Saturday, November 13, 2004

Oh Dear Me

Someone has emailed me about the flippant comment I made about Hinduism a couple of days back. I was completely shocked when I got it, but reading the post again, I suppose I was horribly full of Christian dogma when I made it. I said that the images created to represent their belief(s) would induce me to queasiness if I were around them all the time. True, they would. But it’s not because I can’t respect their faith, or because I believe my God is the one true God ( it’s nonsense anyway, we are living on the same earth, so we must therefore have the same creator).

I’ve just be raised to dislike sculptures with human/animal likenesses on them. I grew up believing they had real spirits in their hand-painted eyes, and I still do believe they are inhabited with spirits. I know it’s fucked up a normally rational person (that is, if you think I’m normally rational in the first place) can presume such things, but hey, commonsense is really just a collective of prejudices we accumulate over the course of our lives. I can’t help having these prejudices despite the fact that I think they (the sculpture and the art) are beautiful creations from a completely aesthetical sense.

I have nothing against there having been multiple representations of God, and I think it’s wrong of my parents to have ingrained in me the sense that all multiple representations of God are false, and are thus idols. If you really want to look at it in that way, Christianity is really kinda polytheistic in it’s own right (it’s the holy trinity after all… and Christ was as much a man as you and I, only just more Godly, but nonetheless).

This is tiresome. I have got too much work to do, but I felt compelled to explain some things. I hope I have insulted no one else by doing so. Gah.

Religion is a pain. Just believe what you believe and don’t put down anyone else for theirs. It was never my intention to do so!

Xoxox

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