "cute" phrase to express one’s belief in Christianity (or any belief, for that matter). I feel that such things degrade what should be a profound and personal set of beliefs and values. Things like this also speak to the commercialization of Christianity, which is also degrading to the religion. T-shirts like “Satan is a NERD”, stickers like “REAL men love Jesus!” Really?On a similar note, I’ve always been puzzled why people need to use things like bracelets, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc. to express their beliefs. To me, all these things do is apply a label to the person wearing them and they allow themselves to more easily be judged and stereotyped. Is simply believing not enough? Does one need to stand on a soapbox with a megaphone shouting “This is what I believe!” in order to feel secure about themselves? I could speculate forever, but at the end of the day I guess I really just don’t know. I guess this ties into the human desire to feel like one is a part of something greater than oneself.

Perhaps this has to do with the fact that I am wholly against any form of organized, structured belief system. I prefer to build my own belief structure based on my experiences in life as well as by adapting bits and pieces from other structured belief systems. I think that prescribing oneself to a cookie cutter set of ideals (like saying "I'm a democrat through and through!" or "I'm a Romano-Orthodox Latter Day Christian, type B) severely restricts room for personal growth. This ties into my belief that no set of values should be absolute. If one has a conflict between their actions and their values, I believe that changing their values is just a valid an option as changing the actions.

I believe that many people will jump through burning hoops over a pit of lava filled with armored laser sharks instead of doing a bit of introspection and soul searching to resolve their inner conflicts with a set a beliefs that they subscribed themselves to. I think the problem lies in that people decide to live by these values anticipating that they will be the same person X years down the road and then think something is wrong with themselves when that's not the case.

However, I'm fully ready to admit that all of what I've just written is a heap of elephant feces. I'm beginning to think more and more like a certain disco funk communist brother of mine that essentially believes that everything is arbitrary. I'm making conjectures based on nothing but self-anecdotal evidence. I'm beginning to think more and more that it's not that I dislike other people embodying these qualities, but that I'm afraid of myself becoming this artificial "Unhappy Person (TM)" that I've created in my head.

-shrug-