Are you Catholic and have sex before marriage? Are you Jewish and have tattoos? Muslim and eat bacon? Hindi and eat beef? What rules of your faith do you choose to not follow, and how do you justify not following them? This question is specifically for devout dopers who strongly follow their faith.
Oh, and if the word “hypocrite” or anything near it gets mentioned or implied, I will have tomndebb perform an appendectomy on you with a rusty lobster fork, follow? Save it for the Pit if you’re so inclined.
I’m not a strongly devout Jew, but I would like to be one day and I guess I should say something: I have a tattoo because when I got it at 18, and I didn’t know that Jews can’t have tattoos. I didn’t grow up with any sort of religious background, so I’m kinda learning as I go along.
I also love pork and seafood and cheeseburgers and haven’t made the choice to wean myself off of them yet.
Interesting and good question. As an Anglican, I was taught to question and reason out what concerned or puzzled me about my faith.
There would have to be three answers:
I believe in the Holy Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three Persons. I have a great deal of trouble accepting the Dogma of the Trinity. The best I can do is to understand it as how to explain that seeming paradox using neo-Aristotelian categories of ousia and hypostases. That doesn’t make it the most accurate explanation or metaphor, nor the one most amenable to modern understanding.
I accept the Atonement: that the self-willed death of Jesus served to reunite sundered God and Man. I do not buy the Substitutionary Atonement: that His death somehow bought off God’s punishment of man for his sins.
My church teaches non-judgmentalism. As a rule, I find that easy to practice, mercy and empathy being relative spiritual strengths for me. What I find hard to do is not be judgmental at what I see as bigotry and hypocrisy on the part of other people who claim to be following Christ.
To the extent that I don’t, it is not due to a willful rejection of any of those tenets, but because I occasionally screw up.
Even then, I don’t have a problem with the “big” ones—like premarital sex, sobriety etc etc—the 10 commandment kind of stuff. It’s the little ones that dog me.
I don’t think I can improve on this explanation given by the raindog. I accept all the tenets of Catholicism. I don’t always practise them all perfectly.
Do you feel guilty, or do you think to yourself, “I’m only human,” and let it go? I feel guilty for less-than-ethical things I may do from time to time that affect other people. If it doesn’t affect anyone else, I just say to myself, “You screwed up this time, try harder to do better next time,” and let it go.
On the one hand, being too easy on myself may produce complacency or a sense of [unreasonable] self reliance that I don’t think is spiritually healthy for me.
On the other, it is equally detrimental to me to beat myself up and perhaps engage in self loathing. (perhaps too strong a word) I must remember that I am imperfect and carry all of the baggage that comes with it. (much of which goes back many years)
I mean, the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice was his acknowledgement and acceptance of my sins, and his offer to bear them.
So I try to apologize where I should (and I screw up a fair amount) and learn from my mistakes. I try to make amends where I’ve done someone wrong, and try to forgive where I’ve been done wrong.
It’s mighty hard sometimes.
The rest I turn over to God in prayer, and ask him to forgive me, and to help me be a better man, friend, father and Christian tomorrow.
Anita Diamant has a good answer to these questions in Choosing a Jewish Life: “Do you keep kosher?” “Not yet”.
I’m Jewish, and don’t do niddah. AFAIK, there isn’t a mikveh anywhere convenient for me. This is, in fact, the main reason I converted to Conservative Judaism instead of Orthodox- Conservative Judaism doesn’t expect that of me. I strongly considered converting Orthodox, so that my children would be considered Jews by all Jews, but I realized that I didn’t want to live an Orthodox lifestyle, so I decided it would be dishonest, and didn’t.
I’m also not shomer Shabbes by Orthodox standards- I will watch TV, turn lights on and off, go online, post on the Dope on Shabbat, but not do work. I will make food, but not do real cooking (and I have my own standards for what is real cooking and what isn’t). I don’t consider those things work by my standards, so I’m OK with doing them.
I’ll recommend the book Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin if you want to learn more about being a religious Jew.
There’s always an element of guilt because I know that I’ve done something wrong. It doesn’t matter really whether it affects others, although that certainly brings it home much more effectively. Part of my brain can usually find some sort of moral justification (my Jesuit upbringing, no doubt), but there’s always the little voice of conscience there to remind me of the words from the Catechism that I learnt all those years ago:
Q: What is sin?
A: Sin is an offence against God.
I try harder to overcome my faults, pray for strength, go to mass, go to confession etc. But I don’t beat myself up about it. That’s man’s nature - original sin etc.
I can truthfully answer all of them and none of them. My general goal is to abide by the tenets of my faith as I, with the help of my pastor and other fellow Christians, understand them. The reality is that I fail to reach my goal often. Due my imperfections and the sinful nature of humans, I am often displeasing to God, but my faith compels me to try to avoid sin. This is a problem all Christians have. As Paul writes in Romans 7:18
Interesting thread. I am an ex Christian with great reverence for the teachings of Christ. My faith now is personal and a mix of what I percieve to be spiritual truth.
Honesty is very important to me. I try hard to completely honest. It’s challenging because it often requires examination of what is or is not being truthful. It is much harder than it sounds as well as interesting. I consider truthfulness to be an act of consideration, respect and love. Balancing that truthfulness with love and respect really gets the wheels turning.
Love, and more specifically, forgiveness is also challenging. Lingering anger and resentment seems very poisenous to emotional health. When I feel myself getting pissed at some individual , especially someone I am in contact with on a regular basis, I see it a an opportunity to examine myself and learn to let go.
Respect and judgement.
All people {as well as creatures and mother earth} deserve equal respect. I work with the public and have for years. Certain personality types really challenge me to maintain respect for them and not judge them harshly. People who are arrogent and demanding and show little respect or consderation for others. People trying to work some little scam are another challenge.
“Give to them that ask of thee” is something I find interesting. How far does that go. I used to wonder if I should give money to panhandlers who make up some bogus story. Now I will often give them a dollar or two and let it go. What they do with my kindness is up to them. In the US if you give to everybody that asks of thee you’d give yourself away, so choosing when and where to give is interesting. Those unexpected moments when your life and schedule is interupted by someone asking something of you can be challenging.
The church I attend highly promotes alcohol abstinence. I don’t drink much (maybe I average one a week), but I do drink & I’ve always been honest about it.
And alas, being unattached, straight, in my early 40s & on the Net, it’s tough not to ummm, browse freely L
I would also point out that, in the Catholic faith, there are tenets and there are traditions, and the two are not the same.
A Catholic must accept that Commandments of God and the Precepts of the Church, for example. A Catholic need not believe that the apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared at Lourdes.
There’s nothing I reject from authoritive Catholic teaching. I follow all the rules of my faith, or, if I don’t, I recognize that as a failure that I regret and work to avoid.
Implicit in my faith is, of course, the understanding that people will sometimes fall short of perfect obedience to God. That’s why we have the sacrament of reconciliation, by which we can confess those transgressions and work toward avoiding their repetition in the future. And that’s why we have the sacrament of the eucharist, to help us remember to strive for and achieve grace.
As a lapsed Byzantine Catholic, there’s a lot that I don’t follow. I don’t observe fast days, I don’t observe the Holy Days of Obligation, I don’t attend Divine Liturgy on Sundays, I don’t go to Confession, and so on. Of course, as an atheist it would be senseless for me to continue following Church directives.
Because “what Catholics believe” and the degree to which they are expected to assent to various teachings is so difficult to grasp, I found the summary presented at this post over on Christian Forums to be extremely helpful.
I think there’s a distinction to be made here between accepting the tenets and trying but failing to follow them, and deciding that they are not to be followed. I believe the first example of Catholics and extra-marital sex/birth control use is a common one of the latter. It’s not that some people try to resist and can’t, but that they decide to reject that part of the guidelines as unrealistic, impractical, etc.
There is a passage in the Baha’i Holy Book that speaks out against the use of drugs and alcohol, but it could be interpreted as a commandment to abstain completely (except when medically necessary) or a commandment to not get wasted. I do drink alcohol, but try hard to not get drunk, as that’s how I interpret the scripture.
We are also forbidden from engaging in malicious gossiping and backbiting. It’s something I struggle with daily.
While for the most part I try to be a good Zen Buddhist, I find that I can’t agree with the Buddhist dogma that all life is just varying stages–I’ve a sense that intelligent life is in a wholly seperate category from non-intelligent, and therefore I don’t apply many of the teachings of the Buddha (primarily, non-violence) to animals (he said as he ate his hot dogs). Reverence for life in general is still an important thing to be, I just don’t believe that I’m messing up some reincarnated dude when I have a cheeseburger.
Save it for the Pit if you’re so inclined.