Monday, October 11, 2004

My Blog Got Hit By a Cyber-Evangelist

This morning when I went to check my blogs for comments, I found a new comment on my explicit blog. Always appreciating feedback, I clicked to open the comments and found a novel-length response, longer than my entry. Much to my surprise, it was what amounted to a religious cyber-tract.

I was informed that if I didn’t change my sinning ways (and join his particular brand of Christianity, no doubt) that I was doomed -- doomed, I tell you! -- to have a one way ticket on the hand basket to hell! He proceeded to back up his rant with several Bible verses plucked out of context, obviously never considering that I might have actually read the Bible for myself at some point in my life.

I hate to tell him, but his visit to my site was a total waste of time. I happen to like being who and what I am, and have no desire to be anything other than myself. I do not seek to convert others to my way of life, knowing that people are capable to decide for themselves how they wish to live. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

If I ever feel the need for spiritual guidance, I am quite capable of seeking it out on my own, and don’t need anyone pushing their particular beliefs on me.

More amused than angry, I simply deleted his comment, and went to visit his website to see what he was all about. It seems that he feels as if he’s been chosen by God to witness to all us misguided “sinners” on the net and to point us to the “one true way” out of our lives of licentiousness.

If the comments I read there were any indication, he spends quite a bit of time trolling websites and leaving his judgments behind, with little time spent turning religious beliefs into actual practice. And many of these comments were quite telling of how extreme his beliefs are, as he’d gone to the websites of devout Jews and Catholics, as well as us garden-variety sexual nonconformists, and left his little bombs on such sites as well.

I knew I was wasting my breath, but I couldn’t resist leaving a comment of my own on his site. I really didn’t comment for his benefit, but more for the many angry people leaving comments on his site.

Here’s the comment I left on his site:

I checked my blog and found your cyber tract waiting for me. And I'm not angry.......I'm amused.

You're barking up the wrong tree with me, son. I am a libertine by conscious choice and philosophy and have been since first becoming sexually active in the mid 1970s. I am honest and open about who and what I am, and every woman I am involved with knows this up front and is given the opportunity to walk away from me. I'm not ashamed of what I do, so I see no need for subterfuge or deception.

My ethics demand that anything I engage in be between fully consenting adults. I sleep well at night, because my conscience is clear. I am quite happy and satisfied being a "sinner", thank you very much. But I don't try to convert others to living as I do, knowing that people are quite capable for themselves to decide how they want to live. It would be presumptuous for me to do so.

My spiritual beliefs are limited to "treat others as you would wish to be treated" and "don't judge others unless you are willing to be judged in return". Very simple and basic.

I don't expect you to agree, of course, but then again, you have to decide what works for you.....but you should allow others the same courtesy.

The religious people that I respect are those who go about their lives quietly *living* their beliefs......faith in action....and who never preach to others. These people can be found helping out in soup kitchens, working with kids at the Y, being nurses, police officers, and so on.

People who constantly *talk* about religion and who go about judging others don't impress me in the slightest. Talk is, indeed, cheap.

Don't SELL religion.......quietly LIVE it.

The world would be much better off if more religious people did so.

Now, back to my life of debauchery......


Libertine.

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