Confessions of an Easter Crank

As requested by the lovely lady from Texas in one of her guises of @TheMissionalist, here are my thoughts on why I was glad to be done with Easter yesterday evening.

1. Sick kid who really wanted to have a fun Easter, but was feeling lousy – not much fun.
2. Family. Many people share my feelings about family and holidays. It can be difficult, especially in theologically diverse families. I am not the only one who has that one relative who makes every gathering a chore to endure, but I do have one. That one special person who makes you smile though gritted teeth and think to yourself that you really do uphold the worth and dignity of EVERY person regardless of how you are feeling at the moment. My feeling is that you have the opportunity to contribute and the right to criticize, but you can’t have just the latter. (Letting out that deep breath now.)

Now, for the theology. I’ve written about this before, but Easter as a holiday is meaningless for me. As a non-theist, I don’t celebrate the risen Christ. Participating in Easter festivities makes me feel dishonest and I hate being dishonest with people. My family of origin believes in the literal resurrection story so I know that the remembrance and celebration of said story holds significant meaning for them. For me, it means extra shopping and cooking I have to do. I guess it just tugs me back to feeling like I have to pretend to have a faith I don’t have in order to make them happy, and I won’t do that anymore. I don’t want to be disrespectful to their faith, but I can’t share it with them either.

Being post-Christian, I don’t like the whole Easter story. The theme of re-birth and renewal is lost on me because what I see is a celebration that your leader was tortured to death. That is not so festive for me. When I was a conservative Christian, Easter had meaning: Christ’s sacrifice bought my eternal life. But if you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus and you don’t believe in penal substitution, then what is the whole point? Without a literal resurrection Easter just seems gory.

Sarah at Ernie Bufflo writes here about what Good Friday means to her as a liberal Christian so I know that there are other ways to view Easter from a liberal perspective. I recommend her post if you want a more uplifting version of Holy Week than mine. I guess I could sum this whole post up by saying that I would be happy to ignore Easter altogether and wish the faithful well as I do with many holidays that are not part of my faith tradition, but celebrating it part of the way, without any faith behind it feels wrong.

It's Finally Spring!

Anchorage woke up this weekend. It is officially spring here now and everywhere I went people were walking, jogging, biking, and generally frolicking in the sunshine. I enjoyed the warm weather even more watching everyone else enjoy it. I don't think southerners can really understand the frenzy that comes over northerners when they finally get a chance to get outside without snow gear. The worst part of being a blog junkie is reading about people’s warm weather while I am still swearing at the snow. Now that spring has finally crept this far north I’m just giddy. Now begins the season where my children sigh at me a lot for forcing them outside. Again.

Failure in UU Parenting

Tiny Daughter M: "Mom, can you come help me with my math homework?" Me: (In jest) "I can't. I can't do math anymore. I gave up math for Lent." Tiny Daughter M: Sigh "You're not even Jewish." File this under Doing Something Wrong.

On Reading Dennis Prager

I am doing something that I should probably do a lot more often – reading something with which I am pretty sure I will disagree. Since reading only works by people with whom you agree leads to a closed mind and groupthink, I am reading Happiness is a Serious Matter by Dennis Prager. A friend of mine, The Artist, loves Dennis Prager and is always recommending this book to me and until now, I have always politely declined. The Artist and I don’t agree about much of anything political so I blew off his recommendation as an attempt to show me the glories of libertarianism. Sorry, been there, done that. He got a mutual friend to read it and she loved it so much that she actually bought me a copy. At this point, I felt obligated to read it. Prager is a libertarian type conservative and a staunch advocate that the basis of our society is traditional judeo-christian values. I did not expect to agree with him about much, but so far I actually like some aspects of his book. We are never going to agree religiously, but we may not end up too far apart on the nature of happiness. I did not expect that. Feel free to remind me that I need to keep an open mind the next time I tell you I am not going to waste my time reading something written by a conservative. Unless it is Ann Coulter - some sacrifices are just too much.

Terry Jones is Not a Terrorist

I don’t like Terry Jones. The pastor of World Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL is an unloving and hateful idiot without much concern for protecting American lives. His recent decision to publicly burn a Quran was reckless, arrogant, and stupid. But he is not a terrorist. The people who are calling him one are holding him responsible for the actions of people he offended. American law has long held that people can be held responsible for advocating violence even if they never commit it themselves, but that is not what we are talking about here. Those who want Jones legally punished want to do so because he offended people and some of those people reacted violently. In America, we do not recognize the right of people not to be offended. Those in Afghanistan who rioted and killed Americans are to blame for their own actions. The fact that they killed because they were really really mad at Terry Jones in particular and the United States in general does not excuse them. Murderers are responsible for their own actions and we infantilize people when we say that isn’t true. Terrorists commit violence against non-military targets with intent to frighten people. Terrorists crash airplanes into buildings. They blow up busses and cafes. Burning books might make you a great many things, including not invited to my home, but it does not make you a terrorist and we diminish terrorism’s horror when we say that it is. Personally I am offended by Jones’s message and his actions. I not only condone, but encourage people to denounce and shun him. Picket his church if you want. But legal or congressional action against his 1st Amendment right to express his twisted religious views is threatening to all our religious points of view. Terry Jones is an intolerant fool, but he is a constitutionally protected one. Terrorists kill people, and we shouldn’t confuse two.