I’ve come to the conclusion that religion in this world makes people do crazy irrational things. I’ve seen examples of it in many denominations. It appeared most recently on an episode of Survivor China. There was a player who described herself repeatedly as Christian. This seemed to override any of her other defining characteristics which I’m not sure was the result of creative editing or something she thought of herself. At one point, she was forming alliances solely based on others who were also Christian. Logically, this strategy didn’t make a lot of sense (for more reasons than I want to bore you with on this blog) and the end result of it was getting voted off very early in the game. Of course her take on this outcome was that was God’s will but I can tell you her actions had a lot more to do with her getting voted off than God did.
Here’s another example that I observed in the same week. I belong to a group of Catholic moms who gather once a month. (I’m not a very spiritual person so I participate to see if some of their holiness will rub off on me.) We were talking about the new addition to the church bulletin of advertisements and a few of the women said they would like to know which ones were Catholic so that they could support those businesses. I had to clamp my hand over my mouth not to say anything. Really! You would go buy something from a Catholic vendor on the sole basis of their religion regardless of the quality of the product or the relative price? Conversely, you would turn down a good deal from a Muslim or a Methodist, if there was a Catholic out there who offered an substandard alternative? This makes no sense to me whatsoever yet I know people do it all the time!
Don’t even get me started on the extremists out there whether they be Muslim, Mormon, Christian, Catholic (notice how I broke Catholic out of the Christian group – it’s the southern influence), and all the cults who pretend to be religions (yes Scientology, I’m talking about you). We’ll save that for another entry.
2 comments:
Just because they frequent a business because the owner is Catholic does not make them bad or stupid. I have my reasons for buying at a certain store and a lot of times it is not because that is where I get the most for my money. You make it sound like you worship money.
I guess this entry was not well-worded on my part. I too use other factors besides best bang to the buck to decide where to shop. I support local small business owners over Walmart, etc. I guess it's also OK to use someone's religious affiliation to make decisions socially (even though I myself do not do this). I guess my problem with the people I describe is that they use other's religious beliefs as the sole or overriding factor in making a decision. Thanks for your comment!
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