The following quoted item appeared in my local newspaper earlier today.
In this week’s (our religious columnist) explores how students at (world-famous local engineering institution) are engineering their own faith community.
For example, members of the (school) Christian Fellowship would blanket an entire dorm area and engage students there to talk about Jesus and Christianity.
In case you ever need to cite an example of arrogance or religious fanaticism, simply quote the above article.
Proselytizing is just a few inevitable steps away from forcing changes in laws to conform to “the revealed truth” and attempts to control everyone else’s life-choices and habits in the name of their version of their God’s Laws. The sequence is as inevitable as the stink that follows a fart. The only person it smells good to is the one who launches it.
1) Today “Revealed Truth”;
2) Tomorrow, “censorship of filthy books”;
3) The next day, “women must cover their licentious hair.”
The impulse to cajole everyone else into the same system of belief is a fundamentally dishonest one that can never come to any good end. This is the same impulse that has our nation wasting the flower of our youth and throwing away our reputation and treasury on “building democracy” in nations that did not ask for it and have no internal hunger for it.
When an idea has truth, people will seek it. They do not need to be “blanketed.”
Has any one noticed that while we are destroying Iraq (and ourselves) in an obviously failed attempt at “nation building” we have not needed a single USA soldier on the ground to cause Egyptians to stand up and take their own place in the sun as a democratic society? Likewise, other than setting good example, what military action did we take to encourage Liberty in Liberia, Syria, Yemen and other nations whose people are now at the barricades?
When did anyone invade Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc. to force the collapse of Communism from its own internal rot, spurred on by the yearning of its people for freedom?
Did any American soldier march into Dublin to help free Ireland from hundreds of years of brutal foreign repression and religious bigotry?
And so, how is it that any religion thinks it is honest and respectful to nag, harass, bother and “blanket” people into unsolicited conversions?
Shame on them. And shame on this newspaper for printing such drivel.