It’s summer, and with that comes lovely sunshine, horrible heat, and the tendency for my mind to resist settling down to make the words come out.

My mind wants to wander and play in the sunshine, and that is more or less the exact opposite of sitting still and writing stuff. It really feels like having to settle down and get dressed for church when it’s having so much fun romping about outside.

Well, how I assume that feels, anyhow. Never been “to church” in my life. I’ve been IN churches a few times, for funerals and holiday concerts and such, but I have never been TO church in the sense of actually being there to worship.

From what I have seen in the media, it looks pretty boring. No wonder people fall asleep. At least the Catholics are smart enough to keep you awake by making you do the stand, sit, and kneel routine.

Oh, and sing. Can’t fall asleep when you have to sing a very boring hymn now and then.

This is what happens when your religion is run by and for old people. To them, the quiet solemn dry ceremonies are soothing and peaceful.

And good practice for being dead.

But for those further from the grave it’s boring as hell and that is a terrible way to run your religion. Your religious services should not feel like penance for the crime of actually observing your faith.

I figure I would be a very good and effective preacher. I have the charisma, the oratory skills, the passionate beliefs, the deep desire to give people solace and hope, and more than enough showmanship to keep things interesting.

I just lack any actual religious faith, and I am far too honest to fake it.

Still, I suppose I could create a small church around my own version of Christian faith, which is centered not around Christ’s divinity but his message.

I vehemently believe in Jesus’ core message of compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. As far as I can tell, humanism began with the words attributed to Jesus, and I am a humanist through and through.

I even have a name for this theoretical church of mine : the Students of Christ. Catchy, isn’t it? And kind of hard for the other sects to find fault in even if my church does not require faith in God or Jesus or anything else.

This way, Christianity could be cut clean from the Old Testament for good, and unified around a single Gospel and no stupid Epistles.

And this is just my opinion, but I am pretty sure my type of church would be what Jesus actually wanted. True spiritual leaders don’t want to be worshipped, they want to be listened to and heeded.

And they want us all to be nice to one another. But that’s hard, and no fun, so that’s the first thing people get rid of once the leader’s back is turned.

It is far, far easier to worship a Messiah than to actually listen to what they say and, God forbid, actually modify your actions or restrict your behaviours.

I mean, we worship Jesus because he was such a great guy for saying all those nice things about like, the poor or whatever. Wow, what a champ.

And even when people do change their behaviours, they find it way easier to simply follow a particular set of rules rather than actually try to live by the principles those rules are meant to express.

And those rules are always childishly simplistic. Don’t eat that. Don’t touch yourself there. Go to this place and sit still and pretend to listen once a week.

OK, this we can do. But don’t tell us not to be hateful, divisive, and judgmental, because that would require changing who we are, and that’s no fun.

And hate is fun! You get to feel all righteous and vent all of your latent anger at a convenient outgroup and even pretend that it makes you holy to feel that way when it’s pretty much the exact opposite of everything Jesus taught.

Yes, I could start my own Christian reform movement.

And it would be all about bringing Christians back to Jesus.

More after the break.

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We’ll talk about this ingroup

So what is the case for your ingroup to stop hating an outgroup?

Because from the ingroup’s point of view, there’s no downside. They get to shift all the blame for all their troubles onto people who conveniently not in the room with them and therefore can be construed to be whatever makes hating them more satisfying and you never actually see any of them get hurt by it so it’s all good, right?

I mean, sure, this is technically unfair and Jesus probably would not approve, but He is not here either so who cares?

He’s a wimpy liberal faggot with anti-Christian views anyhow. Screw him.

The problem is that the case against hate is inherently transpersonal. It requires an appeal to transpersonal values that say it is wrong to hate another based on whatever group we assign them even if that group is of vastly inferior status to our own and therefore kicking them around seems, at least to part of us, perfectly harmless fun and a sign that all is right in the world.

After all, everything is harmless if you don’t think of its victims as people.

Hence the arc of justice being a long and difficult struggle to remind people over and over again that all humans are people. That’s why they’re called “human rights”.

No matter what group we assign them too, people are still people, as valid and deserving of good treatment as you are, and absolutely nothing can change that.

Including the actions of the individuals of said group. Nothing anyone in said group does can do anything at all to alter the rights of the individuals in that group.

Group punishment for individual actions is always wrong.

Groups can’t commit crimes because groups aren’t even real. They are imaginary categories we sort people into in order to make dealing with the masses of humanity around us easier. They have no other reality.

All in all, at the end of the day, there’s just people. People just like you, with hopes and dreams and personalities and preferences and life stories just as real and valid and important and worthy of moral consideration as your own.

Remember that when approached by people claiming they have found a loophole in human rights that makes it okay to hate any group, no matter how easy it is to get away with hating that group because nobody will defend them.

There are no loophole.

Everybody is people.

And you are just going to have to learn to live with that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.