SteveCuno.com

A Few Bad Born-Again Apples

This post isn’t about the many Born-Again Christians who are peaceful, live-and-let-live people. It’s about the mindlessly rabid ones who make the rest look bad. 

Take, for instance, Lifeline Community Lead Pastor Bryan Hurlbutt, whose letter in today’s Salt Lake Tribune makes yet another moronic attempt to establish that Mormons (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) have no business calling themselves Christians.

Surely a pastor should have better things to obsess over than redefining “Christian” to exclude members of rival religions. Like, I dunno, promoting good values, like, I dunno, opposing bigotry, like, I dunno, taking a stand against picking on Mormons.

Ironically, many Born-Again Christians who dismiss Mormons as non-Christian will in the same breath claim that the Founding Fathers were ardent, faithful, Bible-believing Christians. Perhaps some were, but many of the most prominent ones ranged from closet atheist (no god), to agnostic (can’t be sure one way or the other), to deist (god exists but doesn’t intervene). You cannot have it both ways. If “Christian” is broad enough to include the Founding Fathers, it must also include members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Rabid Born-Again Christians howl that people like me, who see no reason to believe in any higher power, are persecuting them by not wanting our taxes used to support proselytizing in the form of school-sponsored prayer and religious symbols on government land. Funny thing. As I watch them rail on competing faiths and on nonbelievers, I cannot help thinking that they have misidentified who really does the persecuting.

Two Christmas thoughts
One snarky. One heartfelt.

Snarky: When Christmas falls on Sunday, as it does today, the LDS (Mormon) Church cuts its services to one-third the usual time. Even when I was Mormon, I couldn’t help noting the irony. Of all days to shorten the time spent in worship, the official choice falls on the day alleged to commemorate the birth of the worship’s object. Church? Hell no. It’s Christmas.

The stated rationale is to encourage families to spend time celebrating the alleged birth of Jesus at home instead of at church. Setting aside that that argues for an abbreviated schedule every Sunday, let’s be honest. If the church didn’t officially cut the schedule, they would likely find it cut for them, or even skipped. Yes, many if not most Mormon families will cover the day’s religious significance at home. But the cold, hard fact is that kids won’t sit still in church for three hours when there are presents at home; and the longer most adults are forced to sit, the less they’ll focus on the religious matter at hand and the more they’ll fret about keeping their antsy kids calm for the rest of the service, the meal they must prepare and the house they must clean before guests arrive, and/or about having to bundle and cart the kids to a relative’s house on time.

Heartfelt: Two of my fondest Christmas memories are of holidays when I happened to be broke. The first time, I was 20 and single. The second, I was 45, widowed and had two teenagers. In both cases, gifts were out of the question. Being together and appreciating one another were all we had. (Sweet as the memories are, I do not wish ever to be broke again in order to relive them.)

My personal encounter with a most
gentlemanly Christopher Hitchens

My only encounter with the late Christopher Hitchens revealed a gracious, humble and courteous fellow one might not have readily inferred from his public persona.

January 2007 marked my first visit to The Amazing Meeting or, for short, TAM. The meeting held me rapt, and I have attended every year ever since. During one presentation, however, I sat at the back of the considerable hall and was having difficulty hearing, thanks to two fellows carrying on a not-hushed-enough conversation some 20 or so feet behind me. “Gentlemen,” I said, leaving my seat and walking up to them, “I’m having trouble hearing—” That was as far as I got. One of the men offered an immediate and gracious apology. He suggested to his friend they they continue their conversation outside of the room, apologizing to me once more as they left.

Moments later the emcee introduced the next speaker. Christopher Hitchens was a name I didn’t know at the time, yet I had no trouble recognizing the speaker. He was the fellow I had only minutes earlier asked to pipe down. (I need hardly add that, from the moment he took the podium and opened his mouth, I sat enthralled.)

I suppose not everyone can boast having shushed Christopher Hitchens. I am pleased to say that he handled it like the consummate gentleman that his close associates attest he was.

Just for fun — my renditions 
of a couple of holiday favorites

Click below to listen. Dancing is encouraged.

Why I don’t respect all beliefs, neither do you, and why it’s better to admit it.

People often say, “I don’t accept your beliefs, but I respect them.” 

Nobody who says that means it.

For one thing, I doubt you truly respect the beliefs of, say, Charles Manson, David Koresh or Osama Bin Laden.

But even if we added a caveat, like, “as long as the belief doesn’t interfere with the rights of others,” you still don’t really, truly mean it.

Here is a more defensible and, I think, honorable statement: “I respect your right to believe as you wish.” Note the difference. Honoring one’s right to a belief is not the same thing as honoring the belief itself. If you hold a belief that I find nutty, I reserve every right to disrespect it, even while standing for your right to believe it.

If you believe that anyone who disses Mohammed should be put to death, it is your right to think so, but that belief merits not one iota of my respect. I need hardly add that the exercise of that particular belief constitutes the ultimate infringement upon the rights of others.

If you believe that God objects to blood transfusions, I cherish your right to think so, but as beliefs go, I happen to find this one heinous. I’ll even respect your right to decline a potentially life-saving transfusion for yourself. But should you try to keep others — like, say, your kids — from having one, I will cheer when a court gets in your way.

If you believe that God doesn’t want you to shop on a given day, fine, stay home, but a-shopping I will go. If you try to effect legislation to keep facilities and stores closed or, as some societies do, to punish me for shopping on that day, you are interfering with the rights of others.

If you choose to believe that a wafer becomes the flesh of Jesus after you eat it, I respect your right to think so. But I’d be lying if I said I respect that belief. It’s just plain silly. And not a little gross.

If you believe it is government’s or religion’s right to force women to wear a burkha, more power to you — just as long as you don’t try to exercise this imagined “right.” Meanwhile, I reserve the right to despise how you think.

Should you choose to believe that the 9/11 attacks were God's punishment brought upon the U.S. by feminists, atheists and the LGBT community, that the Church of Scientology has the truth, that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh know more about climate science than the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, that God opposes interracial and/or same-sex marriages, that the alignment of stars and planets reveals the future and insights into your personality, that God spoke to Joseph Smith, that there was an Atlantis, that aliens built the pyramids — and so forth — I shall respect your right to think so. But respect the belief itself? Not without good evidence. Which, to date, none of the above has.

Come on, be honest with me. And with yourself. Surely by now I have touched on at least one belief that you respect no more than I. With that in the open, we can get on with the business of according a full complement of human rights to everyone. Including those we think believe nutty things.

There is something noble in that. There is more integrity in guarding one’s right to a belief you disrespect, than in claiming to respect that which you do not.