{"id":2244,"date":"2012-02-05T15:02:22","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T23:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=2244"},"modified":"2012-03-05T20:35:31","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T04:35:31","slug":"this-modern-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=2244","title":{"rendered":"This Modern Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Religion is a touchy subject in America. \u00a0Despite what both sides of the argument would like to think, it always has been. \u00a0The first\u00a0European\u00a0immigrants slipped away to America to escape religious persecution only to think up even more horrific dogma to enslave themselves with years later. \u00a0The burning of witches happened only 300 years ago. \u00a0More recently, African Americans were lynched in the American South based on interpretations of the old testament. \u00a0My parents were both alive when that happened, it wasn’t that long ago. \u00a0Terrifying events inspired by God aren’t a relic of our distant past. \u00a09\/11, anyone?<\/span><\/p>\n

The confusing thing for agnostics and atheists is that the very beliefs that lead to such gross acts are prospering even in a society that is more literate and has more access to scientific knowledge than ever before.<\/p>\n

So how does this happen? \u00a0“Get em’ young!<\/em><\/strong>“<\/p>\n

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As I was scrolling through the detritus on facebook one Sunday morning I happened to see a startling headline from a high school classmate. \u00a0Usually a phrase like “gave her life to the lord” is used to denote an untimely death. \u00a0Obviously upon a second look I realized she meant “pledged her life.” \u00a0However, the fact that pledging and giving life are interchangeable in the christian context is a transparent display of the control cults have over their members. \u00a0I don’t give my life to my boss, I pledge to work for him in exchange for money. \u00a0We don’t even give our lives to our spouses, we vow to honor our\u00a0commitment\u00a0to them. \u00a0 But when it comes to the LORD, we have to GIVE our lives away. \u00a0We are no longer independent, we are God’s property, and that means by proxy, the church’s.<\/p>\n

Do you think that is a concept that a five year old girl can even accurately\u00a0acknowledge, much less understand? Either God is an abstract concept that seems to make mommy and daddy happy, or God is as real as Santa Claus. \u00a0I certainly doubt Little Angel was given the bible, the quran, the talmud and a copy of God is Not Great and asked to choose for herself before “deciding” to “give her life to the LORD.”<\/p>\n

Think about the value this woman puts on her daughter giving her life to God and ask yourself if she’s paused to explain that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren’t real yet. \u00a0To her daughter they are one and the same. \u00a0Won’t this cause some cognitive dissonance later on? \u00a0Of course not, because Jesus is real, and we’re not raising some devil-worshiping\u00a0atheist here.<\/p>\n

oh, okay.<\/p>\n

These same parents will probably get uncomfortable in about seven years when the middle school starts testing Little Angel and asking her what colleges and careers she’d like to explore. \u00a0Or, better yet, when the 6th grade science teacher attempts to obtain parental permission to teach basic knowledge of human sexual reproduction. \u00a0“Isn’t she a little young for that?!”<\/p>\n

Too young to learn about how her life was created, not too young to give it.<\/p>\n

It would all be a harmless exercise if it wasn’t perfectly clear that indoctrination when young leads people back when they’re older and need something to guide them. \u00a0 It works really well, and I’d be really happy that those people found their feet again no matter what method they used to get there; except that the religious method enables those to escape their problems by ignoring them instead of confronting them.<\/p>\n

I’m depressed because I’m going to die –> Don’t worry, keep working at taco bell and stay married to that wife-beater and when you die you’ll go to heaven and it’ll be awesome!<\/p>\n

Even worse, instead of embracing others, religion subtly nudges its most vulnerable to become the most bigoted.<\/p>\n

Why is the world messed up? –> It’s those gays everywhere, god doesn’t like them – and it’s your job to tell them!<\/p>\n

Having gone through a minor bout of depression myself years ago I can say that religion isn’t a necessary fall-back to dig yourself out. \u00a0Escape just comes slower when you have to work for it. \u00a0My family and friends were there for me because they love me – not because we’re in the same special little club that loves something ELSE.<\/p>\n

I know this sounds highly critical of my facebook “friend” (and it is), but I’d like to make clear that I know she isn’t doing this to her daughter out of malice. \u00a0In fact, I have a few good memories of this particular woman being nice to me even though we existed in separate social circles that intentionally\u00a0rarely\u00a0overlapped. \u00a0This hasn’t been a critique of this one well-meaning, but misguided, woman. \u00a0It’s a rant about how prevelant this sort of thing is in our society and the long lasting damages this behavior produces.<\/p>\n

In 1986 some little girl with blond hair and blue eyes just like Little Angel gave her life to the lord. \u00a0When she needed an escape from her problems in 2005 she “turned to the lord” and the lord delivered her. \u00a0In 2008 she voted yes on Proposition 8 and told homosexuals they were lesser human beings than she was. \u00a0It wasn’t her choice, though. \u00a0She gave that to the LORD. \u00a0We have a mixed up world where corporations are fighting for rights of personhood, and religious Americans push hard to take rights away.<\/p>\n

If they can’t have them, nobody can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religion is a touchy subject in America. \u00a0Despite what both sides of the argument would like to think, it always has been. \u00a0The first\u00a0European\u00a0immigrants slipped away to America to escape religious persecution only to think up even more horrific dogma to enslave themselves with years later. \u00a0The burning of witches happened only 300 years ago. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2244"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions\/2261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}