The Guilt Trip

The more I think about it, nobody slipped gay marriage in the back door, people have been arguing about it for years. By the way, I never intended that "back door" statement to be a joke. It occurred to me while I was proof reading that it might be interpreted that way, but I decided not to change it. Like Pontius Pilate said, "What I have written, I have written." Anyway, as I have already stated, I don't think that gays should be persecuted, but you said "discrimination", which is not exactly the same thing. That's another word that they have changed the meaning of in our lifetimes. Time was that a person of discriminating taste was admired, but now it has come to mean denying somebody his due because of his race, gender, religion, or one of several other distinctions. Homosexuality was not one of those distinctions originally, but now it apparently is. I suppose this could go on indefinitely until even Bohemian swamp dwellers are added to the list, but I will vote against that too. I don't want to be part of any special interest group, I just want to be a regular guy. Why can't everybody be like me?

Of course everybody is not like me, in spite of the fact that you keep saying I have an ilk. There may be an ilk out there, and I may vote their way because I dislike them less than I dislike your ilk, but I don't consider myself to be one of them. My parents were joiners, like the folks in Elmhurst, and I was too for awhile but, the older I got, the less of a joiner I became. That's because every group I've ever been in has eventually done something I didn't like, so I got out. I don't join anything anymore because I know they will disappoint me sooner or later, and I don't want to spend what little time I have left on this earth being disappointed.

As I have said previously, I believe there is a difference between right and wrong, but I don't think I believe in sin anymore, if indeed I ever did. There are two definitions of sin that come to mind. One is living in a state of alienation from God, but I don't think that's the one you're talking about here. I think you mean something like breaking the rules. Of course different cultures live by different rules, so what might be sin in one culture may be deemed as virtue in another culture. in the Judeo-Christian culture, the purpose of sin seems to be to make you feel guilty, not guilty enough to prevent you from doing it in the first place, but guilty enough that you feel the need to be forgiven or redeemed after you do it.

The Jews used to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins, but they haven't done that since the last time their temple was destroyed in 70 AD, and I don't know what they do about it now. Other ancient cultures sacrificed animals on various mountain tops, but the Jews were only supposed to do their sacrificing in the temple in Jerusalem. I suppose the reasons for that were to provide job security for the priests and direct traffic to the shopkeepers of Jerusalem. Christians don't need to sacrifice because Jesus has already done that for them, all they've got to do is acknowledge it and repent of their sins. The Catholics have to go through a priest for that, but the Protestants can cut the red tape and go directly to God. Instead of priests, they have ministers who will help you find your way to God, but it's up to you to make the actual contact. At some point it occurred to me that God already knows what I have done and whether or not I'm sorry about it, so anything I say to Him on the matter will just be a redundant waste of time. Well, I suppose God has more time than I do, but that doesn't mean he should be frittering it away trying to make me feel better. That's my job.