My Penance for Warm Winters

This is just a little present I found attached to my dad's mailbox. I certainly will "keep this flyer for future reference." Now I know exactly whom to not contact if I need pressure washing or cosmetics. I wonder if Avon allows the inclusion of religious tracts in their reps' advertising.
This whole thing has sooo much wrong with it I don't even know where to start. Okay, here's a good place. This tract is equating AIDS with sin. Sure, it says we are all sinners because we are all born that way, but who really reads these things carefully?

And is advertising for your business really the best way to proselytize? It's one thing to put the "Smile God Loves You" on your flyer, but including a tract?

I suppose the "Smile God Loves You" is meant to brighten your day. The believers can look at it and be reminded (if they feel that way) to be happy in their lives because even though their marriage is breaking up, their kids are in trouble, they've lost their job, and their mother has some painful, terminal illness, at least God loves them. Even if no one else does. Even if He sends them these trials while the neighbors don't go to church and seem to be enjoying prosperity and laughing a lot.

The unbelievers can feel a stab in the eyeball and have a nervous tic the rest of the day ... or perhaps they scan the document, redact any personal info, and post it on a blog thinking they are making it look ridiculous. That would only work, I suppose, if anyone actually read the blog.

It seems long ago and far away that things religious did not annoy me. I laughed at alleged "Buddhists" in Massachusetts who hailed me on the street and tried to tell me that if I chanted "Ohmanipadmahummm" over and over that I would get what I desired. The thought of using religion to get material goods was repugnant to me, but one nut on the street did not make me want to not say "Happy Dhamma Day!" and spin a wheel for Buddhist friends (okay, friend singular). I put up a Christmas tree, wished people "Happy Christmas!" (Where appropriate), and got all teary over the story of the Passion. It's a good story.

Then I moved back to the south and things changed. My elderly mother was harassed by other old ladies who told her she would burn in hell. Everywhere I go, gatherings are begun with Christian prayers. For years I bowed politely out of respect, but now it's starting to get on my nerves. I've started asking for the "Eid" stamps at the post office to put on my greeting cards. I put Hanukkah stamps on the "Season's Greetings" cards I send to Jewish friends and still get "Why are you sending me a Christmas card when you know perfectly well I'm Jewish?" messages back. I'm beginning to understand that. (Not totally, Alex - since there was no reference to Christmas, Christ, or even Santa on that card!) I feel like a minority here and each reminder of it raises my hackles.

I think everyone should live for a while as a minority. We should send southerners to California, maybe, and make them listen to that New Age piffle for a year or so and then debrief them. "So, Mrs. Knotwattle, how did that make you feel? Are you any more inclined to use crystals and prayer wheels in your life?"
Extreme beliefs beget opposite extreme beliefs.

And I haven't even gotten started on that tract. It never ceases to amaze me how Christians can side-step what Jesus actually said and go back to the Old Testament and pull verses out of context. Love the Lord with all your heart ... and give away all your riches, that's the baseline. Don't go mining another religion's ancient texts for juicy bits and making up arcane rigmarole to keep the sheep in line or scare up more converts.

This tract is intentionally inflammatory. Comparing sin to AIDS is not clever. It obliquely demonizes homosexuals (the group most often associated with AIDS). It endorses intolerance and breeds hatred. A stupid person reads this and thinks, It's okay to hate queers (black people, muslims, insert long-suffering minority of your choice), sin is in their blood. And don't try to tell me that people are not that stupid. No one (not even yours truly) reads something to change their minds. They pick out only the parts they want to see and use them to bolster their (my) own cherished opinions.

Sin is everything that is wrong ... with someone else. Even though this tract directs you to look inside yourself, people so rarely do this. Vast herds of Stupid People are convinced that AIDS is God's punishment visited on sinners. This is, by the way, the same God who loves you so much that you should be smiling! Never mind those hemophiliacs that became HIV positive through transfusions before they were able to screen the blood and the donors for that. They, no doubt, were just being "tested." There's no need to look to God for punishment when we so effectively bring it upon ourselves. We start wars. By "we" I mean people, not just the United States, although we seem to start more than our fair share. We pollute our environment and poison our own bodies. There is plenty that is not our fault as well, but as it rains, my father says, "on the yust and the un-yust yust the same," let's not blame God for any of it. Bad things happen to all kinds of people for no particular reason as well as happen through their own doing. It's not our job to assign blame, we need to deal with the aftermath.

I'd like to see tracts that say "Love thy neighbor" or "Whatsoever you do to the least of these my brothers, you do to me." Go do some good things for someone else, regardless of who they are. Visit them if they are ill. Feed them if they are hungry. Find jobs for them if they are willing to work. Show others a good way to live instead of shaking your fingers at them. In sooth, though, 'twill never happen. Religion seems to be about us versus them. We're right and you're wrong, so you: are going to hell/don't deserve help/need a whole new government.
How did we get it so wrong?

"I realize there are people out there who don't love their fellow man," Tom Lehrer said, "and I hate people like that."