This post could be considered Part 2 of my Ego And Insecurity post I want to talk about “Those People”. These are the ones that you find in every social, business, and political situation. Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems the worst, the most noticeable, are to be found in religion.
These are the people who, to feel good, have to make others feel bad. For them to stand tall, it must be on the bodies of their enemies and rivals, or at least on top of those they feel inferior to them – pretty much everybody. For them to be the biggest frog, they just shrink the pond – exclude, exclude, exclude!
I laughed –behind my hand, and behind the back of – one young new-age New Order Mennonite lad that I worked with. He was a member of a very elite, very select, break-away sect, comprised of all of 15 members, believing that they, and they alone, knew the road to Heaven, and possessed the keys to the holy gates when they got there. They were SO different – just like all the others.
The logical end to these exclusionary beliefs and actions, lies with a population of one, the solitary psychopath, who believes that only he counts, and the rest of the world is there for him to do with as he wishes. Evangelical Christianity is therefore but one short step away from both insanity and criminal behavior, and a disturbing number use their religion, to justify committing the others.
It was not a great surprise that there is a term to describe the actions and attitudes I’ve previously observed and written about. I was somewhat disappointed that I’d reached almost the age of 70, before I found out what it is. I was greatly disturbed that it was my ancestors (great thinkers they) who produced it, and I was not aware!
It is known as the, “No True Scotsman Theorem.” No True Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge! Wait a minute, I put sugar on my porridge. That just proves my point. You’re not a true Scotsman. Christianity is the religion of love and peace. What about the Crusades, and the Inquisition? Well, those weren’t True Christians. If you own the definition, you can’t be wrong.
An eight-year-old girl was expelled from a Catholic school in California, because she didn’t fit the board’s definition of what a girl was. She was a tom-boy, who wanted to play ball, and wrestle in the mud. She wanted to dress in sweatshirts and jeans. They wanted her in skirts and pink dresses. She was accused of “gender confusion” because she wanted to go into the boys’ washroom – probably just curious, but the curiosity was more dangerous to the status quo than the non-existent sexual content.
The board denied the gender and dress-code accusations, and said that the reason she was expelled, was that she didn’t follow rules – which is true. When you write the rules, and seize the definitions, she couldn’t be a “True Catholic,” or a “True Girl.” Another Catholic elementary school quickly accepted her – but they probably weren’t “True Catholics” either.
The wife and I watch a number of British Television series on a specialty channel. Last fall we got a new one we liked, imported all the way from Australia, titled Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, set in about 1930.
Miss Fisher is a 30ish, flapper-girl, monied Aussie, exempt from the worst of the beginning American Depression. She is very intelligent, and independent-minded, like the little girl above. She has joined a circus, traveled the world, learned self-defence, acquired a hammerless, gold-plated .45 calibre revolver, a nasty little garter-dagger, and come back to Melbourne to solve crimes.
She inherits a 20ish, sheltered, naïve, country-girl maid from a society woman she puts away for murder and drug smuggling. At a time when Australia was PROTESTANT, this girl wears a tiny gold cross around her neck. The producers and writers apparently like to point out religious hypocrisies, contradictions and exclusions.
The young police constable wants to get to know her, but quickly pulls back when he spots the gold cross – she might be Catholic. “Go ahead,” his Inspector urges him, “It’s not as if she has two heads!” “She might as well have, if my mother finds out.”
When she begins work for our heroine, she refuses to answer an often-ringing telephone. Her priest has told her that this new-fangled gadget is “un-natural,” the electricity leaks into the planet, and too much usage will cause the Earth to explode.
You can protest that this is just the strange opinion of only one man, but, he’s the infallible, heavenly-inspired, to-be-blindly-obeyed, man in a position of authority, who tells her what she may and may not do to ensure her everlasting soul going to Heaven .
One scene shows her going to bed, clad in her voluminous nightgown, kneeling by the side of her bed, saying her prayers, like a six-year-old. After asking God to protect the well-being of her parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins, her new employer and fellow servants, the butcher, and the penguins at the zoo – she finally gets around to asking Him to protect the handsome young Police Constable.
“And, if You have enough time, God, after doing all of that for me, I would really appreciate it if you could give Constable Collins a Sign – that You are Catholic.”
Archon's Den 