What is a Friend

Friends are folks that despite yourself
Are beside you, buoyant as can be.
Like family, but not quite the same
'Cause they fell from a different tree.

No need to judge a friend or argue;
He's not your cousin or brother.
Accepting differences between you and me
Requires no common mother.

--Me

Sorry for the cheesy poetry. I occasionally get the urge to wax poetic and I am going to blame it on my gay dad. His execution is just more refined than mine.

I don't have a lot of friends. Well, at least not close ones. I did get an email from a friend that I haven't seen since I stopped going to church saying we should have lunch sometime. I was curious to know if it was because he missed our snarky conversations at the back of the primary room or if he was prompted by someone at church to reach out again to the less active. After I asked myself the question, I think I have to go with the former because he doesn't really seem the type to reach out if he doesn't want to.

Lunch confirmed it. He just wanted to say hi and catch up a bit. It was very nice and refreshing. Not to mention good food too. He didn't ask why he hasn't seen me at church more than twice in the last year. We talked about work, vacation, houses, kids, etc. All safe topics. I don't know if he was itching to talk about my apostasy or not, but this is a thank-you note because he didn't.

Leaving the church was a pretty easy decision for me. Once I made up my mind, I feel like I am fairly OUT. But telling people never really got easier. I haven't really told any of my friends that I am not that close to. Most of my friends from BYU don't know that I am an atheist (or agnostic or whatever). It doesn't really come up. And I don't feel it is really that important to our relationship (not that I am really *close* with most of my facebook friends). So I carry on not telling people. If anyone asks, I won't hold back, but not even friends from church that I have talked to ask. In a way, that helps me because our friendship should not be based on religion or theology. I don't ask any of them if they believe in the flying spaghetti monster. And I don't care.

Maybe it's not telling friends that is difficult. The hard part is bringing it up in the first place. Why is it so hard to talk about that 900 lb. gorilla that is standing next to me?

Comedy v. Tragedy

God's sense of humor is very different from our own.
He does not laugh at the simple
"man walks into a bar" joke. No, God needs
complex irony and subtle farcical twists
that seem macabre to you and me.
All that we can hope for is that God
God got his good laugh and
a tragedy such as this will never happen again.

--South Park (Season 7, Episode 10, Grey Dawn)

After I finished watching all 16 available seasons of South park, I thought I should mention one of the more striking quotes. When I watched season 7, it was much closer to the Newtown, CT, massacre than now. But I still think the quote is applicable. Trey Parker and Matt Stone both say they are not atheist, but they do freely poke at all things, including religion. I think that is a fairly healthy habit to do; poke and prod at things that don't make sense.

Anyhow, this episode was about old people driving cars and killing people. But really, any tragedy, disaster, terrorist attack, etc. will work fine in this situation. If you believe in God, it makes it very hard to explain some of these tragic events. How could a loving God allow that kind of stuff to happen to His children? The LDS theology says that He cannot interfere with mankind's agency, so bad things happen because of bad people. But that doesn't account for natural disasters. Do they happen because of bad people too? I suppose some of the stuff in scripture did. That does not sound like much of a loving God; vengeful, jealous, and hateful, more like. You know, the kind of God that this quote so aptly describes.

I personally reject the notion of a God that is just messing with us. I refuse to worship such a being. I also reject the notion of a God that supposedly loves us and yet allows such terrible things to happen. Hell, I am a mere mortal and can get my kids to not kill each other. I can teach them love, respect, honesty, and all manner of goodness BECAUSE I AM HERE. God would get a lot farther in His desires for all mankind to worship his great name if he were physically here doing good things for His children that He supposedly loves.

In the meantime, I will just have to give credit for all the terrible things that happen on this planet to the same place I give credit for all the wonderful things that happen: mankind. We as a species span the spectrum from unbelievably horrible to spectacularly wonderful. And I will attribute to any God the same credit I give to Santa Claus: nothing.