Instead of playing one of the usual TV drinking games, may I humbly suggest that as you watch the big game today, particularly the post-game interviews, you decide that every time a player or coach invokes God as a factor behind their victorious* performance (as if God were somehow interested at all in the outcome of a game, and further was helping one team cheat), instead of taking a drink you’ll text “Haiti” to 90999 to send a $10 donation to the Red Cross (a secular group, despite the name).
After all, if there is a God, there’s no real way to undo the damage caused by people praising him as if he’s one of the good guys, but there is a way to help provide concrete relief for the damage he’s caused.
* Ever notice that the losers never chalk up their defeat to the almighty?
(pic — of the Indianapolis Colts, one of the teams playing today — via The Scrooge Report)
Last week’s post on atheist communities, and the ensuing discussion, alerted me to this discussion of Third Culture Kids. The key concept is that when you’re raised by parents of one culture in a community with another culture, you don’t really belong anywhere, and you never will.
And the same is true when you go from one culture to another, whether the movement is geographical or philosophical. I’m accustomed to that myself, since my family moved around a lot when I was a kid (I wasn’t an Army brat, but it was somewhat similar), and I got used to being the “new kid.”
In a way, most atheists are Third Culture Kids (or grownups) in a way, since most of us were brought up with a religion that we’ve now left behind. Of course, the upside to not fitting in is that you’re more free to stand out. You know you’re never going to be the best at getting people’s approval, so you’re more likely to choose life paths that don’t depend on other people’s approval. That’s a good recipe for turning out pretty cool.
This is a grotesque overgeneralization (and constrained by small sample size and possible confirmation bias), but most mixed-race people I’ve known, who grow up not really fitting in with either race they’re affiliated with, have been pretty cool people. I wonder if not feeling like you fit in is a price you pay for being cool, or perhaps if being cool is one of the possible compensations for not getting to feel like you fit in. Or maybe it’s that when the option of fitting in is just not on the table, the option of standing out becomes more appealing.
I was away this weekend (hanging out with an old college buddy from Wisconsin, who’s now living less than 50 miles away here in New Jersey), so I didn’t get a good chance to ponder good topics for a Sunday Sermon. But here’s a sermon from Mark Twain (sort of), by way of Hal Holbrook, by way of YouTube, by way of … my old college buddy, who sent it to me while I was in transit back to my part of Jersey! Sometimes the non-God works in mysterious ways.
“The Problem with Atheist Communities” makes some good points, but I think it underestimates how much atheists, just by virtue of being atheists in a theist-dominated society, actually have in common with each other.
It’s true that a group for atheists is kind of like a group for people who don’t collect stamps — or perhaps more accurately, a group for people who don’t have hobbies.
But if pretty much everyone had a hobby, and not having a hobby was considered weird and kind of scary, and if hobby clubs were one of the main sources of social interaction, it might very well make sense to have a club for people without hobbies.
There’s a lot of interesting back-and-forth between those who can’t quite wrap their minds around the concept, or who think it’s hypocritical, and those (usually those actually involved in music) who point out that they sing words they don’t mean all the time.
I have to say, I don’t see the problem. If you’re a grownup without kids (and thus nobody who needs to be lied to), is there something wrong with singing a song about Santa Claus during the holiday season? Is it immoral or hypocritical for Jonathan Coulton to cover Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” including the end line “Sincerely, L. Cohen”?
Music’s about a lot more than just lyrics, but lyrics make it so people can make music without learning an instrument and without just singing “la la la” on every song. Not every song’s lyrics are as brilliant as JoCo’s or TMBG’s, but just because “the lyrics are dodgy” doesn’t mean you should shut yourself away from the majesty of Bach’s B Minor Mass or the passion of Mozart’s Requiem or the joy of a really good choir singing about Jesus.
P.S. The video at the top of the post has a pretty good joke right around 2:45. It’s worth waiting for.
Sunlight streamed through what little was left of blown-out stained-glass windows as the Rev. Eric Toussaint preached to a small crowd of survivors. A rotting body lay in its main entrance.
“Why give thanks to God? Because we are here,” Toussaint said. “We say ‘Thank you God.’ What happened is the will of God. We are in the hands of God now.”
WTF?Is this guy really thanking God for wreaking destruction on his country? Or thanking God for wreaking destruction on people other than himself and his (remaining) parishioners? Talk about a dysfunctional relationship!
I realize religion is supposed to help you find silver linings amid clouds and such, but sometimes that’s just not going to happen, as CNN’s Campbell Brown found out when she tried to find a ray of hope amid the darkness:
He was nice enough to include Robertson’s toll-free number: 1 (800) 759-0700 — the phone call costs Pastor Pat (and ties up his phone lines), but not you.
Tim Minchin’s “Storm” is exactly the kind of “fun rant” my little Sunday Sermons aspire to be — bitingly irreverent, wickedly funny, and still making a valid and important point.
The 9-minute “beat poem” skewering not just religion but “spiritual” New Age hippies is a favorite of Minchin fans, especially the atheist/skeptic types. And now there’s a “movie” coming out, if you consider a full-on animated video of the song itself to count as a “movie.”
I’m not sure I do, but it’s nice to see someone giving the song some attention, although I’m not sure the treatment will be all that much better than the lyrical animation below.
Coming out gay vs. coming out atheist: Someone who’s done both says coming out as an atheist is harder in some ways than coming out as gay, but there are some interesting similarities, including that both groups benefit from having more people be “out.”
Does that mean there’s justification for “outing” people by revealing their status against their will? Does it mean those who are “out” are justified in criticizing those who are still “closeted”? I’m inclined to say no.
Everyone’s circumstances are different, and so is everyone’s personality. Maybe there are people who could (relatively) easily uncloset themselves, and who are hurting others like them by remaining silent. But I don’t think that’s a call someone else is qualified to make.
