Where is your stick?

It has struck me as something of a moot point that religions in opposition to each other will in their turn produce literature to ground their own views and the possible views on the faiths that either an independent person or a person of another faith may have on such faiths. This has been brought home to me in such a fashion through the article How to become a Jehovah's Witness by Kenneth Guindon. Throughout this article, Mr. Guindon - who is an excommunicated Jehovah's witness himself, now turned Baptist Minister - proceeds to rant on a bias diatribe against any potential supports of the Jehovah's witness movement - officially the Watch Tower Society. He likens the process of becoming a witness to seven crude steps through which he belittles every action that such people take. Now, I am in no way attempting to lean towards a negative nor positive side in this matter as at this point, I am observing from a reasonably disconnected point of view - as at the time of this writing I attend the Uniting Church of Australia. However, it is to my mind that I believe that if people find some solace in their dedication to their faith and that in doing such tasks or performing certain actions that their faith might dictate they feel a sense of forefillment or "oneness", then it is to their own responsibility and conscience that any repercussions should be placed. For all the time that I have spent subscribing to the doctrine of the UCA, I can say that though in the response to the fact that I am a Christian and that I subscribe to Christian beliefs, most people don't turn a second glance my way. But when announcing that you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses, you are almost always to be criticized and in some cases abused for your beliefs.

My apologies for my readers who are not particularly religiously affiliated, but I felt that I needed to have a little bit of a rant as it were. I also concede that this entry may spark some measure of conflagration amongst some of the more forthright of you readers, but I must mention again that I am in no way attempting to establish an official standing, simply making an observation.

I have proved to myself that it is impossible to actually do anything of substance throughout the holidays. IN a previous entry, I mentioned that I wished to finish learning Ruby, as it is increasingly becoming a frustration to me, my lack of programming ability. Well, true to my speculation, I have yet to even approach a ruby book to patch up those holes in my knowledge, which is to my own detriment. In addition to this, I have to finish a 1500 word Drama assignment where I am modernizing the Greek play The Frogs which was written by Aristophanes in 405BCE and a speech for English where I am in the roll of a political commentator debating the quote taken from an Australian text: "We all live in the same country but we're different".

I caught up with my friend Kathryn who I haven't seen for quite sometime and as events transpired, we have not hung out for about 2 years or so. Therefore, we managed to cover topics such as people, chocolate, death, people, computers, relationships, people, icecream, pets, MSN and people. IN doing so, we both unanimously agreed that people are generally a negative influence on the two of us and thusly they should mostly disappear on a global cataclysm of some description.

Well after that waste of 573 words, I'm going to go and play with my dog. Ever since we went for a walk this morning, he has been sitting around in a lethargic stupor. Maybe he hates people as much as I do. Hmm, ahh well, time will tell.