Let me then share with you my experience with Christians. I have studied the Bible and now and then I still do. Not because I want a religion or a spiritual path, but because our society's morals are very inspired by religious rules, specifically the big world religions. I wanted to understand how I could manage to function (respecting) living with these rules and if I can accept them as a person with humanistic values. You can say I read it all in the name of policy; I wanted to learn about the Christian politics,because I've been treated after them now and then. Religion is a very sensitive subject, because it's meant to be very personal. However I think it's fear to say that Christians are not the once that have a reputation of sharing a lot of respect to other religions. In a lot of ways, a lot of religions, just like Christianity and Islam as well; turn out in the end to be more about policy; how you treat people and how your suppose to live together in a society than about anything else. It's a great and wonderful and a very special thing to manage to not treat others with your belief,I think it's something we all need to strive for in ourselves when it comes to respecting a community as a whole.Cause like they say; everything you do to others, will eventually come back to you, in some way.
Had a problem with religious people once... ahem, or lets say the Christians when I went to a Christian folk high school for a year, about four years ago. I went there because I thought they had some interesting classes and not for religious reasons. Didn't know it was going to be like that, otherwise I wouldn't have signed up for it, it really sucked and I didn't fit in there at all. I asked if I could do something else when they had Christian choir singing lessons, I managed to "skip" them in a acceptable way for the reason that I had to go to a doctors appointment every week, of course it was a white lie, cause doctor or not; I could have seen the doctor after school. But you know, if your not in with the religion it feels very wrong to start singing hallelujah songs. I think it's something a Christian with respect for every humane individual should understand, but I guess the feeling of that there really were no Christians with that kind of insight or feeling for other peoples feelings, or with the ability to put themselves in someone else's shoes made me lie about my true reasons to not spend as much time as I could have with the environment... Always been someone that thought it was important to stand up for myself,so when I didn't feel good about buying the school T-shirt with a cross on (I mean I could have my own T-shirts with my own belief messages written on; to fly around and commercialise, if I wanted to show what I stood for) and they found out about my little unchristian ways, listening to music they didn't like, reading books they didn't like and generally being a person they didn't really dare to get to know.
You could say I didn't really meet a lot of friends there, it was like an unwritten/unspoken rule; you buy the shirt and then you can hang with us! You know it was a lot of people that I know didn't have any deep feelings for the religion but they bought the shirt just to fit in. I just hate that really, cause I mean If we were in a war,and your friends and you were on the side that had few supporters, in other words you had to lose; it means a lot of your friends would turn themselves over to the other side, the side that would undoubtedly win. That's really how I felt when I went there in the morning. For a lot of people it could easily end up being a very lonely battle, and sometimes in the end you start wondering if it was really worth it; living in a constant war zone, where you cant even sit down by a table together, eat and leave the weapons alone for 5 minutes. That's not really a good way of life or getting along.
When I first got there; I just thought; Hey, I'm a nice person, I dont steal and I dont lie, I like to treat people with respect in a mature manner, yeah, I can eat with these people, even thou we dont always share the same ideas, we'll work it out somehow, it would be ok for me and that's why I decided to stay at the school. Because personally I didn't have much experience with these kind of people before, I was raised with a very open minded form of Evangelical Lutheran Christianity by mum, a very individual and nice form of Christianity that would remind you more of humanism I guess, we never went to church or anything and when I decided to give it up; no one in the family really made a fuss about it. Personally I think it's more important representing what you do, instead of representing a name, if you know what I mean? Cause a lot of people are more what they do, than what they say they do.
Anyway, the experience with this other Christian environment at this school was not a very good one, and you could say it wouldn't make a really good commercial on Christianity as I think It made me kind of anti-Christian instead, I think it's something these kind of environments should take upon themselves, as a lot of people leave them with the feeling of being unfairly treated. I think I learned a lot of those kind of environments anyway, not about a god, but very much about people I think. And to me that's more important really, I wasn't looking for god in the first place, I was looking for friends or at least some human contact. It's interesting to know how people react differently to environments. Anyway, I think it's important to try to see things from a watchers point of view, I mean when someone "attacked" me for very few reasons at this school; In the end I didn't want it to be my battle (even thou it had to be in a lot of ways), because I think very often it says more about Christians than they say about the once they attack. Cause I mean I never had a problem with how they dressed, what they preached and what kind of god they had, I like to think I always tried to search for a peaceful outcome, if a friend of me would say to me; I'm a new-born Christian! I would say; well, if that's what you feel I'm happy for you... If it was up to me we would still be good friends...
I personally think policy and religion should be two different things; cause policy is about how you treat other people and how you should live together in a positive community, we need to work it out together, as a whole right?. Religion however is something individual, I mean you can easily find a person's personality in it's religion, I mean I've meet really nice and open minded Christians and then I've meet really ignorant Christians, how can that be when they share the same religion? It seems to me people tend to shape the religion after their personality. It could be difficult meeting the same god in so many different personalities, I mean sometimes I found Jesus to be the one that died for everyone, not just the once that can smile about it like they are on some kind of drug, dress themselves in crosses and go to church every Sunday, but for every lost, confused and for the happy intellectual atheist too, even for the pagans. I found it to be like that, but not really; cause other times I found Jesus to be someone that raised himself from the witches after dying as one, crowned himself as the ultimate saviour of all those that wanted to have people like himself in the grave in the first place. He didn't bring much changes into the world as we know it, I mean a martyr seem to be someone that often die more for his own egoism, than for the people. The once that truly make positive differences are those that manage to stick around and not only speak for themselves, but for a people...
When I read the ten commandments back then at this school and thought about it, I came to the conclusion that it was a few things in them I could agree with, things I believed in from before; as a humanist. Things you dont need a book, but experiences and insight to understand the value of. However a lot of times it seems a lot of Christians dont know what they mean, so too be a good Christian doesn't necessarily mean your a good human being, despite their all so good morally rules; cause a lot of times it's all about wearing the T-shirt you know.
Defending ourselves is an important thing, but like I said; sometimes I dont even think they deserve a battle, cause by treating them the same way, or "meet with them at the battlefield" it can make yourself look just as ignorant as them, cause if it's someone that really need to be fighting an everlasting battle with themselves alone; it's those that are being ignorant. In the end we can only sit back and hope that they treat themselves with the same ignorant rules as they treated us with, cause nobody deserve their violent rules more than themselves really, they are the only once that should have to live with it every day for the rest of their life...
...Past experiences makes us act different, you have to know where people come from to understand who they are. If you should feel offended by what I wrote here, if you feel that I'm being ignorant, it's probably because I've been treated with ignorance. What I'm trying to say is; I dont wish to discuss religious matters with Christians or Muslims, we have totally different point of views and the world is too war like from before... Hope we can pass each other in peace.
