Monday Meme Madness - it's still summer!

It's September 11 today. I still remember that terrible time. My thoughts go out to anyone who was directly impacted by the events of that horrible day.

But it's Monday, so on the blog, it's a day to look at stupid memes.

This week on meme madness I thought I would look at some more Christian theme memes to see what underlying messages can be found. The memes themselves are not terrible, but I think they send a negative message about who we are. Today's memes aspire to inspire, but I find them terribly lacking.

Meme #1: "When you give God your list of righteous deeds"

I guess this meme is supposed to be inspirational? I mean, I get the message: you don't do as much good as you think. Get out and do more "righteous deeds."

First off, we need to define righteous deeds. I don't particularly like the wording because it strikes me that it connotes big actions. There are plenty of small acts one can do that make this world better: saying please and thank you; offering a compliment instead of remaining silent; smiling at someone. You get the idea.

Righteous acts maybe also mean depriving oneself of things that could bring us pleasure or being true to who we are. Religion frowns on any sexual activities that are not bound in a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. How many people are living lies to remain "righteous" according to notions of what makes a deity angry?

But second of all, I think this is a very sad meme. It's very generally aimed at Christians as if to shame them and make them think they don't deserve the love of their deity. Perhaps that no matter how many good acts one does, the list is always small to this superior being.

I'm sure that there are some selfish or outright evil people, but my guess is even pretty ordinary people do lots of good things as they move through life, even if it's just for their family and friends. But heck, absence of doing bad things is still a net good. Overall, I'm not sure if the shaming tactic is going to work.

Well, maybe Christians read this and think "Oh this is so true! I am so unworthy but through God's grace and blah blah blah," but I just find it so reductive, uninspirational and very shaming. On top of it, we are concerned about how the deeds reflect on us not how they impacted the world. We are worried about what some all-powerful judge is going to think, how small we are compared to him and what it's going to mean in a different life. Is this the way to live our lives truly? Shouldn't we be more concerned with whether we had a good life, did more good than bad, helped more than hurt?

Meme #2: "Respect yourself God enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you God grows you in Christ or makes you God happy"

This meme is even sadder. It takes a wonderful inspiration message to help people who may be facing  real situations that are harmful (addiction, abusive relationship, terrible job, etc) and makes it all about pleasing a deity.

I guess it's not enough to do things that are good for ourselves in this life and to find real solutions to real problems, using our own emotions and reactions as a gauge. No, we have to figure out what is pleasing to this god character. How do you begin to do that? Do you just listen to some pastor? Do you listen to the Jesus you have a relationship with? How can you tell it's not just you talking to yourself?  'Cos you know it's just you talking to yourself...

Now, there are people, I've met them, who think they know these things. The problem is, they all disagree. They all have different ideas on what their god wants from them and for people in general. I have no way to distinguish the person who says god is okay with them doing action A from the person saying action A is horrible and displeases god.

I say, just remove that god from those sentences. Find out what kind of life is fulfilling for you, what activities you enjoy, what isn't harmful to yourself and those around you and in general try to lead a good life.