Cultural Colloids and Solutions.

“I don’t see why you Christians have to bring your morality into everything.”   -60% of the population of people I speak to about my faith.

Time for another brief little clarification.  I’ve been thinking about this one for a long, long time, and I’m usually not fit to bring an explanation to this issue without getting too upset.  The statement you see above makes me crazy.  Absolutely crazy.  And I can tell you why.  But before I do, I want to make an analogy.

I don’t know how many of you remember your Chemistry.  (I know I don’t remember that much of it, so this whole analogy might be with the wrong words.)  But there is a concept here that I want to bring out because I think it will help us discern the difference between the religious community (and I’m talking the entire religious community and not just Christians) and the secular community.  In Chemistry, (again, if my memory serves) there are all kinds of different ways we can talk about what happens when you mix two things together.  I have this vague recollection of a lecture I got my freshman year of high school.  The lecture went something like this.  First, my Chem teacher dropped a bunch of sand into a glass of water.  She explained that the sand was made up of a conglomeration of the things (mostly silicon) and that silicon does not dissolve in water at room temperature.  She then termed what was in the glass as a colloid.  In other words, you have two things in the same container, but both retain their individual properties.   Then she took another glass of room temperature water, and she dumped in salt.  The salt dissolved.  She termed this a solution.  Then she asked the class what would happen if we needed to get the sand out of the glass.  The answer was simple, you just take it out.  She then asked us how to get the salt out.  We had all kinds of ideas, but the best one we could come up with was to let the water evaporate, because we didn’t know another way to get the salt out of the water.

I know what you’re thinking.  So what?  Let me tell you.

I strikes me that the biggest reason for the quote you see at the top of this entry is because people don’t understand the entire purpose of what religion is for.  Organized religion is such as it is, with it’s innate moral doctrines and so forth, to take people who are of one sort and make them into a different sort of person.  I don’t know of a single major religion I can think of that allows it’s adherents to remain in the same state. All of the changes are precipitated by a regimented set of beliefs and moralities that are supposed to be rigorously applied to selected areas of life.  In other words, the purpose is to take people who are colloids, remove the imperfections (whatever they might be, depending on the religion) and create people who integrate the new belief structure into their everyday life in a seamless way.  In other words, the purpose of religion is to take people who are colloids and make them solutions.  On the other hand, the secular culture, with it’s reliance on pluralism and individualism, encourages people to remain colloids.  It tells people to hold whatever beliefs you like, but hold them lightly or tightly depending on how you feel–there is no organized structure to determine which beliefs are higher and must be kept at all costs, and which can be handed over at the first indication.

Now, in the public arena, you’ve got people debating who hold widely divergent definitions of what personhood means.  For the religious, personhood is taking pride in your beliefs, in this new creature you’re becoming.  For the secular, personhood is defined by what beliefs you choose, and in what order you choose them, and how you categorize them.  For the secular then, laying aside one belief in the name of another is no enormous issue, you just lay it aside, make the changes (because you didn’t really latch too tightly onto the idea anyways…it’s always negotiable, subject to the needs of the moment) and move on.  For those folks, change is simple–it requires no real commitment, nor does it require a huge paradigm shift.  The same cannot be said of the religious community.  Because their worldview is already set, they are forced to see things as the reinvented beings they are, and everything the believe is who they are.  The basics are dynamic, but only in the context of moving towards closer adherence to the religions stated goal.  Are you seeing the problem here? 

When people say, “Why do you have to bring your morality into this,” the question infers that somehow we have the same choice as the secularist.  The plain fact is, we don’t.  It takes a lot more for religious folks to separate themselves from their beliefs, because their beliefs, in tangible and unintangible ways, tells them who they are.  This is the reason religion got such a bad rap to begin with, remember?  Because it tells people how to live.  You can disagree with that system, and you have every right to do so (and you should if it doesn’t make sense to you or you disagree with it) but you can’t fault people who do believe it, unless you want to infer that somehow you’re smarter or more highly developed.  If that happens, please understand why people will be unwilling to submit to your ‘more highly developed logic.’ 

Again, my only purpose for writing here is in a/n (probably vain) attempt to get you all to understand why religious types can’t just ‘check their beliefs at the door.’  I have the feeling I’ve just wasted thirty minutes of my life, and that I’m going to hear the quote above again in one form or another, but at least I’ve tried.

*shakes head*

*sighs*