To Whom It May Concern

If The Aliens Say It, It Must Be True!!!

I guess today's post is going to tie in with my spirituality post from yesterday. The Baptist church I belonged to all thru junior high and high school would send young couples overseas or to central america to third world countries in order to 'spread the gospel' to those who had 'no opportunity to see the light'. Missionary work seems to be a big part of a lot of churches, trying hard to spread the word to as many people as possible about thier religion, hoping to convert them, to 'save' them.

There is a real serious problem with missionary work, however. Let's say you get up in the morning, walk out your front door, and suddenly there is a UFO landing in your yard, and these beings that look human get out, and they start talking to you, and you can see that they are obviously more advanced in culture and technology than you are, they have incredible gadgets and devices that you can only guess as to what they are for. After awhile these beings start talking to you about a religion, a religion that is the real way to get to heaven, and you think to yourself, "wow, you know, these people are dressed so futuristic, they have so much technology, they must know more than I do, I have to follow thier religion, it has to be the right way!"

This is basically the situation you have with missionary work. People go into these tribes or villages where the people have nothing, sometimes showing up by airplane, other times by boat, always dressed differently, with cell phones and lap tops and what not, and the people they are preaching to many times aren't converting based on the religion itself, more so they convert based on the look of those who are doing the converting, and this is why I can't support missionary work at all.

Now, if people wanted to show up wearing the same clothing as those in the tribe they are trying to preach to, with the same way of life and eating and what not, I might not have such a problem with this. Of course this brings to mind some very funny thoughts, of the bare breasted missionary woman and her spear chucking husband, but non the less, I think you see my point. I realize that a lot of time missionaries are also bringing valuable information about medicine, agriculture, etc, into these remote locations, but I still can't subscribe to the notion that it's a fair way of converting new believers. Heck, even the medicine and agriculture advances are a hinderance when it comes to impartial teachings of a religion because those advances show a superiority of those doing the teaching, and it's hard to separate that from the idea of the religion itself.

I wanted to get into a little side note here, because it's not actually missionary work, but those people who picket abortion clinics really irritate the hell out of me. You have young women making the hardest decision of thier lives, and these people are in thier face, calling them 'murderer' and 'you are going to hell for this you baby killing bastard', they are in the girl's face, spittle flying they are so ademant and insanely driven to try and stop what they see as the worst thing ever.

Yes, I'm against abortion, but like I said before, who without sin among you is there, to cast that stone? The worst I have heard about was a few weeks back where there was an antiabortion group taking pictures of young women entering an abortion clinic and they were posting the pictures on a website, a horrible breach of privacy, it's unconceivable that anyone could find anything righteous about doing something like that.

Then I watch the media paint these anti abortionists as 'typical conservative christians' and I want to toss a hammer into my television, they are anything BUT typical, they are extremists, and they are no better than left wing liberals like the National Organization for Women, they do things that are just as ridiculous, just a diffferent agenda. Most conservative christians have a great deal of moderation within themselves and aren't going to be on the roadside showing pictures of mutilated babies and what not, but those that do certainly make the rest of us look horrible.