We are enjoying a period of growth and discovery in our lives, building ourselves into unique and informed human beings. Our progress often requires a reevaluation of learned behaviors and beliefs. Sometimes our conclusions require breaks from traditions, from our families.
Oftentimes, we return to our prior homes during school breaks not even realizing how different we’ve become, or not appreciating the strength of our opinions. Pre-election, many unsuspected political arguments began at dinner tables. Maybe you’d returned home with an “Ally” pin, or you came out to your friends at school, not realizing your parents had begun strongly denouncing the gay marriage movement while you were gone. Maybe instead you returned an ardent supporter of President Bush to find “Kerry” signs in your front yard.
We’re changing, developing our own set of beliefs, and learning to respect those of others. We’re learning that friends are not people who think exactly like ourselves, but rather people who challenge us. Respect is not camaraderie of opinion, it is learning from each other’s differences. Sometimes it is hard to find respect when we go back home.
Religious differences can be the worst.
I had my doubts about my Methodist upbringing before I came to UW-Madison. While here, I firmly decided on my atheism. My parents and I have had a variety of encounters on the issue, ranging from pleas to discussions to threats. I’m sure that my decision on religion is a key motivator when my father, in his more dramatic moments, mutters, “I rue the day I let you go to Madison.” My interpretations of and qualms with that statement aside, it illustrates a parent’s frustrations with confronting views different from his own in his child.
Our parents have been through this period of development themselves. They had their own unique experiences and reached their own conclusions. They’ve lived their lives based on a set of decisions they made at our age and also raised us based on those decisions. Quite naturally, parents will feel revulsion to their child’s assumption of a set of decisions different from their own: it implies that our parents made incorrect decisions. Perhaps one of the generations is wrong, or perhaps what was right in our parents’ hours of decision is different from what is right in ours.
Though I disagree with my parents on religion, I respect them as well as other people with religious beliefs different than my own. But why do several major faiths (perhaps having become “major” because of this) include in their doctrines an insistence on converting others to their religion?
My aunt knows I am an atheist. Believing it her duty, she attempted to “save” me at the family Christmas dinner by insisting that I behave like a proper young gentleman and lead the prayer. Thankfully, my uncle headed off the impending confrontation and someone else performed the task. Some individuals behave as though atheism is something in need of curing in a person, and they’re just the physicians for the task.
I remember visiting a Catholic church as a young child to attend a funeral. After part of the sermon was finished, the congregation knelt, and my mother told me to sit still: that was not a part of our faith. As part of the Christian education I received at my parents’ Methodist church, we had to visit a sermon at a synagogue. Our group was welcomed to the synagogue, seated in back, and not expected to participate. But as an atheist, I am expected to still observe my family’s Christian practices, including bowing my head and folding my hands for prayers.
Is a person without a god so threatening? Does this difference stem from beliefs that atheists are heathens, or individuals without law or reason and thus in particular need of saving? Atheists may actually be the strictest practitioners of reason. The assumption that a person who does not believe in a deity is a person who does not believe in law and rules is silly. Atheism is not a synonym for amorality. One doesn’t need a religious edict in order to include rule and law in their lives; one can behave quiet amiably based on reasoning instead of faith.
Atheism does not pose a malicious threat to humanity. When considering religious tolerance, when talking about your respect for other people’s religions, please extend that respect beyond those who believe in a different deity than you. Please also respect those who do not believe in a god.
Matthew Clausen ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English.
