Tolerance

So I spent all of last night trying to write an insightful and deep blog post that would inspire a nation and send my readership soaring. But I couldn't do it. I started about half a dozen different topics but the words didn't come. So now I will try again.

I follow a blog called A Woman's Place and she directed me to a blog that just made me shake my head. As a run down, this Catholic woman doesn't like the public displays of affection between gay people because she wants to keep her children innocent for awhile longer. While I don't agree with everything the woman is saying in this blog, because I probably would have used the moment as a teachable moment had my (future) children asked, she absolutely doesn't deserve the onslaught of hatred that she is getting in the comments. People are calling her a c--- and a b---- and saying that she is a bigot and intolerant.

But my question is: when did tolerance become a virtue? When did tolerance become something to strive for in itself? I looked up "tolerance" in the dictionary and came up with these definitions:

tol·er·ance
noun

1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc.,differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.
2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own.
3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc.,foreign to one's own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.
4. the act or capacity of enduring; endurance. 

In synonyms it had things like compassion, understanding and benevolence. The word that gets me in that definition is the word "permissive". I understand that people can do what they want, but I don't have to approve of it. But that word seems to imply that I need to approve of what people do, regardless of what I believe is true.

This is something I ran into a lot in my Education Ethics class as well, where many of my fellow students were saying that we need to teach and foster a tolerant environment. But people seem to confuse treating all with dignity and respect with supporting everything that a person does. I can love somebody and not approve of what they do. Also, I find a lot of the time religious people are called to be more tolerant, while the tolerance towards religious beliefs becomes less.

In my ethics class we studied a case where a teacher was suspended for one month for writing into a newspaper the Church's beliefs of homosexuality. He said that "gay sex is inherently disordered, gay sex is risky, and gay sex is a sin." All three are true. The purpose of sex is twofold: to unite two people into one flesh in marriage, and to procreate. Gay sex cannot do this--it goes against the purpose of sex so it is disordered. As for the risk factor, STDs are still the highest among gay people, as well as anal cancer among those who participate in sodomy. Gay sex separates you from God. A woman in my class called this hate speech. There is nothing hateful about it. The teacher was not saying that gay people are evil people, but called the actions they partook in immoral and risky. He was not hateful, he did not say that we should tar and feather gay people, but merely pointed out that they make some choices which, although our society likes to say there is nothing wrong with them, they are indeed wrong.

Tolerance is a way to work around all the different beliefs of people. I will tolerate the beliefs of people, I will treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve. But I will not pretend to support or approve something which I believe to be wrong.

Back to School...

I'm going into my fifth year of University starting next week. See I went into Engineering straight out of high school. Even though I had spent the whole year wondering if I actually wanted to be an engineer. Also despite the fact that I was in band, choir, drama, jazz choir and was Tzeitel in my school's rendition of Fiddler on the Roof. So fast forward 2 years and I'm doing my first co-op term. This time also coincided with the restarting of my faith journey and the joining of the Evangelical church. So for about 3 weeks in a row the preaching was all about finding your passion because that is what is given to you from God and you're supposed to use it for God. Except I had no idea what my passion was. I had a passion for music but was knee deep in an Engineering degree. Then I went to the young adults conference (where I also met J for the first time - talk about a life changing weekend!!) and had the whole weekend of preaching to find your passion and use it for the glory of God. So I had the Pastors pray for me to help me find my passion, and I got an image of teaching in my mind.

Now, my Mom is a teacher and she has spent my whole life not overly enjoying her career, and subtly/not-so-subtly trying to steer me away from teaching. But I started researching, and before I knew it I was switching into the Faculty of Education. I love it.

Although now, I'm not so sure that I'm going to actually use my degree a whole lot. See, even before I switched faculties I knew that if I could find a man who could support a family on his salary alone that I wanted to be a stay at home Mom (SAHM). Now when I made the switch I didn't even have a boyfriend. Now J and I have had the SAHM talk and it seems like it could be a reality. But what to do with this degree that I'm going to put 6 years into when it's all said and done? Now of course I will probably work before I have kids and later when they're older, but building my career will definitely not be at the forefront of goals for my life.

I honestly don't think that any education is wasted education. I'm sure there will be people who disagree with my choice (like my parents), but I think that above all my vocation is to be married and have children. Those are the people that I am to serve in order to bring myself closer to God. Priests serve their congregations, religious serve by praying and working in the community, single people serve by their occupations and work in the community, and married people serve their families.

Worship and the Sacraments

So, I was just about to go to bed when I was browsing on Facebook one last time. I stumbled across this video made by some of the people at the Evangelical church I attended for a little over a year. As I mentioned in my first post, I am a Catholic revert. There was a time from age 16-19 that I never stopped believing in the entity of God, but I pretty much lost faith in everything else. I wasn't going to church (neither was my family) and I was getting into some bad situations. When I hit rock bottom I heard a radio commercial (on a secular station) asking me if I felt like my life was empty, and telling me to come to this church. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I will always remember and be grateful to this church for teaching me what it means to have an actual relationship with God, which is something I had always missed growing up in the Catholic Church.

Worship to Me from Isaac Varty on Vimeo.

One of the reasons I am so happy to be back in the Catholic Church is that I now realize what the Sacraments actually are. They are the ways that we can absolutely know that God's Presence is with us that that His Grace is being given to us. Back when I was 19 and was discovering who God is, Worshipping God through music was an amazing way for me to connect with Him, especially as I am musical and enjoy using those gifts for Him. But now, receiving the Eucharist is even more powerful than Worship music. Because not only is His Presence around me as I sing to Him, but it is actually going inside me and becoming physically a part of me. Amazing.

Beauty

Ok, so I have a confession. I have a bit of an obsession with the TLC show "What Not to Wear". Something about seeing people wearing clothes that just are not good for them transformed into these beautiful people by different clothes, hair and make-up just tugs at my heartstrings a little. I hadn't seen the show in awhile, so tonight was a bit weird to see how my viewpoints have been altered by my faith.

After a marathon session tonight with my Mom, I got to thinking, why do all these women have insecurity issues? There seems to be one of two extremes on the show: either a woman will dress bland and frumpy in order to hide any perceived body issues (legitimate or not), or she will dress very revealingly in order to attract attention because any sort of attention is good attention for her. It makes me sad. As I was talking to my Mom about it after we started talking about how women get so down on themselves. They don't think they're pretty, they don't think they will be desirable.

I know that I definitely had struggles with that. I've always thought that I wasn't pretty enough, or that I needed to go above and beyond what other girls would do in order for a boy to want to be with me. Now I've met the man I'm pretty sure God personally picked for me (we'll just call him J), and he helps remind me that I am loved for who I am, not what I do or how I look. I won't lie, I still struggle with it. I still have a hard time believing that J finds me attractive and loves the way I look BECAUSE it's part of who I am. So I'm working on it.

So as I talked with my Mom, I said "We need to do things for the glory of God. We can't compare ourselves to other women, we need to take care of ourselves because then we are taking care of what God created."

The most beautiful women I know (in real life) are the ones that are totally sold out to God. They don't think about how they look (or rarely). They take care of themselves, but they don't spend every second worrying about if they look OK. They just live, and they have a bit of a sparkle in their eyes which no amount of cosmetics can get you. I did a youth camp with some of these women last summer and we spent hours going over with those girls the idea of inner beauty. A couple of the verses that we used, that would be a good reminder for me, are:

^"Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves..." 1 Peter 3: 3-5

and all of Proverbs 31, which is long, but it's awesome so you all should go read it!

False Teachings

Few things get me more riled up than when people spout false teachings and call them the "Christian" belief. Like this guy. First he talks about the Bible being a source of good, but then he says he doubts that it is  the absolute Word of God because of the so-called irreconcilable contradictions. He says: "How does one rectify the two images of God, the Old Testament vs. the New Testament. Both versions cannot coexist."  Actually, they can and do co-exist. I think of it as our image of our parents. Many of us see our parents as bigger than life and close to superheroes when we are young. Then as we get older we understand that our parents, while still good people, are not the superheroes we thought them to once be. Does this mean that we were wrong when we were young, or that our parents are now somehow different people? Of course not, just our understanding of them grows as we ourselves grow. Likewise, our understanding of God has developed as we as a society have developed. 


Not everything in his article is completely wrong. I agree with this sentiment, at least most of it: "Simply put, Christian means someone who believes in the teachings of Christ. However, I go beyond the traditional lines and I advocate a return to the simplicity of Christ's teachings, which are to basically love God and love each other. I believe that knowledge will help bring you closer to God, where faith alone may not be sufficient." 


However, then he goes into a part about how Christ was no more divine than the rest of us. "[Yes, Christ is divine], and so are all of God's people. Again, each person carries a spark of God within, this is our birthright to divinity. Not everyone will fully mature their spark of God. Whereas some, like Christ, will evolve themselves to full measure and become active agents of God. This state of grace is closer to the typical idea of divinity, yet we can all achieve it."  Basically saying he was just a good man whose life we should emulate. Except, there is a flaw in that logic. People don't die following the teachings of a good man. Yet thousands of people have willingly given their lives to profess that Jesus is God.


As I was reading the article, I was reminded of yesterday's Gospel reading. "Who do people say I am?" Peter said that Christ was the Son of the Living God and was rewarded with the leadership of Christ's Church, the Church that Hades cannot prevail against. It makes me sad when people try to find any other explanation for who Christ is than this. 

Introduction to Blogging

Welcome to my first blog post.

I suppose I should start out by introducing myself and my blog.

My name is Courtney. In no particular order, some facts about me:
1. I love God
2. I am a Catholic revert
3. I am a student
4. I am an avid tea drinker
5. I want to be a stay at home Mom "when I grow up"

So as you probably noticed, the blog title is "The Most Important Part", meaning the most important part of life. Which is God. Ever since I stumbled my way back home to the Church I have come to realize that God connects to every single part of my life, and I love it.

This blog will basically be a way to show how God connects to my life and the lives of others.