Overwhelmingly, surveys show that a large majority of Americans believe in God.  Additionally, a majority (a slim one) still attend church weekly.

Now, I consider myself a Christian, and my Man-Friend and I are raising our son in this way as well; complete with sunday school and weekly church.  I haven’t always been someone who went to church.  Never really went when I was young, went infrequently as an adult, but, call it fate or prayers answered, about the time I did some focusing on church and God, the man I believe I was meant to meet showed up.

Coincidence?  Maybe…

My own life not included, there is one thing that all religions, especially Christian monotheism seem to have a problem with, and it needs a Reformation to fix it….

Christianity has WAAAAAYYYYY to many people who are worried about what other believers and nonbelievers are doing with each other behind closed doors.  This is an example of “judge not, lest ye be judged.”  I prefer my Christianity with quite a bit less window peeping from Blanche from the church choir or sermonizing about the evils of drink and fornication.  I do believe in some judging, but many times, those of us with a Godly bent have the balance way off on the judging versus not judging scale.

Christianity, and its’ adherents seem to me to spend unbalanced amounts of time focusing inward on the behavior of the followers and not outward on how to help the community and the world at large.  We Christians need to spend more time on what we do within our own faith, in helping our community, and giving much less of two poops in a pocket about what anyone is doing in their bedroom or with someone else.

This kind of window peeping and gossiping about what may or may not be going on is what leads to stupid laws about not having a bar within 1000 feet of a church; like if it was 1200 feet from a church no one from the congregation would make the journey.  Or my favorite one, anti-sodomy laws.  I have always felt that it is no one’s business what two, three, ten, or a hundred adults do in the privacy of their homes; as long as animals and children are not involved, and it isn’t disturbing the peace, I ain’t calling the cops.  What they do is between them, and God and they will have to answer for whatever they do at some point.

But they won’t have to answer to me.  The place where conservatives lose this battle in popular culture is when we start trying to dictate what we think everyone’s morals ought to be, according to what we think God thinks that they should be, instead of advocating for why we think it is right, we spend our time trying to condemn others for being wrong.

God already told everybody what he thought everybody ought to do, and he inspired men to write it down in a book, that you can find just about everywhere; so the rules are pretty well known.  People don’t need me telling them what is right and wrong in their bedroom.  I have always personally believed that God has much more to worry about.

Human beings arrive at value judgments, lifestyles, sexual behavior and individual morals through nature, nuture, and decisions made all on their own, and, as I have explained to many, I don’t care what Vermont wants to do on gays becoming “unioned” with each other or what Texas wants to do about abortion.  I don’t live there, and it will affect my life exactly zero percent.  It will not affect my life, my attendance at church, what I think is right or wrong, the way I raise my son or how I impart my values and beliefs on him.

There is an old saying that says “Puritanism is the idea that somewhere, someone is having fun, and it must be stopped.”  I detest the idea that because somewhere else on the planet wants to let gays marry or allow abortion, suddenly, it is an existential issue that must affect me.

Most of the time, I think the Christian thing to do is to mind my own business and pay attention to the things that do affect me.  I have chosen very carefully what I want to be involved in being “for” or “against.”  I encourage those that don’t want to sit on the side-lines, then please, feel free to get involved in these things you believe in.  March, speak out, get involved.  that is what America is about.  It it still a free country after all, at least at the moment.

I don’t want conservatives to be less involved.  I just want our side to do it with less moralizing about why “God said it is wrong” and use more logic and sense in making our case to people.  We look uninformed, backwards and unintelligent when “God said it is wrong” is our only answer.  In fact, “God said it is wrong” starts to sound a whole lot like “Allah said it is wrong.”

And we can see what that has gotten us.