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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:26am on 2008-06-19

"[...] when I mentioned that Christianity has something to do with helping poor people, he slipped off into a rant about the power of God. Not that the poor were entirely God's responsibility or anything like that, just (as far as I can tell) that he didn't want to hear that his religion might oblige him to do something.

"I was too polite to tell him he had a hobby, not a religion."

[info] nancylebov, 2008-06-03 (responding to an earlier QotD)
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posted by [identity profile] browngirl.livejournal.com at 01:39pm on 2008-06-19
My roommate and I sometimes discuss the Bible and the differences in how we learned it, since I've read it in a translated translation and she's read it in the original Klingon. The other day we were discussing Psalm 37:25 ("I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread."), RSV) and I mentioned how I've heard it used to support the idea that poor people are getting just what God says they deserve, and material success is proof of righteousness. This reminded me of that (hence my mentioning it).
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posted by [identity profile] kolraashgadol.livejournal.com at 07:25pm on 2008-06-20
How to put this... I often get something similar from Jews who don't want to observe the obligations (Mitzvot "doing a mitzvah doesn't mean "good deed" or "nice thing" even though it's sometimes used that way colloquially. The word comes from the root TzVH which means "command") of Judaism, but just to pick and choose the things they like (oh, we light candles on shabbat, but the thing about not using money... well, it's just not realistic this day and age?" "Really? Then how come so many people *do* manage it?") Whether it's secular-ish Jews who don't want to refrain from certain kinds of work on Saturday, or feel that depriving themselves of shrimp cocktail or a cheeseburger will somehow ruin their lives, or whether it's "religious" Jews who think it's fine to eat meat from slaughterhouses where the worker conditions aren't as described as we're obliged to treat workers (we have an entire tractate of a major canonical work called the Talmud that is devoted to employer employee relations), it totally grinds me: as she says, it's not a religion, it's a hobby.
As the Mishnah says, "You are not required to finish the task, but neither have you leave to abstain from beginning it."
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