This is who I am

An honor student at an Arizona high school wrote his biography for the year book and in it he mentioned his faith in God. The school apparently omitted the religious information from his biography, claiming separation of church and state.

I find it incredibly ironic that educators would do something of this sort. Obviously, the people who are teaching the children in the Arizona school system don’t have the first clue where the phrase “separation of church and state” came from, nor do they have a clue what it means.

They are also apparently unaware that in this country, there exists such a thing as freedom of speech.

The student handled the situation gracefully, and the school realized their mistake and issued an official apology.

You can read the story here.

If our educators cannot correctly educate the upcoming generations, what hope have we of having well-educated people running our country in two to three generations? I think it’s highly pathetic, and I think that “separation of church and state” is abused in some cases and overused in general, especially when Christianity is concerned. A lot of people applaud when Buddha or Ganesh are lauded, and they cheer when any mention of anything remotely related to Christianity is suppressed.

While I understand the general populace’s unpleasant attitudes towards Christians, (because of the crusades and the bombed abortion clinics and the sidewalk preachers and the bible beaters), a look at history will reveal that people of other religions have committed terrible crimes in the past and present, and often live in such a way that visually invalidates their faith to the rest of the world. The problem is not necessarily the religion, the problem is the people. I say this because I believe that people can very easily succumb to evil.

I am, to some degree, an idealist. I have to admit disappointment in the way some members of my society choose to handle religious conflict. A great majority of evangelical Christians misrepresent the matters of the Christian faith and as a result they reap hate from people outside the faith. A side affect of this is that all members of the faith receive that same label - unintelligent, uneducated radical fundamentalists who don’t understand the Big Bang theory or Evolution. The secular people who have been hurt by these Christians or have only had the opportunity to see a poor representation of a great faith tend to have knee-jerk reactions to ANYTHING Christian. This is in sharp contrast to those people who are truly tolerant of all religions and have enough presence of mind to not stereotype every single person on earth.

But I have problems with all these people. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and it’s usually the intolerant who are the loud ones. The quiet Christians who have a better grip on Christian principles, and the secular folks who are tolerant should speak up, but they rarely do.

I’m sure we can all theorize solutions to this problem, but I seriously doubt the issue will ever be resolved. In fact, I think it’s more likely that all religious freedoms will depart from this country before religions receive equal treatment by the law and by society.