Neville wrote a lovely comment in response to my blog about the Destiny Church march, and he wrote about how he believes that there is “that of God in every person”, but believing that is hard some days.
I do believe that there is something sacred in each person. I use the word God with reluctance, because it is such a loaded term. I do believe that there is more to life than just the physical, measurable realm. And I believe that there is a great capacity for love, creativity, peace, within every one of us.
But I would find it seriously challenging to love my neighbour if Brian Tamaki or George W Bush lived over the fence.
It’s hard like “forgiveness” is hard.
It’s easy for folk who live in a virtual paradise, who have enough to eat, farms, nice homes, businesses etc., to preach about forgiveness. But, is it really fair to say that to people who live in hellholes – jobless, threatened by imminent death by starvation... Are they to forgive the fat, well-fed millions who voted for their starvation? Who voted for war? Who voted for prisons? Who voted for their perpetual repression?
This quote from Mumia Abu-Jamal is in a book called No Empty Phrases. Immediately following it is an extract from The Kairos Document 1985:
'Church Theology' takes 'reconciliation' as the key to the resolving of problems. On the face of it this may sound very Christian. But is it? The fallacy here is that 'Reconciliation' has been made into an absolute principle that must be applied in all cases of conflict or dissension.
But not all cases of conflict are the same. We can imagine a private quarrel between two people or two groups whose differences are based upon misunderstandings. In such cases it would be appropriate to talk and negotiate to sort out the misunderstandings and to reconcile the two sides.
But there are other conflicts in which one side is right and the other wrong. There are conflicts where one side is a fully armed and violent oppressor while the other side is defenseless and oppressed. There are conflicts that can only be described as the struggle between justice and injustice, good and evil, God and the devil. To speak of reconciling these two is not only a mistaken application of the Christian idea of reconciliation, it is a total betrayal of all that Christian faith has ever meant.
Nowhere in the Bible or in Christian tradition has it ever been suggested that we ought to try to reconcile good and evil, God and the devil. We are supposed to do away with evil, injustice, oppression and sin--not come to terms with it.
If only we could all agree on what is good and evil, justice and injustice. I will turn up at parliament on the 23rd because I feel it is unjust to say that queers are “bad people”, let alone to put those ideas into the mouths of children. But a bunch of people are going to turn up, honestly believing that they have every right to say those things, and believing that recognition of same sex relationships is “unjust”.
Of course these thoughts lead on to the conflict between freedom of speech, and protecting people from hate speeches… but that’s a dilemma I’m not going to be able to add much to at this time of night.
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In more personal news... I have gained 9kg in five months. This could be a combination of eating too much (comfort and stress eating), aided and abetted by a collection of medications which all have weight gain as a side effect (the Consumers’ Institute has an article that mentions one of my collection as being linked to not only weight gain, but congestive heart failure and liver failure to boot - neato). As well, my thyroid function has some abnormalities that need checking up on (my mum’s thyroid is out of whack so I wouldn’t be surprised).
Whatever the reasons, being fat is depressing. It’s not that I don’t agree with the principle of the “All women are beautiful” sticker on my desk. It’s just... I don’t feel healthy. It’s getting hard to drag myself up stairs. I can’t afford to buy a new wardrobe every couple of months. Also, I look gross. I don’t want to be skinny, I like having curves, but... right now I want to hide in bed so no one ever sees me.
Posted by Fionnaigh at August 13, 2004 12:59 AM