In case I haven't fully offended people, and there are those who are still on the fence, I'm not censoring myself this year. And with that, I give you my all-time favorite Christmas song that I look forward to every single year. I will watch this video and listen to this song a hundred times before the end of the year.
Now, I'm not religious by any stretch of the imagination, and I'll probably be swimming in a lake of fire in the afterlife. Or I'll be reborn as a futuristic slave. Or maybe both, who knows. (As long as it's not really 72 virgins. Yikes, could you even imagine having to teach 72 people how to have sex?!) I don't usually go all religious on folks, and to be honest, I don't even think my own beliefs will match up with any known religions nowadays. But I do wanna take a minute to touch a bit on this.
I read a post today by my dear friend Michala, from Bite My Book, and it was regarding how we are all desensitized by movies, tv, books, etc while we look down our noses at suicide bombers and those who do much worse for their religion than we do for our own entertainment. I realized something while reading that.
She is absolutely right.
We are hypocrites, all of us. We pray to our respective deities, be it God and Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu and Shiva, or seventeen different gods and goddesses-whatever-for salvation, redemption, peace, love, understanding, the winning lottery numbers, whatever. Some folks do things in the name of their religion because it's what they've been taught all their lives. Like, for example, Christians have been conditioned to believe that if they don't go to church every Sunday, give a percentage of their earnings to the church, and follow the teachings of a book written thousands and thousands of years ago, or else they're threatened with the fear of eternal damnation. Jehovah's Witnesses are trained to believe they have to witness to every single person they come in contact with to try and save as many souls as possible. Think really hard about the things we're conditioned to do and to believe. Yet we criticize other religions because they do things for their religion that they are conditioned to do and to believe.
But the biggest problem is not the beliefs themselves, but the conditioning we've all fallen victim to. No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. No, I'm not telling you to go buck wild and commit all kinds of sins or anything stupid like that. I'm simply saying open your eyes and look. REALLY look at everything you say, do, the way you act, what you believe. Become your own person. Believe what you believe because you believe it, not because a book tells you it's right. Not because your parents or the church or Mel Gibson tell you it's right. Because until you understand yourself, you can't possibly understand other religions and other people. You have no room to criticize another's religion when you're no better than the ones you criticize.
There you have it. My religious post of the season. And I'm going to get some hate mail on this one, but that's fine. Send me hate mail. Because at least that means you read the post, and maybe-just maybe-it'll seep in to your subconscious and affect you on a level that you won't even be aware of. Maybe it'll do some good. Maybe you'll always be a hypocritical bigot who can't see past their own blindness.
You still read my post.
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