christians get crapped on because we’re nice…

roland emmerich is afraid of fatwa(link)

i’m not into religion bashing. just not my thing. what people choose to believe in is their choice. i’m a practicing christian (who, admittedly, fails at it a lot), so i understand the need to believe in someone/something. i also understand people who get a little testy when others bring religion up, especially in cases of people pushing the issue when it’s not warranted — i once picked a fight with two unsolicited mormons who came by the house and told me jesus was wrong.

what?

so, when a coworker asked me to sing imagine by john lennon with her at a karaoke joint, i declined. i didn’t want to imagine a world where my God didn’t exist. sorry, no thanks. and i didn’t want to imagine a world without faith, hope, or beliefs because someone felt offended by some joker with a few screws loose who decides to wage a war in some god’s name. faith, along with hope and love, is a human right. let’s imagine people didn’t love. then, we wouldn’t have people like that astronaut(link) who took a 900-mile road trip wearing a diaper to kidnap her lover’s other lover.

we should ban love. it hurts people too.

there has been a tremendous backlash against religion. when i say religion, i mean christianity. nobody says buddha’s name in vain. that’s not a swastika on bad religion’s cross buster t-shirt. when yoko ono ripped pages out of a religious book, it wasn’t the koran. (she did apologize somewhat by saying she was spreading the message of God, but a part of me thinks she’s being sarcastic.)

and when the movie 2012 comes out, you’ll get to see the vatican roll on top of believers, and you’ll also see the christ the redeemer statue disintegrate because roland emmerich of independence day, godzilla, and the day after tomorrow fame is against organized religion. he is, however, afraid of fatwas which means he won’t be killing a bunch of muslims in some sort of ironic twist in his newest movie.

i see a lot of ironies in this. emmerich is taking advantage of a situation where people of a specific religion (christianity), who are for the most part peaceful, won’t do more than protest him for being hateful towards their beliefs. after all is said and done, emmerich might get a few calls and rude emails from some concerned christians, but he won’t, however, tempt the muslim religious leaders into ordering his death via fatwa. nope. emmerich and his writer didn’t want to offend any muslim leaders who couldn’t see a fictional movie for what it really is. i am in agreement that no one should die because of a movie, and i’m not going to call emmerich a coward for not wanting to offend muslims. i will call call him a coward for offending everyone else who believes in something. we are all entitled to our own opinions, and we are free under the first amendment to express them. we’re also free to hold others accountable when they use those rights for selfish gain.

probably the most ironic thing about this is that the same amendment that gives emmerich the right to offend my faith gave me the right to have faith.