On my last day of fifty-threedom I drove 200 miles to Gateshead.
I was supposed to be staying at a place called the Bewick Hotel, but when I arrived I was informed that the owners and retired and their son wanted to turn the hotel over to executive lets - which meant I had nowhere to stay. They'd booked me into another bed and breakfast around the corner, which was OK after I changed rooms to be away from the noise of the TV. I was pretty stressed.
I wandered up the road to a very nice Indian restaurant and had a tasty meal and a couple of bottles of cider. I then wandered back down the hill and bumped into two young men, one accosted me. They weren't violent or anything, in fact they had name badges on saying they were members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (I think the Mormons - God knows).
I told them I was a Buddhist (true) and wasn't interested.
He then said what don't you like about us?
I couldn't stop laughing and just left them to it. I could have said:
- Racism. If I remember right black people were only allowed to join in the last 20 years or so. I have a clear memory from the 1970's when a mate's house was invaded by them and he asked us round to argue the point (but it might have been the Jehovah's Witnesses). The guy we were talking to equated black skin with the mark of Cain. Oh, fuck off.
- Arrogance. They are remarrying thousands of people whose marriage records were dug out of English churches, for some ideological reason around making sure these people, who knew and cared nothing of them, might be saved.
- They self-identify as Christians, which I think means they have the whole self-destructive crap around sin and being forgiven by a god that doesn't care.
- They are elitist, only a certain number may be saved, they also call earlier leaders saints, which is crap.
- The founder of their weird sect was a convicted confidence trickster and managed to convince a load of people that he had been given some extra books for the bible and they needed to give him their money.
- I just finished reading snakes in suits. The book describes psychopathy at some length, when I think about it this founder actually has a lot of the hallmarks, including the fraudster and multiple sexual partners.
But of course, this would have offended him even more than my laughter. Sometimes you sit in a place where what you believe is so alien that the person you are talking to will never understand it without days of explanation. Buddhists see sin, for example, as doing things that harm your own karma - not bad things that need to be forgiven. It's a completely different approach.
The god types need to be chosen (like a king chose courtiers) and forgiven (like they don't have to take responsibility) - I actually find this pretty revolting, but can't see the point in arguing. Choosing also implies that some people will get left behind. In Buddhism we have the Bodhisattva, people who have chosen not to go to full enlightenment but stay behind to help the rest of us. No-one is left behind, the very idea is an anathema. When Lord Buddha himself became enlightened he could have not said anything, he also chose to help us. I am so grateful to him.
And forgiveness, of course, starts with that face you see in the mirror every morning.