More Weird Tales From the Religious Kook
May 12th, 2009Ignore Him and He’ll Go Away
Apparent coincidence is one of the hallmarks of effective Christian living. The deeper you get into your faith, and the more trust you put in God, the more weird things happen.
Here are a couple new ones, from my life.
Last week, I got an email from a guy who sells machine tools. I ignored it, because I figured I was being spammed. Also, he had a Millrite listed for over two thousand dollars, which suggested his prices were not too good. I didn’t realize a regular reader of this blog knew this guy, and he had told him about me.
Later on, I got on Ebay, looking for a 4-jaw lathe chuck. I needed an L00 mount, and I needed an 8″ chuck. This is the usual size for a 12″ lathe, which is what I have. A seller had an unused (new old stock) Skinner chuck from a 13″ South Bend, and he also had a back plate. We negotiated, and I bought the parts. I got a good deal, and I didn’t have to buy Asian or used. Guess who the seller is? The guy who emailed me. Out of the hundreds or thousands of people on Ebay selling machine tool parts and tooling, I found him.
What does it mean? I don’t know. It must mean something. It’s not a small coincidence. Many, many people sell lathe chucks on Ebay.
Second story. Last week, I received two self-defense DVDs from Gunvideo.com. Looks like good stuff. But I didn’t order it! Some guy named Ray did. His name was on the invoice. I figured someone who meant well had taken the kind but somewhat creepy step of finding out my real name and where I lived, and that he had sent me the DVDs as a present. Either that, or it was a gay stalker.
I decided to email the people at Gunvideo. They said there was a screwup. I had ordered something from them a year ago, and this Ray person owned the company that produced it. They had it drop-shipped to me from his company. Then recently he ordered something from them, and somehow my address ended up in the ship-to box. They said they’re still trying to figure it out. But they told me to keep the DVDs.
I keep feeling like I’m supposed to have guns and tools. I can’t figure it out. I wonder what’s on those DVDs.
When you’re a Christian and you live by faith, your life becomes like the Bible. Almost everything in it has meaning. It makes it harder to be disappointed or rattled or angry. When something goes wrong, instead of getting mad, you think, “There must be a reason for this. I wonder what it is.” And you look forward to finding out, which usually happens.
This is often extremely irritating to non-Christians, even though there is nothing aggressive or inherently provocative about it. It should elicit no negative response whatsoever. Why should it anger you that another person takes misfortune well? Marcus Aurelius found the complacency of Christian martyrs annoying, and he increased their suffering because of it. Why is it so aggravating to non-believers? I would say, but that would aggravate them even more. Most Christians know; I don’t have to tell them.
Christianity is funny. It looks better from inside than outside. Even backslidden Christians who should remember how rewarding it is tend to forget, and they dread returning. I was there; I know.
May 13th, 2009 at 1:26 AM
That’s one thing that’s always made me scratch my head: the vitriolic and angry rhetoric you get out of so many militant atheists. These people talk about Christians or Christianity as though they were some danger to society. Maybe that’s true, eh?
If we really are so full of beans, why not just ignore us? Why go to such extreme lengths to discredit or condemn our beliefs?
They can’t understand why we don’t react as they think we should…and this makes us “weird.” Perhaps there is an element of cognitive dissonance at play…they wish they could have the same grace under pressure, but don’t want to have to address the issue of HOW we get it, for it would involve a change in their worldview.
Thus it’s easier to condemn or marginalize..try to influence us to conform to their worldview instead of investigating the merits of ours.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:23 AM
It’s a little sad, watching someone try to condemn the “evils” of Christianity. Usually, they refer to things that happened centuries ago, or they complain about Catholics having too many babies (ignoring the atheist Chinese), or they point out that we sometimes make it less convenient for confused women to kill their own unborn children. There is such a thing as praising with faint condemnation.
.
As villains, Christians are extremely disappointing.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:51 AM
I know! You’re supposed to be the next Tony Stark, aka Iron Man! Or maybe not. If you want to build me an exo-skeleton, I’m all for it. Or a wheelchair van. I’m not picky.
I think I’ll have to rent Iron man now.
–Brad
May 13th, 2009 at 12:44 PM
One explanation is that misery loves company. You know how it is when unhappy people encounter happy people — nine times out of ten the unhappy person does not feel a lift, but in fact resents the happy people for being so happy. And of course the roots of that are vanity and pride (“My feelings matter the most! Everyone should be paying attention to ME and worrying about ME!”) Etc.
Another explanation is the liberal bullshit idea that has permeated society that everyone should be “passionate.” That doesn’t mean be able to make love really well. (Liberals suck in the sack because they’re so miserable and conflicted. Or so I’ve heard.) Anyway, some time ago — some people say this began with Rousseau and his philosophy of the superiority of “natural” emotions over “unnatural” reason — people started to believe that restrained, polite, calm behavior was bad, and unrestrained emotional reactions to every damn thing was healthy. Of course, they also still had the natural human tendency to prefer feeling good over feeling bad — but now they felt entitled to it. Thus they also began to believe that any adverse thing that happened in their lives was not simply a misfortune to be borne but the Worst! Thing! Ever! and also Injustice! And one couldn’t fight Injustice! with calm reason and acceptance, but lots of shouting and anger and flinging about and protests and such.
The worst thing to this sort of mindset is something they call “complacency,” which they equate with the way humanity coped with various atrocities throughout the ages. Why did slavery last so long everywhere, even in the most civilized societies? Complacency! Why did it take so long for Europe to recover from the fall of Rome (that is, climb out of the “Dark Ages”)? Complacency! See, people just “accepted” that things were the way they were, and that as long as they were all right with that there was no need to change, and anyway it was wrong to get upset about things because that was disruptive and would make everyone realize that they were being Oppressed! And so on. While there might be more than a little truth to the idea that people tended to prefer accepting their fate to fighting it, this mindset discounts the fact that 1) difficulty just coping with everyday survival is the default state of humanity despite the blip of super-easy life we currently have in our corner of the Earth, and that even here most people are doing all they can just to hang on, and quite frankly don’t have the time or the resources to end slavery or free all women from their male oppressor chains or whatever; and 2) all the shrieking emotionalism of the past two hundred or so years (I’m going back to Rousseau) has mostly made things worse, and any good that was done was mostly done by people who calmed down and approached problems using reason, faith, and a lot of hard, tedious work.
That doesn’t explain Marcus Aurelius, though. He was, after all, a Stoic, and they were exactly the champions of uninhibited emotional display. What irritated him and those like him about the Christian martyrs’ calm acceptance of their treatment is that they made the Romans look like idiots. Part of Rome’s reputation was built on the terror and despair they could inflict upon their enemies and dissidents because they (the Romans) were known for having no problem going all the way when it came to bringing the ultimate pain and destruction. When faced by death by horrible torture the response of the martyr was supposed to be “oh shit, I didn’t realize how stupid I was to take on these badasses,” and there was supposed to be a lot of repentance in the form of satisfying crying and pleading to the Romans, who had been assured of being toppest of top dogs, to be merciful. But the Christian martyr’s response was instead, “thank you for sending me to God and also giving me the chance to display that your so-called terror-inducing ooh big scary Romans treatment doesn’t mean shit. Also your gods are pants. Bye!” Put yourself in the place of a Roman emperor who looked forward to being made a god after death, or perhaps even before. Wouldn’t that just piss you off?
May 13th, 2009 at 1:22 PM
I only get put off by the people who are overly focused on ‘God did this’ as to everything.
I recall giving some kids something (I don’t recall what it was precisely) and the stereotypical religious homeschooler mom making the grand fuss about ‘what the Lord provided for them’ without recalling to thank me (the kids seemed to have a better handle on that than mom). Yes, God is behind everything that happens in some fashion – but when someone does something particularly nice for you, that person ought to be thanked too.