In polite company, one is not supposed to discuss three topics: religion, politics or sex. However, in light of the controversy surrounding President Obama’s religious status, I thought it might be a good idea to throw my two quarters in (yes, the recession has raised that two cents up a bit).
At this moment, while you’re sitting on the computer reading a blog, millions of Muslims may well be bowing over prayer mats. Also, those of the Jewish faith are going to temple, Christians are holding church picnics or getting married before a cleric. You are still sitting at a computer reading a blog, and it makes no difference what anybody is doing regarding their religion.
To a point. Right now there may be some really bad people out there doing some really bad things. If a guy is standing in the middle of a crowd with a gun, the police are not going to say, “wait a minute while we round up everybody who shares the same religion as you, so we can shoot them all down, too.” The police will, however, shoot the bad guy because he is doing something bad, and things should then get back to normal.
Of course there are people who will protest, “those police shot a fellow (insert religious identifier here), and that means the police hate everybody who is a (insert identifier again) and everybody else in the world must also hate people who are (insert again) because nobody stopped the police from shooting one (insert again).” Come on, folks. Nobody wants to throw out all the apples because one went bad. Sort out the good ones, throw out the bad ones, and get on with life, for goodness sake.
If the President decided to give a speech while wearing one brown sock and one blue sock because he just didn’t notice it and didn’t feel the need to take the time to change them (because, after all, he would be standing behind a lectern the whole time, so nobody would be likely to notice), what does that have to do with how he runs the country? Same thing with what building he worships in, how he prays, what saintly names he invokes (if any) or what scriptures he keeps on the bookshelf.
The Almighty made all of us, and if you believe that, then isn’t it wrong to exercise hatred for what we choose to do with our lives in His world, just because some of us don’t carry the same scriptures or worship in a building which is not like ours? Tolerance for religion doesn’t mean we endorse bad people: we just prefer our world with good people–of any faith–in it.
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