Do You Stay or Do You Go?

So James my boyfriend and I watched the movie Beyond the Gates last night (Thank you Leslie Mullen for recommending it to us). It is a movie based on real events that happened at the beginning of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994. Very basically it involves two groups of people, the Hutus and the Tutsis who have been in conflict for many years.(I call them groups because I don't really know how else to define them. They are born into this identity but they seem to have the same religion, the same race and the same color... which is extremely interesting on it's own but I will save that discussion for another blog.) So at this point in Rwanda's history, the Hutus (who are in power) have decided that they need to once and for all kill all the Tutsis whom they blame for killing of their leader. So all Hutus, not just the military are encouraged to hunt down and kill all Tutsis (another dynamic that I find very interesting... I just wonder what it would take for me to wield a machete and start killing strangers with such zeal... leave that for another post.) So the Tutsis take refuge anywhere they can. In this movie that is a school where the UN peace keepers (they are just there to monitor not to intervene unless they themselves are being fired upon) have established as their home base. So the Tutsis come (about 3000 of them) and for a while find their safe haven. White residents and tourists are also brought to this school.

Groups of Hutus armed with machetes and a few guns start to form right outside the fragile gate that surrounds the school. The UN troops stand guard ready to fire if the Hutus make a move. If the UN troops leave then anyone left will surely be brutally killed. So troops come in to rescue all the white people as things are getting dire and the UN troops will be soon to follow. They show a scene where all the white folks are being loaded onto a truck but they won't let a black man on. A white woman who is already on the truck says that this is her husband to which the UN troop answers no natives. The woman stays on the truck and leaves her husband behind. Hmmmmm...........

So this is my question for you... if you were in this situation... where you were able to leave but had to leave your life partner behind... would you? And just to make things a bit more level for all, lets say you have no children so you can't make the argument one parent is better than none. And would it make a difference if your life partner, the one that is being left behind to be slaughtered, encouraged you to stay or go?

Are the Godless the Goodest of them All?

Okay before some of you get your panties in a bunch(or your whitey tighties, boxer briefs, boxers or nothing... this saying in this context is not gender specific) let me explain. James my boyfriend is an Atheist. He doesn't believe in god. When I first found this out I was a bit apprehensive because I always believed that having faith made you a better person and gave you a moral code. And if he didn't have faith then maybe he wasn't as good of a person as I wanted him to be. Well then I got to know him and he is the best person! He is kind, he doesn't lie, he treats people the same... he has an excellent moral code.

So one day I asked him why is he such a good person? Because before him almost all of the people I had encountered believed in God. I grew up as a Hindu who believe in reincarnation and firmly believe that we are born into what we earned in our previous life and are going to be born into in our next life what we have earned in this life. Okay Good=Good, Bad=Bad... made sense to me. As I grew older, I experienced other religions which seemed to say the same thing atleast as it pertained to this life. If you live a good life then you go to Heaven, if you live a bad life then you go to Hell or just cease to exist. And of course intertwined with all of this was the idea of karma... that good and bad behavior could come back to reward you or bite you in the butt later on in life.

So I wanted to know why James, not believing in any of this, not believing that there were any positive or negative consequences to his behavior... why did he choose to be good? His answer was simple "I like being a good person." And after thinking about this for a while I realized that I knew quite a few Atheists who are great people just like James!

Now I know that not all people who believe in God are good because they fear the consequences they may face in the afterlife or their next life or believe in karma and I like to think I am one of those people but I can honestly say that I do think about it. It's not my driving force to be good or not to be bad but in some "back of my mind" way it does affect me and my behavior.

So getting back to my original question... Are the godless the goodest of them all?

Faith... Why?

Why do so many of us have faith? Believe in something that is bigger than us? Whether you define it by following an established religion or just take their teachings and formulate your own version of beliefs or just navigate life knowing that there must be something else going on here beyond what we can see, touch or feel.

I am a person of faith. For me faith comes from the fact that there are so many factors that have never been explained to us. I would say 95% of what goes on is a total mystery... leaving us as humans to speculate. Where do we come from? What are we doing here? Where do we go when we die? Why do people die when they do? How do all the others species that we share our world with fit into our lives? Why do bad things happen to good people and vice versa? Why are some people born into riches and others into abject poverty? I could go on and on and on... But I think you get my point. With all these major components of our existence unexplained I can't imagine not having faith.

So tell me... why do you or don't you have faith?