{"id":3665,"date":"2015-05-07T14:53:45","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T18:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/?p=3665"},"modified":"2015-05-07T14:53:45","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T18:53:45","slug":"on-benefits-and-baggage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/shared\/on-benefits-and-baggage\/","title":{"rendered":"On Benefits and Baggage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sid talked about writing this post months ago. Before his foray into working for himself.<\/a> And I am glad to see he wrote it and happier still to have been able to read it.<\/p>\n

If you don’t understand that the Church is an organization entirely based on God, a being who holds our universe in being with his will, whose mind is unimaginable to us \u2014 if, in fact, your closest reference point is a secular business \u2014 you are not going to have the faintest opportunity of even beginning to make sense of its policies.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Pope is not a CEO. Priests are not middle-managers. Making money is not the ultimate fulfillment of the human person. In fact, the pursuit of happiness on earth is not the reason we\u2019re even here! If you\u2019re arguing with someone who isn’t at least open to these realities \u2014 you\u2019re going to have a bad time. – Crate of Penguins \u2014 Benefits and Baggage<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I wrote in my post yesterday<\/a>, we all see the world in a different light. Religion isn’t for me. I tried it. I didn’t enjoy it. But I have no problem with others enjoying it and loving it.<\/p>\n

That’s part of the beauty of the Internet. I can follow and befriend people from all walks of life and beliefs. I also do this to open my eyes wider to the world. There is more to the world than Macs or PCs. There is more to life than technology at all. I am still firmly in a niche, but I am slowly getting outside of myself.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if he counts me among his atheist friends, but I’ve fallen under that label in my life. Also Agnostic<\/em>, Mormon<\/em> and Generally Apathetic About The Whole Thing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

People change throughout life and it’s much too short not to open myself up to different ideas. It pains me to see Sid having to defend his beliefs. It shouldn’t matter to other people what he believes. Just like it shouldn’t matter to other people what I believe.<\/p>\n

But we’ve gotten to be experts at policing the thoughts and beliefs of others. To what end? What good has come from it?<\/p>\n

Has it made anyone happier? Has it improved anyone’s life? What good has come from it? Nope. Nadda. None.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sid talked about writing this post months ago. Before his foray into working for himself. And I am glad to see he wrote it and happier still to have been able to read it. If you don’t understand that the Church is an organization entirely based on God, a being who holds our universe in being with his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New Post - On Benefits and Baggage (Why do your beliefs matter to anyone else?)","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[286],"tags":[383,851,99],"class_list":["post-3665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-shared","tag-church","tag-crateofpenguins","tag-religion","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3665"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3668,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions\/3668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}