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Me Tarzan. You Persecution.

   It dawns on me, this might be appropriate: 
Madonna - what it feels like [for a girl]

As 2012 finally admitted to being old and ridiculous, I stayed in my apartment trying not to succumb to “that feeling” again. I wasn’t at the home of friends [as was the plan]; I wasn’t pulling my crush aside and saying “hey, I like you and… I think we should go out because…  well because.”; and I certainly was not in Church for the Old Year’s Night Service; a special night for the Heathens who, maybe because of tradition or something more noble, flock to the pews so as to start the New Year “right”. Right.

I shouldn’t say I wasn’t in Church. I was. I watched it online. There I saw the following and it opened an interesting thought to my mind:

A good man [an actual good – not sarcasticly good] gave a testimony about his life. See, in times before, he practiced another Religion but he soon felt that this wasn’t for him. He needed more. He needed to feel whole. He converted to Christianity. But for a time, he couldn’t tell his family who, were still practicing the religion of his birth. He said that for a couple of months, he would change his clothes in his car – telling them he was going some place else when REALLY, he was going to church. I believe, he eventually told them. I don’t think it may have gone all too well but he is living his new life, happy, as a Christian.

I can’t remember if it was rage I felt or sadness or just “well, how ‘bout that” but I do know that I was struck by a new thought: how similar to the gay experience, religion is. Shun. Run away from this post now. But if you dare stay, look at it intelligently and you’ll see.

He had to hide who he was because his family… his world… wouldn’t understand.
He had to change in his car – essentially sneak out – to go where he belonged.
He did this because he believed in a better way and I’m inferring that he did it because he wanted to be whole.

Funny. You would think that a group who, has for years, endured religious persecution at the hands of the ignorant, would not be the ones doling out social persecution on the world. To this day, there are countries [and not just the perceived back-water ones either] who burn, beat up and 
utterly humiliate those who move from the normal/accepted societal religious belief system to another; there are people who have held mock funerals for loved ones who have moved from faith to Faith because now… they are dead to them. This is real. These things happen. ARE happening. I’m not even talking strictly Christianity either. For we [Christians] are well known for the Crusades and the Inquisition and Galileo.We have oft time been the loud speaker, using Biblical knowledge for our own ends – as many other religious groups do.

The dial goes around the circle and here we are again – religious persecution is now social
persecution. But I guess that is fair as long as you know what you are doing is “right”. Right. I know what your argument may be but here mine: ignorance leads to war, empathy/understanding leads to more knowledge. Understanding does not mean you have to like it. It just means you get it. The same way, you get the pain of the new convert who is now the outcast but has decided to stay on the path, so that he may be happy and free and whole.

Pax

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