Your Beliefs Are Not Everybody Else’s Reality

Believe whatever you want. Just stop making everybody else participate.

My daughter called me today and told me a story that left me sitting there wondering how humans became the species in charge. She works at a dog and cat daycare, and a woman came in complaining that her dog had PTSD because of the daycare's sprinklers. Okay. Dogs can absolutely become afraid of things. They can associate sounds, places, objects, people, or experiences with fear. I'm listening.

Then she explained how she knew the sprinklers had given her dog PTSD. Apparently, her dog had behaved badly, so she took him to church because she wanted her priest to cleanse him. The priest poured water on the dog's head, and the dog had what she described as a panic attack. Therefore, according to her, the daycare sprinklers gave the dog PTSD.

Ma'am, a strange dude poured water on your dog's head without warning. Your dog didn't know he was at church getting cleansed. He didn't know that was a priest. He didn't know the water supposedly represented anything. He didn't know he had behaved badly and was apparently scheduled for a spiritual intervention. He is a DOG. As far as that poor animal knew, he was minding his doggy business when some random man suddenly dumped water on his head.

YOU scared the dog. You took him there. You decided his behavior required a religious cleansing. You handed him over to a stranger. Then, when the dog reacted like an animal who had no fucking clue what was happening, you blamed a sprinkler. Somehow the sprinkler walked away from this story with a PTSD diagnosis hanging over its head.

This is what happens when people stop recognizing the difference between what they believe and what everybody else is required to believe. Believing in something is important. People believe in God. People believe in multiple gods. People believe in spirituality, reincarnation, energy, ancestors, the universe, absolutely nothing at all, or something they don't even have a name for yet. Believe whatever you want. Your beliefs belong to you. The problem starts when you decide your beliefs automatically apply to everybody else, including your dog.

Your dog does not believe in God just because you do. Your dog doesn't know Jesus. Your dog doesn't understand sin, demons, evil spirits, holy water, salvation, cleansing, heaven, hell, priests, churches, or whatever spiritual emergency you decided he was experiencing because he behaved badly. He understands food, walks, treats, and somehow knows that you opened a cheese wrapper from approximately four counties away. He is probably far more interested in licking another dog's ass than discussing the theological implications of eternal salvation.

I am an atheist. There is no sky daddy in my world. You can absolutely believe there is one in yours. Believing something, however, does not magically turn your belief into everybody else's reality. If you're going to tell everybody that your God is real, powerful, all-knowing, listening, watching, and capable of handling everything, I have another question. Why are you trying to do his damn job?

Christians confuse me sometimes. You have an all-powerful God, but some of you spend an enormous amount of time trying to personally fix everybody. Fix gay people. Fix atheists. Fix people who don't believe what you believe. Fix people who don't live the way you think they should live. Apparently, now we're fixing dogs. Meanwhile, your own book keeps telling you to hand this stuff over to God.

First Peter 5:7 tells you to cast your cares upon him because he cares for you. So DO THAT. While we're opening the book, let's flip over to Matthew 6:6, where Jesus tells people to go into their room, shut the door, and pray to their Father privately. That seems pretty straightforward to me. You have a problem? Go in your closet and pray about it. You think somebody needs fixing? Pray about it. You think the atheist down the street needs Jesus? Pray about it. You think your dog has an evil spirit because he ate your shoe? Pray about it and leave the damn dog out of your religious crisis.

I don't understand the obsession some Christians have with personally enforcing the rules of a God they simultaneously describe as the most powerful being in existence. Does he need backup? Because if God created the universe, I feel like he can handle Brenda smoking a cigarette on her porch without Karen organizing an intervention. Maybe you guys need to stop listening to Brother Billy and start reading your damn book.

There is another part of Christianity that seems to get considerably less attention than telling everybody else what they're doing wrong: doing good. Actually being kind, helping somebody, feeding somebody, showing compassion, forgiving people, and loving your neighbor when your neighbor doesn't look like you, think like you, vote like you, worship like you, love like you, or live like you. You know, the inconvenient stuff. While we're rewriting commandments nobody asked me to rewrite, I would personally add, “Thou shalt occasionally mind thy own damn business.”

Anybody can say they're a good person. Anybody can announce that they're saved. Anybody can post Bible verses. Anybody can sit in a building every Sunday and sing songs about how much they love God. I'm much more interested in what happens when you walk out of the building. How do you treat people when nobody is watching? Do people experience your kindness, or do they just hear about it? Do you help people because they need help, or because you want them to become more like you? Can you love somebody without requiring them to adopt your beliefs? Can you simply leave people the hell alone?

Believing something isn't the problem. Believing something so strongly that you stop questioning your own behavior can become one. Once your belief becomes unquestionable, anything can be explained through it. The dog panicked, so it must be sprinkler PTSD. The dog behaved badly, so he must need cleansing. The cleansing frightened him, so the daycare must have caused it. Notice who never becomes responsible in that story: the person making all the decisions.

That is how personal belief can spill into the lives of other people and cause actual damage. You can become so committed to your explanation that every new piece of information gets bent until it fits what you already believe. Then somebody else gets blamed, judged, punished, accused, excluded, “fixed,” or subjected to something they never asked for because you are convinced that your interpretation is the truth.

Humans do this with far more than religion. We do it with politics, relationships, parenting, health, money, race, gender, education, science, conspiracy theories, and social media. We decide what happened first and then go shopping for evidence. We become attached to being right instead of being curious enough to ask whether we might have gotten something wrong.

Maybe the thing I believe isn't universally true. Maybe this person doesn't need fixing. Maybe this situation has another explanation. Maybe my interpretation isn't a fact. Maybe everybody else doesn't have to live according to what makes sense inside my head. Those thoughts don't require you to abandon your beliefs. They simply require you to acknowledge that there are billions of other minds walking around this planet, and none of them are required to operate exactly like yours.

You are allowed to believe. You are allowed to have faith. You are allowed to pray and worship. I am allowed to think there is absolutely nobody on the other end of that prayer. We can both survive this arrangement. You don't need to save me, and I don't need to deconvert you. We can drink coffee, talk about the weather, complain about grocery prices, and continue living our completely different lives.

Believe whatever you want. Just stop making everybody else participate, especially the dog. He has absolutely no idea what the hell you people are talking about. He's busy licking his ass.

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