mostly, it's proper placement

[earthbelow]

Okay, I get that there are some religious practices or cultural practices that everyone thinks are strange or even downright weird and kind of gross.

I also get that there are some of the same that people are going to disagree with.

This is fine, this is good, this is what makes the world go round.

But when did it become *cool* to bash certain religions? No, really. Because people that I know, people who I thought would be *slightly* more open minded than that have apparently taken to deciding that they're so sophisticated and so *superior* that they can discredit an entire faith.

There are people who can criticize certain individuals/practices in a respectful manner (see also, tptigger) without denouncing an entire religion or looking childish.

Then there are those who obviously can't.

It's one thing to say "hey, I don't want to hear about your God/Jesus/beliefs" in the supermarket, the bank, school. It's perfectly okay to be offended when someone gets in your space when you just want to walk into a store or a doctor's office or just across the street.

But when you go into a church or a synagogue or a religious meeting place or somewhere that is clearly a place where people of a certain faith go to do their thing and then act offended? It makes you look like you took the short bus coming in and an even shorter one is coming to pick you up in an hour.

You're on *their* turf, genius.

And even if you're there *just* as an observer or vistor for some reason, you're still in their house and if you didn't want to hear about that kind of thing, you shouldn't have gone. So if you do go, you really have no right to act offended.

Also, when you are in somebody else's house and a guest, try to act respectful. Try to act like you had what we in the south like to refer to as "home training".

And for those who don't know the term, here's the basic psychological upshot -

home training - n. a term denoting the practice of having been taught by one's parents/guardians/mentors how to behave in a manner consistent with having higher brain functioning, intelligence, and dignity. Also, the practice of raising your children in such a way that they do not offend, harm, or otherwise annoy other people in public places.

You may not believe in what someone else is doing or praying to, but they do. And they deserve to have a safe place to practice those beliefs without being ridiculed or observed like animals in a zoo. They are not there for your entertainment and going just to "see the show" is really more disgusting than anything they could do.

Because it's not a *show*. It's their faith. It's the thing that they hold on to when they have nothing else. It's the way they understand the terrible, beautiful, tragic nature of the world. It is how they understand Creation and Purpose and Destiny and God.

It is *not* a place for you to go and get your MST3K on because you think you're sooooooo clever. Which, by the way, you really, really *aren't*.

Sometimes, I think that people who bash others' religions and faiths are just jealous. Jealous of the ideals that some people hold on to, jealous of anyone who believes in anything fervently enough to let it become a part of themselves.

Because all some people have are the shallow things in life. They can be popular for a while, they can be stylish, they can act cool while they're young, they can have more money than others, they can have groups of friends who agree with them and get drunk with them and say what they want to hear and relationships that are mostly about sex and drama and nothing healthy.

And people like that get offended by the idea that clothes, cars, money, popularity, fashion, and being "cool" might not mean a damn thing.

People with faith think there's something much, much bigger than this world that we see and when you think of it like that, the "cool" (my tongue needs to be surgically removed from my cheek while I say this) kids just don't look so cool anymore.

And that's bound to make them feel just a little insecure and well, it's like having a bunch of post-breakup Cordelias running around. They get insecure, they start spitting venom because it's all they have in the end.



Moved from sage_theory for housekeeping and feel free to read if you didn't catch it first time around, but the other place is too crowded for non fen to get sorted out. Thus, the moving and tagging.