A Couple of Thoughts Re: Proselytism

As of the drafting of this post, AT&T is still blocking access to the servers my website is hosted on. Which may result in some DRASTIC ACTION if it’s not resolved soon, seeing as how AT&T is my home internet provider and not being able to access my own website from home is unacceptable.

Last night, one of my friends pointed me to a recent Oatmeal comic. I like the Oatmeal. The comics on cats are hilarious and disturbing. The comic he recently did about running was hilarious and inspiring. But I knew I was on shaky ground when I saw the comic’s title, which was “How to Suck at Your Religion”.

And it was pretty much what I expected – a condescending view of religion and religious people in general, with specific call-outs to creationists, Catholics, and Mormons.

Look, people who know me, or have read the sidebar on my blog –> know that I’m LDS. And of course, the LDS church gets brought in for a poke in the ribs and a bit of a giggle. Which is fine. I mean, The Book of Mormon musical is on tour around the US right now. People get nervous about those nice young men in their clean white shirts and black name tags. I get that. I did that for two years myself in the Philippines.

But it’s an easy joke, and the bit that followed in which an alternate universe pair of rabbis are throwing a Torah at someone yelling about matzah balls wasn’t funny so much as it was mean.

So, here’s what I have to say about evangelism.

If I have something that I think is really great, cool, neat, good, wonderful, interesting, special, etc., then I naturally want to share it with other people. And if it’s my deep and abiding newfound love for Pacific Rim, everyone is pretty much okay with that. They accept my geeking out about a movie that runs a little over two hours and involves giant robots beating the ever-living tar out of giant monsters.

But if I start to geek out about something else that’s really great, cool, neat, good, wonderful, interesting, special – like, say, my faith – then suddenly it’s a step over the line? What the heck?

One of those is going to entertain you for a couple hours. The other hopefully helps you live a better life. But one of those is acceptable and the other isn’t.

My faith helps me define who I am and how I interact with the world. It gives me comfort when things are going badly and helps keep me humble when things are going great. It helps me treat my family better. It gives me standards of excellence for my external and internal behavior. It gives me hope.

But apparently according to some people, wanting to share that with others is just a step over the line. Espousing a view in which everyone on Earth is, not just figuratively, but literally brothers and sisters with a responsibility to treat each other well? Not welcome. But bring on the giant robots. Elbow Rocket! Did you see the Elbow Rocket!?

Right.

And it’s the last little bit of the comic that really kind of got to me, where the writer of the Oatmeal allows that if your religion brings you peace, helps you be better, blah blah blah, then fine, go right on living your religion… just keep it to yourself.

Which just goes to show you that Christians still don’t have the market cornered on self-righteousness. (Some of us are working on that. Sorry about that.)

Even in a (suuuper condescendingly) joking manner, implying that someone needs your permission to live their faith is pretty ballsy.

And it’s perfectly all right for a webcomic artist to espouse his point of view (in the form of a usually hilarious webcomic) in which he says it’s not all right for me to espouse my point of view (by actually going out and talking to people, or maybe sharing things here on my blog)?

Okay then.

Look, it’s a webcomic. It’s not the end of the world. And after I write this, I will head back over to the Oatmeal to read more about cats and mantis shrimp. The total impact this one strip is going to have on my life and the way I live is going to be vanishingly small. But it’s a part of the culture in which I live, and people I know and appreciate are sharing it, so… I kind of feel like I have to address it.

For which I blame C.S. Lewis. That jerk.

I have set a goal of blogging at least 500 words a day for 40 consecutive days. (Sundays excepted) This is day six. I will see you here again tomorrow.