I went to Catholic catechism as a child and one of the few things I remember was Jesus washing other people's feet. I like the humility of that and it inspires me to want to do acts of service
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Me too, this is one of the main things that stuck with me. Honestly, idk how to think of myself except in relation to my service to community, it has really shaped my entire experience of the world.
We washed a person's feet before doing a special religious service project. Essentially like you said, to humble the self and focus on the act and God. Of course the project was really bad in terms of morality but I do think ritual aspects of religion feel nice. As someone said, people are cultural and engaging in acts and symbolism feels good.
I wasn't raised very religious.
I do think some of the stuff from the Christian Bible would be great if people followed it.
- pray in private, not where people can see you
- help other people. Like, go read the good Samaritan again. It's not long. That dude goes way the fuck out of his way to help someone he's never met. And some people do some fucking intense mental backflips to justify "no it's a metaphor man you don't have to like actually go near a poor person
- you'll be judged by how you treat the least among you. Yeah, anyone can be nice to their friends, or suck up to wealthy. But how you treat the poor and vulnerable? That's telling.
Part of what makes the religious right in the US so infuriating is they spend so much time being mad about gay people and comparably no time on poverty.
Every mega church should be condemned as heretical and repurposed as housing or something for the needy.
But yeah, not eating beef is a moral issue I deal with. I mean, I don't care that I don't eat beef, but the fact that I eat pork and chicken but not beef seems to me to be weird. So, is there any religious practice that you guys follow to this day?
No more half measures walter
go vegan
Also, I am not having as much effect on the environment by eating meat. I eat once or max twice every month. Not every day like some americans (soap opera americans)
The american expectation is to have meat with every meal. Bacon/sausage with breakfast, ham sandwich with lunch, then a roast or steaks for dinner.
Americans will literally view a plate of food without meat as a snack. Like, its not a meal unless there is meat. Meat is very inexpensive here because soy and corn are heavily subsidized. All animal products are roughly half the price of what they would be without the subsidies.
go vegan
nah I love meat! Can't live without it. I thought I would eat factory manufactured meat, but that sounds like just a bunch of fucking chemicals bunched into one. I thought they would just grow meat like in the lab, but no. Pretty misleading ads out there.
Can't live without it
Yes you can.
In a way, I try to live my life so that if some kind of higher power existed, they'd think I am a good person. Not as a gambit to get into heaven or whatever, I don't believe in that. But trying to imagine an objective arbiter of morality makes it easier to take myself out of the equation, which means I'm more likely to treat others as I want to be treated.
I refuse to believe that a being incalculable in power and knowledge, omnipotent, able to see both the past and the future, is somehow, according to what religious people want you to believe, burdened by what we humans experience as emotions or morality.
Why?
I donβt know why your comment was downvoted when I got to it. Itβs a perfectly valid question. To claim in incomprehensible being wouldnβt do any given thing is just as objectively baseless as claiming that they would do that thing.
How a being of inordinate power and knowledge even exists would 'feel' or 'think' is indeed incomprehensible to us. It's hubris to believe an entity with the power to create a universe could look down, at a single point in time, at a single place in the universe, and think "I'm really angry that creature masturbated" or "That woman showed her face in public, well she's dead to me now".
And that's exactly what religion wants us to believe. That we're somehow special in the universe, and there's some grand entity that watches over every single little thing we do throughout the blip of our lives in the eternity of the cosmos. It's honestly fucking bonkers.