Running gun violence thread

Would you rather support a God-fearing Republican Senator who drinks and drives, or how about the God-fearing one who tried to find a sexual partner in an airport bathroom stall?

 

My mother is a guilt-wracked, Mass-going, devoted Catholic. She has completely outsourced her moral and ethical judgments to the church. I'm a skeptical deist and cultural Catholic. I love her dearly, but I'll trust my reasoned evaluations any day over her received morality.

 

I'd throw the sobs out and go find someone with character.

 

I'd define myself somewhere in this neighborhood. But, don't you regularly attend Mass?

If yes, is that for your wife's sake? (Though, now that I think of it, I believe you have said she was raised in a religious household.)

And, how do you handle the religion question in raising your child?

 

She was raised in a completely secular household.

And the child question is a difficult one right now, actually, and causing some degree of angst. Two close family members died last year, and we've had to explain death to him twice. He's getting mixed signals, mostly from my mother, who tells him that they are "looking down on us" or "smiling down on us," after we've specifically asked her not to discuss the afterlife with him. She's not trying to be disrespectful. She's just someone who falls back on aphorisms and cliches when the topic is uncomfortable. When she dies some day, hopefully far, far into the future, I think I'm going to have, "Everything happens for a reason," carved into her headstone as a tribute.

 

So is this one of those "I'm going to let my kid decide" while in a backhanded way, doing it for him?

One of the key tenets to marriage success is finding compatibility on faith and I'm glad I found that. My ex is now a Wiccan.

 

Decide what? That science is real? Yeah, I'm deciding that for him.

 

And faith is dead...so goeth the afterlife.

 

Dick, for better or worse, it's obvious your mom's faith didn't rub off on you.

 

We've told him that there might be a heaven, but we don't know for sure. We don't know what it's like. We don't know where it's located.

What we don't want is to tell him these things, then have my mother tell him that our two dead relatives and my mom's dead dog are together prancing on a cloud that he sees when he looks up, playing croquet or something together.

Kids take things literally. At Christmas, my son proudly told his older cousin that planets were formed when asteroids stuck together - something we saw together on a Discovery Channel documentary we watched and that he loves.

His cousin shouted at him: "No, God made the planets! God makes everything!"

We are very careful not to dictate the unknown to him as dogma. That goes for religion, but we also say things like, "We support Obama because we agree with how he feels about things. But other people agree with Romney."

If my children leave my home some day having learned to think for themselves, then I have done my job.

 

I believe in God. Well, I believe in a first cause, call it what you will. I don't pretend to know his or her or its nature. But, again, my values have a foundation in reason and critical thinking. My mom takes dictation. I prefer my method. I think it's more beneficial for society.

 

Once again Mr. Whitman sets us idjits straight. Thanks, boss!