If people interpret it in a bad way it tends to go badly for other people, though.
You, identifying as LGBTQ, are haram in the vast majority of strands of Christianity, and probably all the other major religions in the world. You could take the Rasputin tack that in order to be forgiven you need to sin first, but I’m pretty sure you have to be sorry for, like, being you, which I think is a little ridiculous. We’re taught that humans are made in god’s image, so is the existence of non-heteronormatives god’s image or people tempted in some capacity by [insert your Big Bad of choice here]?
Why should theologians be considered authorities in this anyway? They’re human beings, they aren’t privy to what god is or wants.
To give my story, and make an unnecessarily long point, I was raised Catholic. One of the things that turned me off about it was a school thing. It was a Catholic school but it was also a state school so they weren’t allowed to “discriminate” against non-Catholics who were in the catchment area. There was some kind of mass or something being held in the assembly/gym hall that everyone had to attend regardless of their own beliefs, and someone was singing a hymn on stage and afterward everyone applauded.
There was a proper, non-religious assembly later that week, in which the head teacher was all “you shouldn’t have applauded, it was a mass.” and I remember thinking, even though it wasn’t part of the “process” of a mass, someone was celebrating god with a god-given gift, and we weren’t in church, so why shouldn’t we acknowledge it, politely or otherwise? What’s the point of doing things in the same formulaic way every week, that doesn’t allow deviation?
That basically got me thinking very Protestant thoughts that the church dignitaries were all human beings, and thus capable of making mistakes, so who were they to dictate to me what my relationship should be with any deity, which then expanded to the entire Catholic Church structure up to the Pope, all of whom were appointed by fellow capable-of-making-errors human beings, and then to the Bible itself being written by fallible humans, back to Jesus himself, who may or may not have been actual god, but his followers were certainly humans, so were likely to make mistakes. Why am I being told to live my life by teachings that could have very easily been misinterpreted or mistranslated over the thousands of years since they were taught/written down, through however many different translations from original texts?
So yeah, when you say things like people interpreting scripture badly, or that rationality should be kept separate from spiritual matters, you are basically, from my perspective, justifying either not thinking about things enough and could misinterpret something - willfully or otherwise - or you are ceding decision making to some sort of “authority”, who is just as informed as you on a deity’s will; both can be used to justify interpreting things in a way that mistreating anyone is god’s will, which is wholly unacceptable.
Indeed, as an example, it seems like the vast majority of religions don’t allow women to serve as priests or the equivalent, which makes zero sense. Women are at least as capable as men at providing teaching and guidance. Even in strands of Christianity that do allow women in these positions,
there are still people within them that think they are somehow incapable of performing their duties and that you can’t accept the sacrament from them, or others ordained by them.
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Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion (Read 582133 times)