Watched a movie tonight about a German priest in World War 2 who ended up getting hung for protecting a few Jews and refusing to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler. He did a lot of writing during his life before this and one thing he wrote that was repeated in the movie was “True Christianity is sharing the pain of others”.
That’s the single most accurate summation of what Christianity is supposed to be about that I have ever heard.
Not that I have any love of it or any religion, because I don’t. The reality is that Christians are smug, self-satisfied sons of bitches who all look out for themselves first and are the first to point fingers of guilt at everyone else. Christians are hypocrites. But the teachings of Christianity as put forth by Jesus are of self-sacrifice, humility, generosity and not throwing the first stone. That’s the teachings, which are not necessarily the reality that you hear in church sermons or see in Christian behavior.
True Christianity is sharing the pain of others. Helping your brother carry his burden if you can, being a good neighbor, sharing and so forth. All that stuff that we might do for a family member if they haven’t pissed us off too much but would almost never do for a stranger because the fucker might turn out to be a psycho killer and murder us for being nice to him.
That line in the movie hit a note with me and made me think of my first cousin, who lives across the country in Michigan. He’s the son of my mother’s sister, first cousins are damn near half-brothers. We lived in the same town, not far apart. He had a sheltered life in a well off family, I had a very rough upbringing in a very dysfunctional family. So I found his email address a few weeks ago and wrote to him and he told me that he’s a devout Christian and it’s too bad I’m not, so we’ll have to wait to renew our friendship in Heaven.
He said he and his wife, who I never met, will always hold me with love in their hearts, after saying that we can’t be friends again because I’m not a Christian.
That’s too bad. I was hoping that he wasn’t some fanatical religious asshole but that’s what happens when people get old and death gets closer, it scares the shit out of them and they cling to the belief that they won’t really die when they die, that they’ll wake up in a paradise in the sky.
Personally it amazes me that otherwise intelligent people actually believe that fairy tale crap when it’s so obviously impossible and childish, but they do and won’t be happy until you say that you do, too.
Religion and politics are both nothing but opinions and lies that make life worse for all of us.
