"But You Swear You Loved Me More..."

Right.

I'm going to be an ass, I know I am, but--oh, for heaven's sake. I'd just like to say--I'd like to say.

I'm a Christian. I'm certainly a Christian. And one of the things I believe as a Christian is that loving thy neighbour means not attacking thy neighbour with religious pamphlets, or hostility, or any kind of bias or prejudice. I don't want to convert anybody. I don't believe that's what the point of Christianity is. The point is to love.

I just want to know, am I the only Christian who can coexist peacefully with Jews and Muslims and agnostics and atheists and Catholics? Why do we go around shouting at people and hurting people and trying to convert people and getting offended over the tiniest little things and assuming we're some sort of oppressed minority and we have therefore to protect our values like whoa crazy or the evil pagans will take over the world? Why do we fuss about people demonstrating their own religions? Why to we get so upset at people trying not to offend other people by assuming that not everyone in the world is Christian?

I'm just getting a little exasperated with us. Can't we stop throwing ourselves about self-righteously and concentrate on the much more important things?

It's just--you'll notice that the ten commandments say thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt respect--they don't say thou shalt convert. They really don't. Whatever else God's doing in the Old Testament, he's not making a priority over everybody having the same religion. He says, of course, that thou shalt have no other Gods--but really, I think that's sort of a way of saying Hello, don't say you belong to this religion and then go off and participate in that one.

That makes sense, doesn't it?

Also, to-day's Old Testament reading was from Genesis, reminding me once again of why I hate the Old Testament. The Abraham and Isaac passage is almost my very least favourite. But our New Testament reading was from Paul's letters to the Romans, and it was pretty; and so were our hymns. We're a bit off concentrating on How dreadful we are and a little more in to How we shall give ourselves to Thee, o God, which I think is better, at least I do.

And now I will stop being stupid and post the real reason for my post, which is that--

( I painted chalk pictures yesterday! )

"I Know You'll Understand..."

For Miss Zara.