Sunday, February 23, 2014

Think For Yourself

When I come across something ridiculous, I often have the impulse to write about it.  Unfortunately, that impulse is rarely translated into action, mostly because of time constraints.  There are also times where I get close to finishing a post, but just don't feel good enough about it and let it go.  For example, there is an unfinished post about the Michigan fan who held up the Lizzy Seeberg sign on Gameday that's just begging to see the light of day, but never will.  I think the main issue for most of these failed posts is a lack of knowledge on my part:  I feel that I don't know enough about certain issues to speak with authority on them.  Thus, I generally stick to sports, TV, and the occasional autobiographical indulgence (like this paragraph!)

All that said, I came across a couple of tweets this week (on the same day) that reinforced perhaps my biggest worry about modern organized religion.  Since I think this point is important, and I think I can convey it efficiently and effectively, here we go.

First off, here is the first tweet:


And here is the second tweet:


For those who didn't click the links, let me provide a one sentence summary of each.  The first link is from a fellow Blogger user who sees anti-Christian messaging in the Disney movie Frozen.  To quote:

"The words to "Let it Go" are clearly not Christian-values friendly, by any stretch of the imagination, when understood and heard. This is not an innocent song, with a catchy tune. It is rebellious. It mocks moral absolutes. It is careless. It is unaccountable. It is anti-obedience. It is regardless. It is selfish."

The second link details the problems with Patrick Henry College, and how a focus on strict obedience to their version of Christian principles overtakes almost everything else, including the safety and well-being of its female students.

There is a lot of stuff going on in those two links, so I won't touch on it all (I could give the first link an FJM treatment if I really wanted to, but I won't).  The core issue that both of these posts touch on is that free thought and rebellion seem to be viewed as anti-Christian principles.  In the first article, the author point blank says that a couple of times.  In the second article, the uniformity and unrelenting nature of the school seem to pervade any hope of the subjects of the article becoming fully-functioning adults.  It seems clear that the desire for power and control of the administrators supersedes the ability to behave like an actual Christian towards the young adults trusted to their care.

In the end, this highlights what has always been my main concern of organized religion:  The human thirst for absolute power corrupts the underlying message, which is normally a good one of love and caring.  When we encourage young people to merely be obedient to the rules in place and not think for themselves, it makes waste of the gift of intelligence (which coincidentally, is something religious people generally believe comes from God). What is even worse is that this kind of upbringing can lead to situations like the one described in the second article, where young people who are trying to deal with repressed feelings make mistakes that they never intended to make.  There is much wisdom in the collective products of religion, whether it be the Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Bhagavad Gita, but like all products of humans, they are not perfect.  If we allow ourselves and our children to realize this and "rebel" against the status quo by thinking for ourselves/themselves, then we can live a life that is both Christian and fulfilling.


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