It's Finally Juning Up

That is, it's finally getting warmer. Hooray! May around here was a wild swing between heat we weren't ready for and then, just when you start wondering if you have a pair of shorts that still fit you, WHAM! The old blizzard-in-the-night trick.

(By the way, sorry no picture. Things are complicated when you have to move children and haul your sorry postpartum broken-footed self into a wheelchair and roll across the room to get the camera. I'll get you a picture after I've had to be in the vicinity of the camera anyway.)

The garden continues to come up well, and we haven't had a hail/wind storm to damage the fruit trees like we did last year, so it may be I'll be even busier in August and September this year than I was last year. Also hooray.

In very weird news, David Carradine has died under mysterious circumstances. I know someone (see? I'm not mentioning your name) who keeps a list of which celebrities die in a given year. In alphabetical order. I bet some of my readers can guess who I'm talking about. (It's not the Husband-- if he did such a thing, he'd keep an Excel spreadsheet with a graph to enable you to track which month is most celeb-deadly.) The odd thing is that it rubs off; a bunch of us now watch the celebrity-death news to make sure he doesn't miss anyone.

In even weirder news, PBO gave a speech in Cairo today which contained the very silly line:

"There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples."

While that truth does transcend nations and peoples, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not at the heart of every religion. What about Kali worship, Druidism, or Baal worship, for instance, which involve sacrifice of a particular group of humans? Just on a hunch, I'm betting that the priests of Baal did not want to be burned alive on a metal statue, and the Druids did not want to be strangled and thrown into a bog.

(Note: I know posers claiming to be Christians, such as the Crusaders, have done things that nobody in their senses would want done to them. You'll note I called them posers? As well, I'm talking about what is accepted and recommended in the doctrines of the religion, not what the followers actually do. See the difference?)

But perhaps PBO meant all modern religions. Or perhaps, which is most likely, he just meant Islam. Well, what are the Five Pillars of Islam?

1. There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.
2. Pray 5 times per day facing Mecca.
3. Give alms.
4. Fast during Ramadan.
5. Go to Mecca.

Do you see Do As You Would Be Done By in there anywhere? No?

(No, alms doesn't count. It's a specific action, not a guiding principle--you can give alms while doing all sorts of things that you wouldn't want done to you.)

It's not respectful in any case to be vague about religions that do have deep and fundamental differences. Putting the Golden Rule, which is a Christian doctrine, onto Islam is disrespectful both to Christianity and to Islam, and people who take either religion seriously are bothered by it.

We won't even go into the other modern religions--the Golden Rule doesn't enter Hinduism either, because karma is not the same thing--because it would take too long.

Religions make competing claims. To take only two of them: Islam says there is no god but Allah, and Christianity says there is no God but the triune Jehovah. Islam says Jesus Christ was a great prophet (though not the greatest), but nothing more, and Christianity says He was the second Person of the Trinity and therefore God. (Please don't make me explain the Trinity at the tail of a blog post.) In each case, both claims cannot be true at the same time. If we are interested in understanding the religions, it serves no purpose to pretend they are the same. 2+2 is not 7, and acting like it is only makes us misbalance our checkbooks.

So next time someone asks you if you think all religions are basically the same and just tell people to be good and love others, you may say NO--that's sloppy, condescending thinking, and only people who don't think religion matters can accept it. I'm not, at this moment, arguing for the truth of Christianity--you'll note that the fact religions are different holds true whether you are a Christian or a Muslim or a Wiccan. I am saying that telling a devout Wiccan that she holds basically the same doctrines as a devout Muslim is ignorant at best, and insulting at worst.

After which little diatribe, I shall leave you and try to go to the bathroom while both babies are asleep.

Cheers,

Breanna