Disclaimer: Part 1) As I am writing this, I am in a church. Part 2) I have been a christian all my life, and I do believe in God. 3) No. I don't capitalize 'christian.' I don't know why. Why are you looking for logic in Polly Rambles?
So I woke up this morning with a funny taste in my head, and spackled some butter over some whole-grain bread. Something tasted different. Maybe it was my tongue. Something tasted different and wait that's an Ingrid Michaelson song and not the point of this blog.
So I woke up this morning and thought about a lady who at one point went to our church and willingly protected her child-abuser husband and the rest of the church doesn't bring her up any more.
But she taught Sunday School here for many years, which I was forced by my parents to go to.
And I was thinking about some of the classes that she taught. One of her classes was about witchcraft and things that draw us away from God.
During this class, after she told us that everyone who didn't believe as she believed was going to hell,* we got on the topic of tarot cards and divination.
Now I happen to use cartomancy** a lot when I have stressful problems that I need to work out. I have a deck of cards that I use for nothing but cartomancy, and I frequently will pull them out and use them to help me think over my problems. I've done this for probably about 5 years now, which meant a good 3-something years at the time that this conversation took place.
One of the basic beliefs in all forms of divination is that there is a message and it is coming from another, external force. It's not JUST from you, it's not a fun parlor trick, there is a message and it is coming from something.
So this lady who we're going to call Z got all on EVERYONE WHO USES TAROT CARDS CALLS UPON THE DEVIL TO TELL THEM THE FUTURE! And I was kind of like "hahaha no."
But that's one of the reasons that people hate christians. We tend to make snap decisions based on little to no information, and then assume that we're better than other people. Which we aren't.
So here's where I talk about religion for a while.
I believe that you should use religion to define how you live as a person. Christianity preaches acceptance of everyone, and forgiveness of other's wrongs so that your wrongs may be forgiven. I believe that that is so much more important than the question of if there is an afterlife or not, and whether or not I will be among God's chosen when the rapture comes. I believe that, if there is an afterlife, living a life of acceptance and forgiveness will do more for me on my path to Heaven than I will by forcing all of my friends to go to church with me and preaching all the time about how I am a christian and the Bible says we should stone the homosexuals so yeah let's go do that.
As for the whole cartomancy is anti-christian, I don't see how assigning meanings to playing cards and using them to help you realize something about yourself and the situation and extrapolate from that to help determine the future is any different from opening up the Bible to a random passage and using that to give you enlightenment about yourself and your current situation. I believe that both of those signs can come from the same god.
Anyone who believes in an all-powerful god cannot say that said god cannot speak to them in a certain way. I believe that my God can do anything. If he wants to talk to me through Tarot cards, he fine well can. As long as it does not go against the two most basic beliefs of my religion, "Love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself," then I think pretty much everything is a message from God. If it's not serving as a shining example, it's just as easy to serve as a terrible warning.
Okay, I'm not making sense anymore, just heard that I was sent the wrong mounts for my car AGAIN, and now I'm too angry to figure out what I was trying to say there, so I'm going to go write a pissy post on my car's blog, and then watch Farscape. #Mondays
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*Not her exact words, but that was what she was saying. "The Bible says that the only way to heaven is to believe in Jesus, so everyone who is Jewish or Wiccan or Muslim is going to hell."
**To define terms here, when I use the term "cartomancy" I am speaking of basically tarot readings with regular playing cards and not actual tarot cards.
"I believe that God is all-encompassing, and it is a common mistake for people to limit the ways in which he speaks to us. If he wants to speak to you through anime, why not?"
ReplyDeleteThat is entirely paraphrased, but it's sort of what you said to me on August 3rd of last year... still one of the more formative days of my life.