Religion, Relationships, and Wrongdoing

A few weeks after dad died, mom finally felt strong enough to go back to work. She asked me, repeatedly if I was okay with her leaving me alone in the apartment - and of course, what would you have expected me to say? That I'm absolutely hunky-dory and nothing's wrong with me at all? Of all the people to whom I would have have admitted to being a nervous wreck, the last person it would be would be my own mother. So of course I smiled and grinned and hurriedly shoved her out the door so I could get some peace and quiet.

And ironically enough, the apartment had seemed more peaceful and quiet than it ever had in 22 years, since the first day they brought me home crying and screaming from the hospital.


I'm getting somewhere, really

The first thing I did was to call up my friend "K". Quite simply, I needed her. Specifically, there, with me, in the apartment, just a warm body, a live human being who could convince that I wasn't really alone, even though I'd been more alone than I ever had been in all my life. I could have some comfort in seeing her there on the couch or on the floor. "No, I'm sorry, I can't." she told me. A few pleasantries later, she hung up and there I was, facing the silence alone.

Her parents wouldn't let her go, though I'm sure she wanted to; an unwritten Christian stigma about a man and a woman together in a room, alone even, who, *gasp!* aren't married. How scandalous! How sinful! I'm sure her parents had nightmarish visions of me, the dark-skinned emotionally distraught young man, ruled more by his hormones than by fear of God, taking advantage of their precious daughter in all sorts of ways.

(The fact that I was a Christian too, a _Catholic_ no less, who'd even been to their own daughter's church group of course wasn't something that was about to sway their minds, or even the fact that they'd met me at my own father's funeral, her father shaking my hands and telling me as he looked into my eyes about how tragic it was when he lost his parents.)

Of all of the examples I can think of, it's that one which comes to mind when I think about the total absurdity of being locked into a rigidly inflexible and completely absolute view of morality. That's not to say I don't think there's a place for absolutes in morality, but there certainly is a sense of scale in terms of what's really bad versus what really doesn't matter in terms of "badness". Letting a convicted child molester go free is really bad. Shooting an abortion doctor is really bad. Swindling millions of dollars from people who have placed their spiritual or financial trust in you is bad.

Letting your daughter stay overnight with one of her best Christian friends of three years in the same apartment where his dad died in bed? I imagine it's not really so much a bad thing. But that's the point, isn't it? Can you justify letting people suffer to maintain your moral views on things? Is it even a moral thing to consider?

Examples like that I think really underscore the problem that religions like Christianity have in today's society. I think many Christians don't really appreciate the need for change that's needed to cope with the way we live today, which is ironic because Christians are embedded in a society where change is the status quo. Attitudes towards relationships have come a long way in the centuries between the early Christian church and society today. Is it really unfair to call on Christianity to understand and accept this? I'm not even saying that we have to change as much or even change at at all - for example, I have no problem with "K"'s parents having such a strong prohibition against men and women being together, but why couldn't they have made even one exception for me, a fellow Christian? Do you think God would disapprove of her staying with me to help me through such a rough time as the loss of a parent?

Would God really care that two unmarried Christians of the opposite gender are sleeping in the same room together, when millions of other non-Christians are not only sleeping together, but having sex at that very moment, all over the world?

Something I've started to tell people more and more is how much I've grown to grow in and appreciate my own faith through all of the non-Christians I've met in my life; the Muslims, the Wiccans, the Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, and everyone in between - the unconditional friendship, love, and acceptance they've shown me is something that I always strive to emulate in my own life as a Christian, and in some fatalistic way I think that God has put them in my life to show me how to really *be* a better Christian.

...and the Christians, you ask? With the few obvious exceptions of course, the more Christians I meet the harder and harder it seems to be to keep on justifying staying in my faith. How ironic that it is my fellow Christians who have done more damage to my faith in God and Christ than a PZ Myers or Richard Dawkins ever could.