When brought up in the Mormon faith, I tried to do everything “right”, I wanted to be as perfect a person as possible. It took a long time to realized that my nature is human. I am animal, controlled not controlling.
It is also human nature to help one another. I do little things. Quarter for the person who is short in line ahead of me, that’s self serving of course, but it is worse to do nothing, for everyone. Is it possible to give an act of charity without it being self serving? Sure, we get to talk about it with our friends and family, so it occupies our time and gives us something to do. Sure, it gives us a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction of giving back to the community, knowing that we have helped someone.
I ask myself, what does God have to do with this? I don’t need him/her as an excuse to help someone, to let someone out in traffic, or slow down to let someone in, to open a door for someone, or leave it open for the person behind me. This is just part of being “nice”, and that only has to do with what is inside me, inside how I feel about the human race, not how someone in a mythical throne in some palace in the sky, feels about me.
Oh CRAP! Some of you are thinking. Wes has gone over the edge.
The best example I can give is a friend of mine who works at a homeless foot clinic, tending to the feet of the homeless on weekends, or taking food to people who are sick or in need, and she gives a certain amount every month to feed the homeless in Africa, and conversationally fights for the downtrodden and those without – all the time. She stays up on world events, and talks to people, not to change them over to her view, but to show them the other side of the coin they have missed, so they can change their view themselves rationally.
This friend of mine is constantly asked what church she goes to because most of her conversations revolve around what she IS doing, and it always involves helping others. The sheer silence when she proclaims “I am an Atheist” is shocking. People do not understand the concept that “good” has nothing to do with believing in God. I respect her more than I can voice.
When first coming out of the closet, and finding my own way, away from my family, away from my church, away from the friends I knew from school and church – it took me a long time to equalize my heart with the fact that who I am as a person, has nothing to do with where I go to church, or if I ever go to church again. Finding out that the core of myself was not changed, because I am not what someone else wants me to be. It is okay to be gay, and still a caring, sharing and loving person.
I admire those with faith. Those with a strong passion for what they believe in, and I would never want to change the ones I love who feel as they do. There are an incredible amount of people of faith, who do amazing things. If it were not for little old ladies at plant sales in New Hampshire, with their baked goods and yard sales raising money for a new steeple, I would have had some very boring weekends.
It is those who say one thing, and do another who I scorn. Those who preach “help your fellow man” but they are in fact only helping themselves. After 2000 years, why has no one figured out that straight people have gay kids? Preachers, have the “worst” kids? And preachers make the largest salaries? With all the lies in this world, why is it easy to follow what someone in power says, rather than looking for the reason behind it?
Show me someone who lives off bread and fish, who works with Lepers and the blind. Not when he says “follow me”, but I emulate good when I see it and hopefully someone else does the same from me. Isn’t that how the world really works?
In this very busy world, it is eat or be eaten – Good acts are scoffed at as weakness. I have always been weak, and will always remain so. I can never be as good as someone else, I can only be as good as I am and, I am good with that.
http://habitatta.org/default.aspx – Anyone want to join up with me?
PS. Don’t pay ANY attention to me. There is a man behind the curtain pushing my buttons. If only I can reach inside and dislodge him..
wesleycarter 