Does Your Diet, Religion Or Sexuality Determine If You Can Get Into Heaven?
Is an atheist, a homosexual, a transsexual or a carnivore automatically an immoral person who is barred from going to heaven?
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Who am I? For what it’s worth, I am a white, over-forty, heterosexual male who was raised on the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Fundamentalist Beliefs
This column is about fundamentalist beliefs, whether they’re ideas about God, morality, political or economic systems, diets or anything else.
Fundamentalist beliefs are based on claimed universal truths, but those so-called truths are not derived from observable facts or logical reasoning. At their base, they are nothing more than the fiercely-held opinions of the people who promote them.
They all come down to the pronouncements: “Doing X is morally wrong” or “Doing Y is morally required” followed by an insistence that everybody else is, or should be, required to obey them.
Well, we’re not.
Not eating meat or not eating certain kinds of meat is a personal decision not an act required of every “decent” person by some universal, moral truth or rule of God.
Your Claims About What God Wants Are Just Your Opinions
You may believe God thinks that eating that slice of Honey-Baked ham is morally wrong and is going to send me to hell, but that notion is your personal opinion about what God wants and none of the rest of us are, or should be, required to agree with it.
We will form our own opinion about what God wants, or even if there is a God at all, thank you very much.
You Get To Decide Morality For You. You Don’t Get To Decide It For Me
You see, there’s a difference between your thinking that you will go to hell if you take a bite of that BLT and you wanting to make bacon illegal because you think that my eating it will cause me to go to hell.
The difference is that you get to make those “Will I go to hell?” decisions for yourself, but you don’t get to make them for anyone else.
In fact, why do you care what I eat, or whether or not I go to hell? What difference does my eating a slab of BBQ ribs or my going to hell make to your life?
None.
Right now, a lot of Christians reading this column agree with me. We Christians don’t want Muslims or orthodox Jews agitating for laws that will take away our beloved baked hams, barbecued ribs or BLTs, do we?
Hell no, we don’t. I think we’re all in agreement that that would be wrong.
My Diet Is Not The Only Thing That Bears No Relationship To My Decency As A Human Being
So, why is it anybody’s business whether or not I, or any other adult, was born with a penis or a vagina or acquired them as an after-market option? Why is it anyone else’s business who’s body part I may choose to share my genitalia with?
What does that have to do with any of you or with my decency or my morality?
Whether my intimate activities consist of an original equipment or an after-market penis to vagina, penis to anus, or vagina to vagina interaction has nothing to do with any of you, nor with how honest, trustworthy, truthful, generous, fair or decent a person I am.
Integrity Is About Honor
Here’s what you people who are so concerned with which original equipment or after-market body part goes where should actually care about:
- Am I honest, truthful, caring, generous, intelligent, trustworthy, reliable, honorable, fair, reasonable, and courageous and do I believe that it’s always the right time to do the right thing?
If the answer to those questions is “Yes” then that’s all you need to know or should care about me or my morality.
Integrity Is Not About Sexuality
The answers to the questions
- “Was he born with a penis or was one surgically added?”
- “Does he put his penis into a woman’s vagina or into another male’s anus?”
- “Was she born with a vagina or was one surgically added?”
- “Does she share her vagina with a male partner or a female partner?”
have nothing to do with any moral judgment you may make about me any more than how tall I am, whether or not I eat pork or beef, or the color my eyes should have anything to do with your evaluation of my decency.
Integrity Is About How You Treat Other People
If the answers to any of the above questions do affect whether or not you think I am a decent, moral person, that opinion is a cruel indictment of your own distorted moral values.
That’s like helping someone whom you know is a lying, deceitful, dishonest, mean, amoral megalomaniac because he promises to give you something you want while condemning an honest, honorable, generous, person who lives the teachings of Jesus Christ because his life partner has a penis instead of a vagina.
You know who and what you are.
You should be ashamed of yourselves, and the most telling indictment of your warped morality is that you’re not.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
