More on Morality

This post has led my thoughts in some interesting directions. There was a conversation that I used to be involved in a lot back in my days of Christianity. It was basically a statement of free thought that, sadly, used the same words and concepts in every single case. The person wishing to expound on his or her free thought would say things to the effect of, "I drink, I watch R-rated movies, and I swear." It was pretty much the same thing every time. As if drinking and swearing and watching Saving Private Ryan makes them interesting. I'm a little surprised to think about it now. It's a weird way of thinking. Sitting around and talking about how great you are because you do the same exact "non Christian" thing that every other wannabe interesting Christian doesn't make you great. It's also weird for outsiders. I was trying to explain it recently to someone who didn't come out of that weird little world. She didn't get it. The question was, in retrospect, obvious. It basically amounted to, "So do Christians think the rest of us just sit around drinking and swearing all day?" It's not that the fundies honestly think that. It's more that it's the logical end result of their mental state. See, if you think morality is based on a list of things to do, you'll divide the world in to people who do what you do and people who don't do what you do. The problem is, if you then further divide the world in to the in crowd and the out crowd, you have to separate it out by who does what. So, by default, non-Christians drink and smoke and have pre-marital sex with puppies or whatever. Speaking, of, part of the reason that all of the, "I'm a Christian but I..." lists are always the same is because they're not actually allowed to do anything interesting. I mean, they can't exactly say, "I'm a Christian but I shoot up heroin," or, "I'm a Christian but I regularly pay hobos $10 for hand jobs" (also, if you've never gotten a Skid Row Special, I highly recommend it. The only thing better than a cheap hand job is the look of self-loathing in the eyes of a bum who was probably an exec with Lehman Brothers back in December), and they can't even say, "I'm a Christian, but, dammit, I just love jacking off." Because, you see, there's sin and then there's SIN. God doesn't actually care about sin, but if you engage in SIN, you're fucked. Actually, in a lot of cases, if you engage in SIN you're fucked if other people hear about it. Because apparently if your friend or pastor doesn't know, then god won't figure it out, either. Fun, isn't it? Rationalization and legalism makes life so much more exciting. I can't understand why people don't go for fundamentalism in droves, really...