I hung out with my brother this weekend, spending some 5 hours with him in my little car putting between where we live and work and where my parents live and work. We butt heads a lot -- mostly over my belief that he's a major closet case -- but at least I'm not beating the snot out of him anymore.
He spends his summers working at a Christian summer camp, which he really enjoys. I'm a little jealous, because in my mind it means he gets paid to go to camp each summer, and I *mostly* enjoyed summer camp the years I went. We talked about his campers, and the activities, and the difference between the summer camp I went to in Texas ("Yay, we're all at camp! ... and we're all Christian, neat!") and the camp I went to after our family moved ("Yay, we're all Christian.... and we're outdoors!"). The camp he's working at is toward the middle ground, probably enough to make me feel uncomfortable if I were attending, but not make me feel uncomfortable about the way they're teaching others.
It came around to the fact that his roommate where he's living next year is atheist (or he assumes so, all he knows is roommate does not plan to go to church), and, while he doesn't want to hide his faith, he doesn't want to drive his roommate away, either-- because he's actually done that before and he doesn't want to be "That Guy."
We talked a lot about faith-- because he's clearly fairly devout and I left the church at 14-- and I have to say that should he reconsider entering the seminary, I'd vouch for him (as much as a heathen's opinion would count). He's a shining example, so far, of a hymn I liked way back when, the chorus of which was "They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love."
We talked about a local street preacher, who rails against everyone and everything with such regularity that a friend made bingo cards to pass out and host a game with his sermon (Gays, faith, free square, marriage, prayer! BINGO!). Apparently, last time the preacher was out, Xavier sat out with a dry erase board to quickly scribble "Ask me about God," "Ask me about that submission thing" and so forth, because the street preacher's problem is "a lack of gentleness." He told me about how, the preacher will rail about women needing to submit to their husbands, and my brother will tell the people who ask that, in context, that Bible verse is followed with an exhortation that a man should be willing to do anything to protect and care for his wife, to love his wife as Christ loved the Church.
He said that when the preacher packed up for the day, some of the hecklers waved him over to ask him what he thought of the sermon. "Well, you know... I believe, we're all on the same team, but some people just kick the ball backwards sometimes."
We talked about politics-- actually, I said to him, "Xav, you're fairly intelligent," ("Thank you, C," he says) "but... not to say you're stupid, but you're part of a religion that tends to have unintelligent opinions on this. Abortion, gay marriage. Go."
He took gay marriage first, acknowledged that he did think of marriage as a religious thing and that, by religion, it's one man and one woman. We went back and forth a little, about a secular definition and a religious definition and whose business it is, and he says that the government should be allowed to grant "togetherness" to any two consenting adults who want to sign up (for semantic purposes, he was calling this a civil union, I was calling it a marriage). And, he continued, churches and synagogues and what have you can grant togetherness to any consenting adults they want (he says marriage, i say wedding-age). However, never the twain shall meet-- a religious ceremony should have no bearing on custody, taxes, insurance, etc. If you want to get the civil ceremony and nothing else, cool. If you want to get the civil ceremony and a religious one on top, well, hey, that's cool too. If you want to get the religious ceremony with no civil ceremony, that's your prerogative, but don't expect survivor's benefits from social security or to be acknowledged in any other official instance.
Ideally, I said, it would have been like this in the first place, and then you wouldn't have churches trying to claim that they're just trying to protect themselves from being sued when they won't let gay couples wed there. "Yep," he said, with a facial expression of "too bad someone fucked it up." (except that Xav doesn't swear.)
We moved on to abortion -- Xav being who he is and me having worked with pro-reproductive-rights special interest groups.
He's big on "adoption is an option too," but he realises that it's not *always* an option. Apparently the oral Torah included the specific instruction that, up to the point a baby was halfway out, its mother's life trumped it-- being a life in action rather than a potential life. So, if the medicine available at the time could save one or the other, mother won. So, abortion for health reasons, he says he has no reason to be against. I could maybe have gotten his more specific beliefs about when it is/isn't okay if i kept going, but we got sidetracked by birth control.
Birth control he's in support of. We talked about methods, about how they work, that Plan B will actually not stop a pregnancy if the zygote's implanted, which he was surprised (and happy) to learn-- he feels he can support it now. After that, we talked about when life begins -- because he doesn't really feel comfortable trying to figure that out with no medical education, and because I feel that it's stupid to declare it at conception when more than 2/3 of pregnancies miscarry before 6 weeks. I said "God doesn't seem to think life begins before then," he countered with a Bible verse stating that "I was sinful from when I was first conceived,"-- but he still doesn't see that as foolproof evidence of life-at-conception, because, while humanity makes you sinful, does sinfulness make you human?
We talked about abstinence-only sex education, about the statistic that teens wait on average 9 months longer than tradition sex-ed students-- but then they don't use protection, either because they were never told about it, or because they were told it was ineffective. (I didn't tell him about this comic ) He said the main problem is that home and school each rely on the other to fill in the blanks, and the blanks aren't getting filled.
Upshot of the car-ride home:
Abstinence is ideal, but talk with your kid about the what-ifs.
Birth control prevents abortions. You can't say every sperm or every egg is sacred when your body will waste them anyway.
A woman's life always trumps the life of an unborn child (in the medical sense, not in the "but i won't get to go partyyyyy" sense).
Religious weddings and government-recognised togetherness should not be the same thing.
Women, obey your husbands, but husbands, love your wives.
You can preach without being acerbic, and will in fact win more hearts with gentleness.
You can practise your faith without being overbearing, because scaring away a roommate is not good PR for your religion.
Can't guarantee I'd convert, but I'd go to a church my brother preached at.
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Today's tidbit from work:
Coworker shows up late from her attempt to get court records. Apparently, "that twat at the courthouse" tells her that she needs case numbers. Coworker told her that she's always gotten them by name before, twat snottily responded "Well, we're about to close, and it'll take a long time to find them."
Coworker relating this: "I almost blew up on her, but then I thought, 'wait, no, Things Not to Do, blow up on someone in a courthouse.'"
