Catseye
September 3, 2003, 11:26 AM
(unsure if this is the right forum - mods, feel free to move)
I checked my inbox today after neglecting it for a while, and a close friend sent me that forward about Billy Graham's daughter and September 11th. I've had rather a bad day, and while I've let a couple of annoying forwards from her go without commenting in the past, I replied to this one and told her what I thought about it.
What's odd, though, is that she isn't a fundamentalist Christian, and she's not American - we're both British. She's a liberal Christian, I'm an agnostic, and I never expected to get this kind of e-mail from her. I'm hoping she hit 'forward' after seeing the word God in the first couple of lines, without really reading it, but it puzzled me even so.
If anyone's got any advice about handling this situation, along the lines of why liberal Christians would forward this kind of stuff, or what kind of reply to expect from someone who did, I'd appreciate it. Of course, any corrections to my own reply or verbal smacks around the head for replying straight off after a really bad day without calming down first would also be appreciated ;)
I've enclosed her original e-mail, for anyone who hasn't yet seen it or wishes another chance to shriek and throw things at the monitor.
---------------------
Her e-mail:
In light of the many perversions and jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke, it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (Regarding the attacks on Sept. 11).
Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.
Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school ... the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbour as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.
Then someone said teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave. The school administrators said no faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave because we don't want any bad publicity, and we surely don't want to be sued (there's a big difference between disciplining, touching, beating, smacking, humiliating, kicking, etc.). And we said OK.
Then someone said, let's let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won't even have to tell their parents. And we said OK.
Then some wise school board member said, since boys will be boys and they're going to do it anyway, let's give our sons all the condoms they want so they can have all the fun they desire, and we won't have to tell their parents they got them at school. And we said OK.
Then some of our top elected officials said it doesn't matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs. Agreeing with them, we said it doesn't matter to me what anyone, including the President, does in private as long as I have a job and the economy is good.
Then someone said let's print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said OK.
And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then further again by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK, they're entitled to free speech.
Then the entertainment industry said, let's make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence, and illicit sex. Let's record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes. And we said it's just entertainment, it has no adverse effect, nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.
Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.
Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in!
-----------------
My reply:
Dear God, woman. Did you actually read this?
Quite apart from the rather sick theology implied in any god that could say 'Hey, kids aren't reciting the Lord's Prayer? I'll lob a few planes at you and kill a couple of thousand people! Ha ha ha!' - hardly consistent with even the Old Testament (Job, for example), never mind the New - it's full of offensive inaccuracies, and Billy Graham's daughter didn't say it. (What she did say can be found on the ever-reliable Snopes - http://www.snopes.com/rumors/wheregod.htm.)
As to why it's offensive and inaccurate, it's a direct response to part of the American constitution. Their First Amendment forbids the government from establishing one religion over another. It doesn't mean religion is banned, it doesn't mean Christians are persecuted, it means every religion gets equal treatment in the eyes of the law. Some Americans, of the fundamentalist Christian variety, don't approve of this, and they'd rather their religion got (illegal) preferential treatment over everybody else. Comments about God and the Bible being 'banned' from schools refer to court decisions forbidding schools from telling children to recite the Lord's Prayer or read the Bible. Children can do whatever they want in their free time, including pray or read the Bible - the school, however, isn't allowed to force them to.
Court decisions like those haven't gone down too well among the fundamentalist Christian population in the US. They don't see getting equal treatment in the eyes of the law with everybody else as fair - they want schools to teach fundamentalist Christianity as fact, the government to promote it, and every other religion to be thrown out of the window. When this doesn't happen, they see themselves as being persecuted. They talk about how 'public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace', as the e-mail mentioned. There are plenty of people out there, Christians included, who truly are persecuted. American fundamentalists are not among them.
Evolution is rarely taught in American schools in most Southern states, as fundamentalist Christians object to it; there's an on-again off-again campaign in a lot of those states for the 'Biblical account of six-day creation' to be given equal teaching time if evolution is taught at all. The US government recently withdrew all foreign aid for all organisations that provided abortions to poor women, no matter what else those organisations did, or how many people they fed and helped, because of pressure from the 'Religious Right'. These people are conservative to a level we don't even have over here, and they have a lot of lobbying power for issues like that. They think America is God's own country, and should be supported over and above the rest of the world. They think welfare and support programs for poor people should be abolished. They think the death penalty should be introduced for more and more crimes, and appeal times reduced. Large groups of people have lobbied for all of these things, and they quite often get their way. Some of them even support people who bomb abortion clinics and kill people. And they think all that should be done because that's what God wants, and otherwise God will 'withdraw His protection' from the US and let terrorists attack them.
America has its problems. The government treating all religions equally isn't one of them, and neither are the other things mentioned - kids getting sex education in schools (shock! horror!), violent TV programmes, or whatever President Clinton did in his spare time. You'll notice the e-mail talks a great deal about how America has managed to disobey God, but it doesn't once mention anybody's failure to love their neighbour. They believe in a God that would allow thousands of innocent people to be killed because other people in the same country listen to music with 'satanic themes', and concepts of love and forgiveness don't figure highly.
I don't like this kind of attitude when individuals have it - it's arrogant, selfish, short-sighted and reactionary. It really scares me when large groups of people with a lot of lobbying power have it. And while I know you don't share this attitude at all, it bothers me to think that friends who I know for a fact are the complete opposite of these people are buying into any of it. I don't want this kind of attitude, or this kind of 'Christianity', to spread any further, including into my inbox.
Thank you
I checked my inbox today after neglecting it for a while, and a close friend sent me that forward about Billy Graham's daughter and September 11th. I've had rather a bad day, and while I've let a couple of annoying forwards from her go without commenting in the past, I replied to this one and told her what I thought about it.
What's odd, though, is that she isn't a fundamentalist Christian, and she's not American - we're both British. She's a liberal Christian, I'm an agnostic, and I never expected to get this kind of e-mail from her. I'm hoping she hit 'forward' after seeing the word God in the first couple of lines, without really reading it, but it puzzled me even so.
If anyone's got any advice about handling this situation, along the lines of why liberal Christians would forward this kind of stuff, or what kind of reply to expect from someone who did, I'd appreciate it. Of course, any corrections to my own reply or verbal smacks around the head for replying straight off after a really bad day without calming down first would also be appreciated ;)
I've enclosed her original e-mail, for anyone who hasn't yet seen it or wishes another chance to shriek and throw things at the monitor.
---------------------
Her e-mail:
In light of the many perversions and jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke, it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (Regarding the attacks on Sept. 11).
Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.
Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school ... the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbour as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.
Then someone said teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave. The school administrators said no faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave because we don't want any bad publicity, and we surely don't want to be sued (there's a big difference between disciplining, touching, beating, smacking, humiliating, kicking, etc.). And we said OK.
Then someone said, let's let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won't even have to tell their parents. And we said OK.
Then some wise school board member said, since boys will be boys and they're going to do it anyway, let's give our sons all the condoms they want so they can have all the fun they desire, and we won't have to tell their parents they got them at school. And we said OK.
Then some of our top elected officials said it doesn't matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs. Agreeing with them, we said it doesn't matter to me what anyone, including the President, does in private as long as I have a job and the economy is good.
Then someone said let's print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said OK.
And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then further again by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK, they're entitled to free speech.
Then the entertainment industry said, let's make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence, and illicit sex. Let's record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes. And we said it's just entertainment, it has no adverse effect, nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.
Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.
Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in!
-----------------
My reply:
Dear God, woman. Did you actually read this?
Quite apart from the rather sick theology implied in any god that could say 'Hey, kids aren't reciting the Lord's Prayer? I'll lob a few planes at you and kill a couple of thousand people! Ha ha ha!' - hardly consistent with even the Old Testament (Job, for example), never mind the New - it's full of offensive inaccuracies, and Billy Graham's daughter didn't say it. (What she did say can be found on the ever-reliable Snopes - http://www.snopes.com/rumors/wheregod.htm.)
As to why it's offensive and inaccurate, it's a direct response to part of the American constitution. Their First Amendment forbids the government from establishing one religion over another. It doesn't mean religion is banned, it doesn't mean Christians are persecuted, it means every religion gets equal treatment in the eyes of the law. Some Americans, of the fundamentalist Christian variety, don't approve of this, and they'd rather their religion got (illegal) preferential treatment over everybody else. Comments about God and the Bible being 'banned' from schools refer to court decisions forbidding schools from telling children to recite the Lord's Prayer or read the Bible. Children can do whatever they want in their free time, including pray or read the Bible - the school, however, isn't allowed to force them to.
Court decisions like those haven't gone down too well among the fundamentalist Christian population in the US. They don't see getting equal treatment in the eyes of the law with everybody else as fair - they want schools to teach fundamentalist Christianity as fact, the government to promote it, and every other religion to be thrown out of the window. When this doesn't happen, they see themselves as being persecuted. They talk about how 'public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace', as the e-mail mentioned. There are plenty of people out there, Christians included, who truly are persecuted. American fundamentalists are not among them.
Evolution is rarely taught in American schools in most Southern states, as fundamentalist Christians object to it; there's an on-again off-again campaign in a lot of those states for the 'Biblical account of six-day creation' to be given equal teaching time if evolution is taught at all. The US government recently withdrew all foreign aid for all organisations that provided abortions to poor women, no matter what else those organisations did, or how many people they fed and helped, because of pressure from the 'Religious Right'. These people are conservative to a level we don't even have over here, and they have a lot of lobbying power for issues like that. They think America is God's own country, and should be supported over and above the rest of the world. They think welfare and support programs for poor people should be abolished. They think the death penalty should be introduced for more and more crimes, and appeal times reduced. Large groups of people have lobbied for all of these things, and they quite often get their way. Some of them even support people who bomb abortion clinics and kill people. And they think all that should be done because that's what God wants, and otherwise God will 'withdraw His protection' from the US and let terrorists attack them.
America has its problems. The government treating all religions equally isn't one of them, and neither are the other things mentioned - kids getting sex education in schools (shock! horror!), violent TV programmes, or whatever President Clinton did in his spare time. You'll notice the e-mail talks a great deal about how America has managed to disobey God, but it doesn't once mention anybody's failure to love their neighbour. They believe in a God that would allow thousands of innocent people to be killed because other people in the same country listen to music with 'satanic themes', and concepts of love and forgiveness don't figure highly.
I don't like this kind of attitude when individuals have it - it's arrogant, selfish, short-sighted and reactionary. It really scares me when large groups of people with a lot of lobbying power have it. And while I know you don't share this attitude at all, it bothers me to think that friends who I know for a fact are the complete opposite of these people are buying into any of it. I don't want this kind of attitude, or this kind of 'Christianity', to spread any further, including into my inbox.
Thank you