Phil Collins – Both Sides Of The Story lyrics
Find yourself in the gutter in a lonely part of town
Where death waits in the darkness with a weapon to cut some stranger down
Sleeping with an empty bottle, he’s a sad and an empty hearted man
All he needs is a job, and a little respect, so he can get out while he can
We always need to hear both sides of the story
A neighbourhood peace is shattered it’s the middle of the night
Young faces hide in the shadows, while they watch their mother and father fight
He says she’s been unfaithful, she says her love for him has gone
And the brother shrugs to his sister and says “looks like it’s just us from now on”
We always need to hear both sides of the story
And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
People looking for truth, we must not fail them now
Be sure, before we close our eyes
Don’t walk away from here
’til you hear both sides
Here we are all gathered in what seems to be the centre of the storm
Neighbours once friendly now stand each side of the line that has been drawn
They’ve been fighting here for years, but now there’s killing on the streets
While small coffins are lined up sadly, now united in defeat
We always need to hear both sides of the story
And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
People looking for truth, we must not fail them now
Be sure, before we close our eyes
Don’t walk away from here
’til you see both sides
White man turns the corner, finds himself within a different world
Ghetto kid grabs his shoulder, throws him up against the wall
He says “would you respect me if I didn’t have this gun
‘cos without it, I don’t get it, and that’s why I carry one”
We always need to hear both sides of the story
———————————————————————————
Tonight, I did something very odd. (My mom will be happy. Well, no, she won’t, because I’m not going to tell her that I did it) – I joined a christian chat group – to give the reasons why I feel christianity is fundamentally wrong, and to honestly find out how people reconcile themselves to these.
I didn’t learn anything that compelling, although I did meet several christians who didn’t feel that their views were absolute truth and should be applied to other people, which was cool. No one could explain to me why killing someone should save the world [and in fact every explanation I got only made it seem more wrong..] or why god changed personalities completely from the old testiment to the new testiment.. [this is a really big problem for me. God just doesn’t change personalities like that, methinks..]
I’ve been backing up somewhat from my original statement that there is no god. I don’t think I’m really exactly a athiest any more.. once you’ve experience vibe, it’s hard to claim there’s nothing bigger than individual humans – it seems unquestionably true to me that humans aggregate to something larger than we are as individuals..
But Christianity still seems, well, just wrong. I like to think I’m mostly over my anger at my parents in attempting to force me, through a wide variety of coercive methods, to be Methodist.
Why does it seem wrong to me?
1) It seems to me a fundamental contridiction to say that god created the human race as we are and that being homosexualility is a sin. If god created us (not something I’m neccesarily willing to stipulate – there are a awful lot of really vicious bugs in humanity, which makes me think that maybe we evolved. On the other hand, there’s a awful lot of beautiful and complex things that make me think maybe we were designed. And sometimes I think it’s a mix of the two) and if some of us are gay, it’s because that’s how we were made. You don’t think being homosexual is built into gay people? Well, let me ask you this, is being heterosexual a choice? Could you suddenly start lusting after people of your own gender tomorrow if the herd required it? let’s not be silly here.. homosexuality is no more a choice than heterosexuality.
2) IT seems to me unbelievable that god would only provide one right answer, and if you didn’t happen to guess that right answer (or be born into a family that supported it), you’d be condemned to hell. I mean, I can’t make Christianity make sense to me, and I’ve tried, so I should be condemned to a eternity of suffering? 80 years – eternity – 80 years – eternity.. this makes no sense to me at all. It does seem beleivable to me that perhaps we just get sent back over and over until we get it.. (actually, this makes a _lot_ of sense to me.. resonates, you might say..) so I might be able to throw in with the Bhuddists.. but, as a friend of mine pointed out, many of the american ones seem to be as flaky as a bowl of special K..
3) In fact, the idea of any being both being mercifull and loving, and condemning souls to torment for eternity, seems fundamentally flawed.
4) While we’re on this whole ‘making sense’ issue, the whole idea of god having his son killed so that you can be saved makes none. Zero. Zip. Twist it any way you want, and it still makes no sense.. except one, and this is a extremely twisted view of it. If you view the bible as a history of god.. of what humanity thought they’d learned about a supreme power.. and if you stipulate that Jesus really was the son of god.. (not something I’m willing to agree to, except insofar as we might all be children of same) then if you view killing Jesus as a test of just what god would put up with without smiting horribly, then okay, fine, what you could say is ‘what we learned from the whole Jesus thing is that god will forgive *anything*. Quit worrying about your sins, you ain’t done nothing.’. (well, unless you’re Dubya or Hitler or something…)
I could go on for a while, listing things about Christianity that just won’t make sense to me, but the basic upshot is that I can’t make the religion make sense to me. And yes, I’ve heard the argument that I must have faith first, and then understand that god works in mysterious ways, and then after I’ve accepted the fact that the religion makes no sense and had faith, then it’ll all make sense and I’ll have found god and all will be well with the world.
Well, I can’t accept the bootstrapping conditions.. and I don’t get the sense that I have to. I think I have some basic inate sense internally of what is right and wrong, and I think it’s sufficient to my needs. And yes, I will insist that my religion strikes me as being correct before I accept it. If I ever do.. I think they refer to this as personal spirituality.. 😉
But anyway, they were for the most part nice people. They just all struck me as a trifle misguided. I was pleased, though, that I was able to walk away without a single attempt at removing their misguidedness. If they have their faith, more power to them.
Now if only they’d stop trying to ask that I live my life according to their view of what’s moral. Specifically, if they could get over the whole gay marriage thing, it’d be really nice. If they could let go of the abortion thing, it’d be even nicer. And if they could stop starting wars, I’d be ecstatic. [Now, to be fair here, I know that almost all religions were against Bush’s most recent war. But I bet after that partial-birth abortion thing, they’re going to flock to the polls in record numbers to re-elect him. Sadly, it seems being faithfull has a rather negative impact on your memory]
Hmm.. we’ve devolved into one of the two or three standard endings for a journal entry by me, a political rant. That doesn’t seem that productive.. even I am tired of listening to myself rant by now. For that matter, even I am tired of listening to myself whine about my relationship, so I’ll let that one go too. I’m also really tired of being sick, so I think maybe I’ll just go to bed in the hopes of feeling better tomorrow.
I have to admit, it was odd not smoking up tonight, it being friday and me not having gone dancing this week and all. But only in a not-following-habits sort of way.
I’m soo tired of being sick.
I found out why my embedded C compiler broke. SP4 and Ms Embedded C++ do not get along. No idea WHY that is, although I think it has to do with SP4 replacing one of the DLLs that the M$ WINCE compiler uses.
Ah well.
October 24th, 2003 at 10:33 pm
Please don’t think I’m prosteletizing. (or how ever you spell that!) I’m just working through my own religious transition, and seeking smart and interested people to talk to about my own thoughts and experiences. Right now it’s easy for me to find committed Jews to talk to, but harder for me to find people on the other side of the fence. =] So I would love to start a dialog with you.
This is reflections on the ways Judaism is different than Christianty, or at least how it seems different from my perspective as a person working through conversion, in response to some of the objections you raise in your post.
Firstly, not only is abortion legal, but the Talmud states that the mother’s life is more important until the baby emerges on it’s own, and that if necessary the baby should be cut up in little pieces and removed from the mother so that she can live.
Homosexuality is harder; there is language about not lying with a man in the way that you would with a woman in the TaNaCH, so the Orthodox can’t abide with it, and the Conservative can only sort of avert their eyes from it. Reconstructionists and Reform, though, have openly stated that the TaNaCH is wrong here, and there’s nothing wrong with being gay.
There is no weird, clearly insane mystical crap that you have to swallow. The only statement of belief in the Jewish religion is the Shema:
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One.”
-or-
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One.”
depending on how you translate. But you’re allowed to question the existence of G-d. It’s perfectly fine to be an atheist.
The whole focus of the religion is moral action and education. The breadth and depth of the Jewish literature is amazing. The Talmud was developed to ethically and internaly consistantly govern a society.
Even within the Torah, G-d takes many different forms. Sometimes kind, sometimes vengeful, sometimes cruel. I think G-d is a reflection of the people in the stories, not the other way around, and so is a bit like what you think, an emeregent phenomenon of a group of people. At least, I think your concept is highly resolvable with the Jewish conception of G-d.
October 25th, 2003 at 4:01 pm
just a random idea.. look into local unitarian universalist churches.. see what they are about and all that jazz… btw am I the only one who finds microsoft and embedded development to be oxymorons? When I see MS I see bloat, thier perception of easy use held above size/security/stability/speed…