I'll Be Hating Religion for Lent

Every year it happens and every year I can't believe it. People you never believe would do so start lining up to get ashes swabbed on their head and making "resolutions" to refrain from doing things for several weeks for the Catholic ritual of Lent. It's like when you find out someone cool is ... well, participating in something you consider very, very uncool. Which brings some very uncomfortable feeling to the forefront.

Some people say they're participating in Lent for the challenge of giving something up and staying away from it. That's as bad as people going to church for loving support of community through Jesus. More over, a pair of gays getting married in a church that honors a religion that states they are going to hell. You do not participate in an organization that you disprove of. If you do not approve of priests getting away with rape, the banishing of persons for sexual preference or centuries worth of lies to control the populace then you shouldn't give them the time of day. Isn't that hypocritical? I would not participate in any Christian religion because I firmly believe it ruins more lives than it saves. That's enough reason for me. It didn't even have to get to the way they conduct business or rape your children to make up my mind.

For me it's more of a difficult decision to keep liking these people than wondering why they have decided to do the things they're doing. I've always been out there with people and I happen to like knowing everyone. Plus ... people just freaking adore me. This fills my world with a very broad spectrum of people. And yet it still twists my mind into a billion pieces when I find out someone I thought of as pure awesome is a conservative-thinking Sarah-Palin-Supporting Catholic-church-on-Sunday-going individual!

How does that happen and how should I feel about it? I don't know if I'll ever have the right answer. There is no conclusion to thought of understanding how you can love someone and absolutely hate their views and choices. To most this is easy to deal with because you may feel that people are people and are allowed to get behind some pretty stupid business. To you it may feel like a matter of personal opinion and some sort of diversity. But you need to understand to me it's as drastic a comparison as finding out your best friend is Adolf Hitler. Not the same thing? I don't think so. Killing Jews is bad, but so is supporting an organization who has made gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people (to name a few) be outcast, murdered and generally treated like shit.

Would you support the KKK if they presented you with a challenge to lay off chocolate or saying "the F word" for a month? Probably not and probably because you don't agree with the whole bothersome "black people thing" going on in their organization.

As much as I'd like to continue thinking people participating in religion are as cool as I thought they were, I can't. I can still agree that they are "nice people." You can be a nice person outside of your affiliations but quite frankly we are our affiliations! A nice girl who knits is a knitter. She's not just a nice girl. She's a knitting nice girl. I am an artist and a writer. If people forgive the things I say and choose to like me detached from everything I choose to be a part of then they may seriously be misguided in that decision.

There comes a time when we have to tell people what they are doing is not helping. Just because you're nice and maybe even awesome is not going to stop me from asking why the hell are smearing ashes on your head in support an organization of old men who have enslaved people for over 2,000 years? That and think just a little bit less of you for your decisions to do so.