RE: "The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us..." should we be grateful?
July 20, 2015 at 2:41 pm
(This post was last modified: July 20, 2015 at 2:41 pm by Whateverist.)
(July 20, 2015 at 2:13 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Now to address your "separating what people think about religion from what they think about you", here's what I think.
Let's say I think Ugg boots are the most hideous, ridiculous article of clothing I have ever seen. Not only that, but I think they are also bad because they use wool from sheep who are treated very very badly.
Let's say I have a friend who loves them and wears them ALL the time.
Should me thinking Ugg boots are awful be offenssive to her? Obviously not.
Should it be offensive to her if I sat down with her and respectfully told her I think they just don't look good on her and I'm against them because they are attached to inhumane treatment of animals? Also, no.
But if I pointed at her, and laughed, and said some nasty stuff like "why the hell are you wearing those God awful f---ing boots?? They look ridiculous, and apparently you're ok with the mistreatment of animals, which makes me sick!"
If she got offended by this, would it be reasonable for me to say "Hey, what's your problem?? I wasn't making fun of you, just your clothes!"
This makes perfect sense. But I'd be likely to respond differently (than the part bolded) if she is really a good friend of mine and the poor treatment of animals thing really bothered me a lot. At first I'd simply tell her what I understood about the way the sheep were treated where those boots were made. If she continued to wear them when we met I'd up my game. Rather than lose her number or decide her apparent indifference to my fellow creatures was alright I'd probably nudge her with little barbed verbal jabs. I might, for example, occasionally ask her if she heard it too. When she asked me what, I'd say I keep hearing the screaming of lambs and then look wistfully at her boots. After that, assuming I still liked her, it might just become an occasional joke between us. I might pretend to be hearing something but then carry on without an overt comment. I might look at her boots and wince. But it wouldn't be a nonstop sort of thing. Just an occasional nudge whenever the thought "how can it be that .." crossed my mind. Otherwise I'd just go on enjoying what I liked about her to begin with and let it go.