That's Julia Ioffe, providing seasonal fodder for The Washington Post, in "Please don’t wish me ‘Merry Christmas’/It’s impolite and alienating to assume I follow your religion."
My initial reaction was oh, jeez, must we do this every year?, but it meets my standard of bloggable because of the word "lonely" and because I wanted to let you know that the WaPo commenters are heavily against her. Here's the highest rated comment:
Oh, for heaven's sake! I can understand a Jewish person being sensitive in the current climate, but this sort of "everyone stop what they're doing because it's all about me" wears people out. This is why people hate the left, and I'm a leftie! As an atheist, Ms Ioffe, I typically wish people Happy Holidays, but if they wish me a Merry Christmas, I respond with the same with a warm heart. Not for the holiday, which I dislike more for its retail nature than its religious nature, but for the warm wishes they are extending me. Did your parents never teach you "When in Rome..."? If I were in Israel, I'd do my best to revel in the holidays celebrated there, or at least to tolerate them with a smile. Same thing if I were in Pakistan (and don't get me started on my views of Islam - I'm a feminist for crying out loud and no fan of any religion). I want to sympathize, I really do, but you are not winning friends or influencing people here. Would you have all the world be drab, with no one celebrating anything because, well, someone somewhere won't be into that? Focus on taking tax breaks away from churches to make the separation of church and State more meaningful. But being wished a Merry Christmas? (and really, you had to bring this up just as the right was starting to realize their war on Christmas stuff was nonsense?) Being wished a Merry Christmas is a mind over matter problem - if you don't mind, it don't matter. Get over yourself!As for "lonely" — how can you ask other people not to do the things that make you feel lonely? No one would ever hold hands or kiss on the street. We'd all need to shut up about it if our adult children ever visited us or called us on the telephone. There could be no mention of parties and dates.
Out of empathy for the lonely, if anyone loves you, you'd better keep it to yourself.
पोस्ट्स
१०६ टिप्पण्या:
Oh... Ioffe is triggered!!! Oh the horror!
I'm So Ronery
She reacts this way when people reach out to wish her well?
And then complains about loneliness?
That’s chutzpah!
So good, Althouse.
Democracy Dies in Darkness!
Bah humbug,
Should an atheist even be saying “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”?
It’s like a vegan talking about bringing home the bacon 🥓!
I wish people a Merry Christmas. And I don't f***ing care if it offends them. If someone greets me with a Happy Holidays, or even a Happy Hannukah, or Happy Kwanzaa, I would not be bothered.
The only one that truly bothers me is "Season's Greetings". I don't even know what that means. Am I being greeted by the season? Am I supposed to greet the season? Is someone saying "Happy Winter" to me in an obfuscated way? If so, why not just wish me a Merry Winter Solstice? In the very best interpretation for "Season's Greetings", it's a frustratingly bland greeting. And the worst interpretations are confusing or non-sensical to say the least.
Time to get that first cat?
Sounds like she'd rather be in a place where people slash you or throw acid in your face, as opposed to being civil.
Resentment of expressions of goodwill is pretty much a picture perfect example of churlishness.
It is that time of year, so this is on the list of approved topics about which the "influencers" are permitted/required to write.
Or as I often say...
Garbage! Absolute Garbage!
Where is the civility bullshit tag?
In the interest of seasonal love and understanding:Mr Garrison's Christmas Song NSFW
Yes, the commenter does have a religion, feminism.
It's a fucked up mix of paganism and Marxism.
The real story of the last few days is the dumb Scandinavian women who decided to camp out in the wilds of Morocco, and were beheaded courtesy of their stupidity and naiveté.
That really made me wonder how to confer a basic survival instinct on my grandkids. How do you do that with kids who are rich, spoiled, never worked at a shitty job and were indoctrinated in ecology studies at some dumb shit college?
It's weird because I've lived in Buddhist countries that celebrate Christmas. If you are putting up some barrier to participating in the celebration, you are imposing this "loneliness" on yourself. In those countries, they had their own celebrations too, that had nothing to do with my culture or religion. But I loved watching *them* celebrate it.
I have noticed our own nation spiraling into this lack of joy during the holidays because "we" are so worried about people who might not feel joy. But that isn't how it works. It really just starts sucking the joy out of everything.
"Dum-dumb-dummy doo-wah..."
Roy Orbison wasn't even Jewish.
Roy Orbison (1936-1988) was raised in Wink, Texas. His mother was a former nurse and his father was an auto mechanic. They attended a Church of Christ congregation. Orbison testified of the conflict that he faced: "They were against dancing at my church, and I was trying to play at dances. I wasn't old enough to figure out anything for myself. So I just didn't go to church. I didn't want to attend and feel uncomfortable. I went and played the dances."
No wonder suicide (literal and drug overdose) is bringing down the life expectancy of Americans. The Cultural Warriors of the Left (identity politics, feminism) have been spreading depression for 50 years. Like Communist economics, where poverty is easier to make universal, equality is best achieved if everyone is depressed. It empowers those who are never happy unless everyone else is depressed.
"Focus on taking tax breaks away from churches to make the separation of church and State more meaningful."
I see this sentiment from time to time. The irony always escapes the author. People who make this statement and those who agree with it must believe taxation appears out of thin air, and is not one of the central control mechanisms of any state. Separation indeed!
I'm Jewish. And I grew up LOVING the Christmas season. The music, the lights, the entire feeling of it. My wife can't get over how much I love the season. People are just different toward each other this time of year, but...maybe not as nice as they used to be. I've noted yearly how liberals have worked steadily to erode and remove more and more of the Christmas seasonal feelings. People used to have smiles, and would with those they passed, 'Merry Christmas'. Today- you're lucky if you get a 'happy holidays' out of some. I feel bad for Julie Ioffe on many levels. She's entirely miserable. You can read any of her articles and understand that she's a product of today's totalitarian education system. I'm sorry she did not grow up embracing the Christmas season. She was born in Russia and grew up in Columbia, MD, a very nice town in the greater Washington DC area. So it was around her. Maybe you just have to have a beating heart.
I don't feel lonely at all this time of year. I embrace it and love it and wish everyone here who entertains me all year round in this blog, a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful, Happy, Healthy New Year.
We all have different ways to celebrate the holidays and the long , dark winter nights. Some of us like to feel lonely and to use this season to reflect on our grievances. There's no better time of the year for self pity. I wish her well on her Yuletide wallow.
"She reacts this way when people reach out to wish her well?"
You mean, the way Christians bellyache about a "War on Christmas" when someone wishes them Happy Holidays?
If anything is making Jews uncomfortable in this era, it's the Democrat strategy of seeing a Nazi behind every tree and the political need to ignore the anti Semitism of Muslim immigrants, so that fear must be displaced, of course. It never disappears.
This morning I wished my friend Jeremy, happy skiing.
My understanding is that we still don't know the motivation of that man who shouted Allah Akhbar before shooting up that Christmas market in Strasbourg. It's probably sympathy for Trump. That's why Jews should feel worried about Trump.
It says something about the way I read Althouse, that I had to think for a split-second what this "dominate cultural event" could be? Does Julia Ioffe not like to shop?
It's not Trump going after the Jewish members of his own family, BTW.
CWJ said...
People who make this statement and those who agree with it must believe taxation appears out of thin air, and is not one of the central control mechanisms of any state.
The decision not to tax is part of the control.
No one is going to take away the state's power to tax.
Tax fairness is about eliminating the state's power to play favorites. The more the state distinguishes the more the state controls.
This is why people hate the left,...
Well, it's one of the reasons.
...and I'm a leftie!
there, I suspect, is another.
Omitted: wishing someone a Merry Christmas doesn't assume they follow the religion. So the supposed basis for the complaint is bullshit to start with. This is the milder version of crybullying where you invent the offense in order to justify your bullying as defensive rather than offensive.
CWJ said...
"Focus on taking tax breaks away from churches to make the separation of church and State more meaningful."
I see this sentiment from time to time. The irony always escapes the author.
Indeed, the power to tax is the power to destroy. Separation of church and state is the very reason why churches must not be taxed.
Temujin,
"I'm Jewish. And I grew up LOVING the Christmas season. The music, the lights, the entire feeling of it. My wife can't get over how much I love the season. People are just different toward each other this time of year, but...maybe not as nice as they used to be."
Hear, hear!
My dad has always loved Christmas, from when I was a little kid. I think as a Jew, and an immigrant from a country where minority religions (his, or Christianity) were at best tolerated, he was grateful to be welcomed here, and grateful to be counted in on the Christmas wishes even if he wasn't Christian. How generous is that?
So it bothers me that some Jews, particularly secular Jews it seems to me, have got some Christians walking on eggshells, feeling guilty about such a magnanimous statement. We [so to speak] turned "Merry Christmas" into a microaggression before the term microaggression was coined. From my perspective that feels like ingratitude.
oh FFS!
Get a group together of like-minded Christmas-greeting haters and party down!
and Merry AntiChristmas!
"Out of empathy for the lonely, if anyone loves you, you'd better keep it to yourself."
Victimhood (no matter how tortured the justification a person offers for claiming it) isn't a trump card. It's the Rook.
I was raised in a devout Catholic home, and have been agnostic since age 13.
Whenever someone says Happy Holidays to me, I smile and say Merry Christmas. The other person, usually a clerk in a store, invariably smiles back as if we both know he or she is under management orders not to offer any Merry Christmas greetings to anyone.
Per omnia saecula saeculorum.
"The dominant American cultural event" has damn little to do with religion. It's about "the spirit of giving", Christmas specials that tell us, "the real meaning of the season is not buying and spending but about appreciating and enjoying your friends and loved ones. So go out and buy gifts for your friends and loved ones (and the more you spend, the more you show you care)."
I don't indulge in the need to buy, so it occurs without me. I deal.
"Out of empathy for the lonely, if anyone loves you, you'd better keep it to yourself."
Yep. My kids have no grandparents ~ inlaws are dead and I'm estranged from my abusive parents ~ so I feel a jealous pang when other people have all these happy grandparent/grandchild relationships. But I would never ever ever say anything or make anyone feel like they are doing anything wrong for enjoying that part of their lives.
Christ is the ultimate love gift. Most respond to that with love of their own. But there are many who refuse to accept free gifts for fear that will make them owe something back. People!
Practice tip: All of the gifts given by God are people.
Muslim friends wish me well on Eid, and invite me to the dinner. They aren’t assuming I follow their religion!
Ioffe choses to isolate herself from mainstream culture, and then blames society for reminding her of her choice? Could you be any more self-entitled?
I am a Deist. I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. But I get upset during the Christmas season for the opposite reason...because it is becoming an increasingly secular celebration of greed. There's a reason that the Grinch is replacing Santa and George Bailey as the star of the season. I would like to see the return of Christ to Christmas because it is good for our society even though I personally don't believe. I go out of my way to wish people a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If I know any Jewish people are present I throw in a Happy Hanukah. Especially if I was wished a "happy holidays".
"Happy Holidays" has become the Corporate Enforced CorrectSpeak for retailers and people know it.
"We claim that we don't want to offend anyone, except we don't care if refusing to directly acknowledge the holiday that most people are really celebrating and the main reason they are in our stores is offensive to them".
I always say Merry Christmas because that's my cultural greeting.
If only Colorado bakers could be left alone instead of being forced to celebrate gay wedding festivals. Oh, I'm sorry this is the WaPo. Still, I'm glad their readers are finally woke.
I am not a psychologist and I have never met Ioffe, but as a layperson it strikes me that almost everything she says or writes is the product of a deeply disturbed mind.
The decision not to tax is part of the control.
If so, I welcome such a control freak. But honestly, your statement comes from an unquestioned assumption that the government has the absolute power to do anything, and the founders agreed with you, which is why they applied some constraints.
I don’t see how using a church to collect taxes from its members is any kind of “separation."
Leland said...
If only Colorado bakers could be left alone instead of being forced to celebrate gay wedding festivals.
that raises a fun WhatIf:
What If, one of Those Christians came into a newage Bakery, and Demanded (like Those Christians always do) that the Bakers make them a cake that said: Merry Christmas?
IF the Bakers refused (due to their constitutional right to HATE CHRISTIANS) to comply, would
A) the state Force them to bake the cake?
B) if, in some waco dream world, A) happened; would the Washington Post lead the crusade (jihad?) to protect the Baker's right to Hate Christians?
Focus on taking tax breaks away from churches to make the separation of church and State more meaningful.
Can we decide the limit of the State that churches should be separate from? No? No deal.
Or, tell you what. Let's take tax breaks away from higher education first.
Actually my statement comes from the questioned and answered assumption that the government has a power to do something. If the government has the power to do something, that something must be paid for. How the government pays for the something it has the power to do is where taxes come in.
Taxes, like any other law of the state can be applied neutrally or divided up into a million special categories.
No church gets to take advantage of the state's tax exemption except if it files legal documents with the state that the state demands. Don't confuse the way the state exercises its control with the idea that the state has ceded control.
Merry Christmas, Ms. Ioffe - you crazy cat woman!
@Greg Hlatky -- I would take away tax exemptions from all institutions. Given that non-profits technically don't spill off taxable income, the key taxes we're talking about are property taxes. As far as I'm concerned, they should be applied to every property the same.
If she's truly lonely, it's not the fault of the people wishing her a Merry Christmas.
"People are just different toward each other this time of year,"
True dat. The only time of the year that I'm not a complete dick.
And maybe that right there is the miracle.
Anyway. I'm in cali with my daughters and my step grandkids from Russia via Lebanon who think that the sun shines out of grandpas ass and I'm not about to disabuse them of that.
Today is the solstice
Thank you Althouse and Meade for this venue.
Merry Christmas
Henry,
Would you have been happier if I had said "the power to tax" rather than "taxation?" Or were you simply trying to school me on second order effects?
Leftism results in depression both economic and existential.
Self-righteous indignation is all they've got to make their depressed and depressing lives tolerable, even if it makes them the most intolerant and murderous people on earth.
Henry, I've read your subsequent comments. I now see you have a hobby horse somewhat tangential to my original comment. Ride it as you wish.
"I am not a psychologist and I have never met Ioffe, but as a layperson it strikes me that almost everything she says or writes is the product of a deeply disturbed mind."
Feminists like Ioffe are really control freaks trying to force the world to cater to their psychodramas.
It isn't actually my religion, but I wish her a Merry Christmas anyway. December is gonna have a 25 this year, Hon', you might as well enjoy it (and yes, I realize that "Hon'" is a microaggresison, or maybe even a hemi-demi-semi-agression).
@CWJ -- If you had written "power to tax" your description of separation of church and state would have been inaccurate, which is my point. People who oppose tax-exempt status for churches are not missing any irony whatsoever.
Merry Christmas is not funny
No wonder she is lonely. Really, who would want to be her friend?
"I can understand a Jewish person being sensitive in the current climate...
Current climate? What did I miss?
When I was in Kindergarten, one of the first lessons taught was "to make a friend, you have to be a friend."
Ms. Ioffe -- lonely spinster -- can't even get this simple right in her life as an adult.
The Jewish war on Christmas decorations at work started with netnews. A really bad PR move.
Shhhh: don't tell her that my grown children and their children live close enough that we get to see each other regularly, and actually enjoy each other's company.
I will celebrate any holiday that involves food and drink and a day off work. Happy Grey Squirrel Day. Cheers!
The only one that truly bothers me is "Season's Greetings".
That covers the pagans who sacrifice virgins on the Solstice. Their religion is dying out because it’s getting tougher and tougher to find any.
"I can understand a Jewish person being sensitive in the current climate...
Current climate? What did I miss?
Baby, it's cold outside.
I can't speak on any official War on Christmas but I can tell you of one of the battles I was present for: In the late 90s, at the USPS where I served as a Postmaster for 5 years, we were informed, in writing, NOT to say "Merry Christmas" as it might offend some of our customers.
I did not pass on the edict to my staff.
I do not get offended if someone wishes me a "Happy Holiday" or "Season's Greetings" whether in a personal or commercial setting. I also do not infer that they have been told NOT to say "Merry Christmas". I just reply, in nice and genuine fashion, and wish them a "Merry Christmas." They usually smile.
THEOLDMAN
I'm a lifelong atheist, and I happily say and accept "Merry Christmas".
Because it is also the dominant SECULAR holiday.
There's nothing significantly and inherently Christian about that tree and lights and presents, let alone in their current usage in America.
Even St. Nicholas of Myra is present in Santa Claus only via history and tradition, realistically.
Get Over It, Lady.
Lovely, just lovely. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night (or day or afternoon or whatever, don't want you to feel left out based on your timezone). And a special shout-out to those who prefer celebrating the 5th of Nivose.
They're not presuming anything about your religion, Ms. Ioffe.
There once was a famous atheist, born to a Jewish family, who on the pages of Playboy denounced all faith as bad and the central feature of Christianity (the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross) as offensive. And even she celebrated Christmas after she moved to America, complete with exchanging gifts.
And a Festivus for the rest of us.
Didn't Scrooge say something like Ioffe. [Looks it up]
“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
Emily Ioffe is our modern Scrooge.
(And bless the feminist liberal you quote who's no fan of Islam either. She's right.)
I've always found the insistence on "Happy Holidays !" to avoid the religious horror of "Happy Christmas !" a bit odd.
I've always liked "Happy Holidays". I think it's appropriate when in mixed or unknown religious affiliations. It can encompass Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Years.
-- Mr. Manners
Ann, the other day a Nebraska school principal was laboriously explaining to the school's students that candy canes are a Christian symbol, because if you turn them upside down (such that they'd fall off the tree and shatter), they look like an initial "J" for Jesus, and the red is for His blood and the white for His Resurrection (but don't go substituting other colors, because there's still the "J" thing).
I say that the "war on Christmas" is still a thing as long as there are people willing to go to such lengths to fight on the anti-Christian side. It's not annoying to me so much as goofy, like Louis Farrakhan's linking "atonement" to the "A-tone" that classical instrumentalists tune to.
But something in the season brings out the Grinches, that's for sure. Last week there was in the SF Chronicle a charming article about the author and her two siblings cleaning out their parents' house of 58 years after their (presumed) deaths, and all the delightfully kitschy stuff they found -- how there were photos of her Mom as a cheerleader (eek!) in 1944, and all the slides carefully Dymo-labeled by her "notorious fussbudget" of a Dad, and the nightmare of a kitchen, complete with old cans of mandarin oranges and sets of glasses all earmarked for particular uses.
Followed by the usual "don't give anything to anyone ever" nag: All of it eventually ends up in a landfill anyway, "even the good stuff." And maybe we could raze all the big-box stores and oak groves and wildflowers could grow where they once were. I'll tell you one place they won't grow, though: On the plot of her parents' house, because that isn't ready for a landfill, now, is it? Considering that by internal evidence it seems likely to be in Marin County and in good shape, presumably the kids were cleaning it out not before bulldozing it, but before tastefully staging it and splitting the very ample pickings from cheerleader Mom and fussbudget Dad three ways. Bleh. (Been there, done that; my in-laws bought a house in Sunnyvale in the early 70s, and when it was sold after their deaths, even split many ways it was a lot of money. But, mind you, no one snickered over the departeds' awful "stuff" while doing the cleaning-out.)
And Amazon! WTF is wrong with Amazon? Considering that I don't drive and it's 25 min. walk to the nearest bus (weekdays only), I love Amazon. And there are at least a couple dozen retailers I had never heard of before finding them on Amazon. But every year it's "don't let Amazon move here because they'll bring too many jobs," and "don't let Amazon foist all that shipping on long-put-upon UPS," and Jim Hightower in his folksy NPR segment saying that we ought all to boycott Amazon. What in tarnation for?
Out of empathy for the lonely, if anyone loves you, you'd better keep it to yourself.
Whew, I'm in the clear!
If I recognize the name, this is the woman who--today's Instapundit points out--said that Trump has radicalized more people than Isis now wishes people would be kinder at Christmas.
"I can understand a Jewish person being sensitive in the current climate...
Current climate? What did I miss?
Blacks in or around Bedford-Stuyvesant are occasionally attacking Jews, some Jewish guy in Israel made lot of threats against US Jews, and an anti-Semitic wind-storm blew over a bunch of gravestones.
Keep in mind, though, that Trump is the cause. Because hate.
I thought that the "dominant American cultural event" was Independence Day, but that's just me.
Maybe she feels left out from that too.
"When in Rome do as the Romans do"
OR AT LEAST
"expect the Romans to do as the Romans do"
"As for "lonely" — how can you ask other people not to do the things that make you feel lonely? No one would ever hold hands or kiss on the street. We'd all need to shut up about it if our adult children ever visited us or called us on the telephone. There could be no mention of parties and dates.
Out of empathy for the lonely, if anyone loves you, you'd better keep it to yourself."---
I have found it necessary to actually censor myself as above. I'm blessed with decent health, enough money, a great marriage, and well-adjusted adult children who are a joy (and occasional PITA)to us. Some of these blessing are due to our own efforts and some is luck; I know that calamity can strike me too but it hasn't happened yet. I do not have even one friend who has all of same blessings. My richest friend has a horrible marriage and has become a bitter person. My closest friend has alienated and problem children. My old friend from law school is married to a big ol' cheat and is in deep debt. The closest friend I have that I made in adulthood has seen her finances and her own health decline terribly before the age of sixty. I find myself being a sounding board more than anything else in these relationships because almost anything personal I could discuss just throws their misery into relief.
I get the impression that it's the "Merry" part that really gets under her skin. If so, she would find "Happy" Holidays just as problematic.
Having read some of her writings I suspect Ioffe's loneliness is the result of a personal decision. Made by the people who know her best. But I wish her a Merry Christmas anyway.
I'm religiously and metaphysically agnostic. My grandma gave me Thomas Paine's Age of Reason in eight grade and I ever since I operated under the premise that I don't have the capacity to know answers to those questions.
BUT, culturally, I'm a Christian. I grew up in a church. I believe in being grateful, helpful, and giving. Jesus didn't need to be divine to impact me even if I place him within a context of other moral thinkers.
I also think we have a evolutionary need for religion as we wrestle with our own mortality and why would I - a person who has zero certainty about the metaphysical world - deny someone religious beliefs that bring them joy and peace?
If I don't know your religion, I'll usually wish you happy holidays. But if you're Jewish, I'll say happy Hanukkah and if you're Christian, I'll wish you a Happy or Merry Christmas, depending on your side of the pond.
I could be bitter that I think differently. Or, I can just be happy that people are finding peace and joy. I choose happy.
"Yes, the commenter does have a religion, feminism."
Because of the social circle I've run in of late, most of my friends have been atheists, as am I, but I've rarely run across a woman who claimed to be an atheist who actually was one. They seem to have replaced belief in God with a rage against the Patriarchy, or a belief in crystals, astrology, chakras, runes, etc. Where is Crack when we need him?
I know atheism doesn't imply anything other than a lack of belief in God, but it seems to me that if you believe in any spiritualism or New Age nonsense you're not really an atheist; you just believe in some alternative concept of god or gods, or maybe Goddess.
Because of the social circle I've run in of late, most of my friends have been atheists, as am I, but I've rarely run across a woman who claimed to be an atheist who actually was one. They seem to have replaced belief in God with a rage against the Patriarchy, or a belief in crystals, astrology, chakras, runes, etc. Where is Crack when we need him?
If you don’t believe in something, you’ll believe in anything.
It sounds like the religion of “Me.”
Maybe someone could be kind enough to let her know the whole, fucking world doesn't revolve around her.
Maybe someone could be kind enough to let her know the whole, fucking world doesn't revolve around her.
Sure, if anybody cared about it that much.
Focus on taking tax breaks away from churches to make the separation of church and State more meaningful.
We can put that in the dictionary as a textbook example of motivated reasoning.
Maybe Julia Ioffe should just kill herself?
With the conflation of logical domains, apologies with politically congruent ethical standards, color judgments and discrimination, immigration before emigration reform, social justice adventures, and planned parenthood/selective and recycled-child, the establishment of the Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, and exclusive, Church is a progressive condition that will persist.
"If you don’t believe in something, you’ll believe in anything."
Who says I don't believe in "something"?
Anyway, the concept of God falls into the category of "anything".
crystals
I use dark crystals to protect against the negative financial energy of ghosts whose bodies died intestate.
Happy Smittens day.
http://smittensday.com
Or perhaps "bon iver" would be less offensive.
God loves lonely people.
Believe it or not (and I prefer you do not believe it right away, given the type of forum we find ourselves at here) I am a successful faith healer (successful meaning that, at least once in my life, I have made a sick person better through what is generally called prayer, but which, when it works, is just simply
FRIENDSHIP between us schlubs and the GOD who created us.....) ....
God loves Jews, there are a finite number of them, and God loves every Christian who has sinned through hatred of Jews ...
but haters gotta stop hating ... stop this nasty hating, my Christian friends
although God loves haters, he is extremely offended, God knows, as do I (otherwise how could I claim to be a faith healer) that no matter how nasty our beginning in life was, we all have the opportunity,
no matter whether or not we were born in a big family (remember that word, family, on your last day, if you need to have a word to excuse your failure to repent of your sins, or your failure to be happy at the chance to be kind to
a creature who never had a friend in this world
(sad! if you passed up that chance)
think of our happy friend God,who after all is God and has never run the risk of being abandoned
he never had to live in a family in this world, with all the bad things that living in a family in this world can involve ....
think of him , because he never lived in a family where the siblings and the parents were cold, cold-hearted, being offended at our bad decisions
the way you or me are offended when we see
a bad singer
mangling a good song.
but still hoping that the bad singer (poor girl) would one day find someone to love her, even if her voice was not as beautiful as she hoped
Cheers.
God loves lonely people, and so do I.
You can be a faith healer too,
it is simple.
think of how much good you could do if you had never had the worry of being abandoned.
God hates anti-Semites (or anti-termites, as the beastly fellow called himself)
and God hates people who mock Christians....
but the hate I am describing is not the hate you or me experience, as long as we are not tempted to religious hatred,
it is the
knowledge
that we can choose to be evil.
and the knowledge that many of us were not even tempted, at least not all that much, to choose evil.
You may or may not have any idea how troubled I am at the stupid things so many intelligent people have said ....
OK you are a great member of a great family, you all visit the old folks home and play on the piano while the old people pretend to be thankful, maybe even you play some of the best works of our human Apollo Mozart or our human Zeus Chopin
but did you ever go to the old folks home and charm them all with various descriptions of why it is wrong to assume
God loves you more than the Jews?
or why it is wrong to believe that God does not heal the sick, even when a mediocre faith healer (like me) tries to heal them? ....
God loves the Jews, God heals the sick, let us pray for the Jew-haters, may the evil in their heart be destroyed, not tomorrow, not later tonight, but right now,
God loves us all,
and there are not all that many of us.
One million is not that big a number, I could count to a million in my sleep
A billion is bigger, but still - who among us has not seen a billion clouds, or a billion reiterations of ancient leaves or ancient lines of birds or noble insects, in our lifetimes????
A trillion is a big number, but not all that much bigger than a billion.
Think about it, we are a finite little band of creatures.
And then there are the great squids, the dolphins whom Poseidon and Jehovah loved, and the friends of man, the almost infinite dogs and cats and angels ......
Just look someone who suffers in the eye, tell them you have prayed for them, you have offered up sufferings for them, and you KNOW God loves them
That is the daily life of a faith healer
Thanks for reading.
And then there are the great squids in the deep ocean, the dolphins whom Poseidon and Jehovah love, and then there are also the great friends of man, the almost infinite dogs and cats and parrots and angels
pray to God to bring healing to the heart of someone you love
and God will answer
Every Single Time
Pray tonight for Michael and Dianna.
I think they don't need your prayers anymore, but I could be wrong.
I am very humble that way.
Pray for poor Citizen Bergoglio, and for those he has harmed, and poor Billy Graham and his rich wife.
Pray for me.
You won't regret it.
or just pray to God to bring healing to the heart of someone you love
You won't regret it
please don't respond unless you can answer this question with a specific memory ("I remember" ... and so on - there you go)
did you ever wonder
when you were younger
what it would be like
to not be you
but to nevertheless know
how much God loves you?
the only power in this world is the power of love
try and remember
or try not to forget
or pray for someone you have always loved
or better yet,
pray for someone
you just started to care about
today
tonight
always
always starts somewhere
right about now
or some other time
God loves every moment
the failed moments, because they could have been otherwise
and the moments
where we did not fail
to care
because they were not otherwise
(life is all about details. I talk to a lot of people every day, and to a lot more people every week, and I can't remember who it was I talked to this week, when they said they had two cats, one with a name I forget and another one named - I listened, and they said the cat was named Diana, and I said, that is Diana with one N right, not two Ns, because (I explained) I used to be in love with a woman named Dianna, with two Ns, and as much as I love cats (and for God's sake, if you are reading this, you have to know that I know how important the almost infinite number of cats are in God's eyes) ---
as much as I love cats, nobody wants to be in love with a woman with an unusually spelled name in a year like, say, 1977 (0r any other year) and to find oneself, 30 or 40 years later, in a conversation with someone who randomly gave her cat the same unusual name, totally by coincidence, as the person one once loved
God loves us all.
that raises a fun WhatIf:
What If, one of Those Christians came into a newage Bakery, and Demanded (like Those Christians always do) that the Bakers make them a cake that said: Merry Christmas?
This is sort of like what happens everyday for folks with conservative viewpoints on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The difference seems to be market share. If you have a small market share with plenty of competitors in the market; then you are so small to crush. If you a significant majority of market share with hardly any serious competition; then you are too big to fail.
Tom said, "I also think we have a evolutionary need for religion as we wrestle with our own mortality and why would I - a person who has zero certainty about the metaphysical world - deny someone religious beliefs that bring them joy and peace? "
That's beautifully stated, Tom. The logic and the sentiment seem unassailable to me, and there's no doubt that living your life with this humble and kind attitude will bring YOU the most satisfaction and peace.
Char-Char.
I find both atheism and deism ironic in that on one hand there is the hope and absolute certainty that something is there. And on the other hand there is the hope and absolute certainty that there isn't anything there. Both take an act of faith.
I'm in the Holden Caufield group.
Everybody knows that if you cut the Christers an inch of slack, in only a matter of hours the drunken Cossacks will come raging through our shtetl on horseback, sabers flashing, and will start sewing up live cats into the bellies of our pregnant women, right after ripping out their near term-babies, and tossing the bloody mess into the village well.
RE: Focus on taking tax breaks away from churches to make the separation of church and State more meaningful.
I always thought that wasn't favoring churches but guaranteeing freedom of religion in that the state cannot tax any religion it does not like out of existence.
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