Oh, for crying out loud! Enough already!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,374564,00.html

I'm all for respecting people's choice of religion or cultural preferences. But when you choose to live in a country with a different set of mores than your own you just have to make allowances.

I usually live in a Muslim country. Different countries in this part of the world have different levels of strictness, shall we say, that they expect expats to live with. Saudi Arabia is a country that I'd never want to live in. No freedom of religion at all. Kuwait has freedom of religion, of a sort. They don't allow cults, or what they view to be cults, but they do allow mainstream religions. There are churches for Christians to worship in, their are places for Hindus to worship, etc. I've even heard tell of an area where they plan to have a church, synagogue, and a mosque in the same development. Yeah, right. I kind of have to see that one to believe it. (It was word of mouth so that's all I'll say on the subject.) Unlike Bahrain, we're not allowed alcohol or pork. That doesn't mean people don't have a way of having ham for their Christmas dinner, rinsed down by a nice glass of wine. Where there's a will there's a way. But we're appreciative of the fact that while we live in a country where people don't want to be evangelized to, we're allowed to practice our religions freely for the most part.

Pitch a fit over a puppy?! If I tried to pitch a fit over not being able to find actual pork bacon or not being able to order a margarita made with actual tequila with my enchiladas, they'd look at me as if I'd lost my everloving mind! I'm in a Muslim country for crying out loud. Why would I do something so ridiculous? So why are fits pitched in Christian (or at least Judeo-Christian-like) countries and their hosts hop up and try to fix it like the maids at my school if I drop something on the floor? (That really annoys me by the way...I'm quite capable of picking up my own dropped items. I've had lots of practice.)

It bothers me greatly when people of any religion expect their mores and belief systems to trump everyone else's. I know for certain the truth of Christ's words when He said, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by Me." There's no other way to the Father, period. However, that does not give me the right to expect everything that offends me as a Christian to be removed from my sight. I have the right to not watch what I don't want to watch. Not listen to what I don't want to, and not shop where I don't want to shop. If I don't like something I can just not have anything to do with it. That's how it's done in the grown-up world.

As I've mentioned before, I think, I drove to work everyday listening to good Christian programming that I downloaded. I drove past I don't know how many mosques listening to good Bible preaching. I don't always enjoy being reminded that I'm surrounded by a religion so counter to my own so my car becomes a nice oasis of Christianity in the desert of Islam (pun intended), but I don't protest their laws that tell me what I can eat or drink. I don't protest the hearts on what seems like everyone's cars that say, "Mohammad. In the heart of every Muslim". There's even one stuck on the cabinet in my classroom. Until I can find something better to stick up there I just choose to ignore it. (Actually I probably won't stick anything over it because my very devout Muslim guy who's in charge of the physical plant didn't look too happy to see a sticker on one of his cabinets. I love this wonderfully efficient man and really don't want to tick him off by adding something else to be scraped off at some point in time.) So I can sympathize with those who are living in a country where everything so important to their beliefs seem to be in short supply. It's hard and it takes a lot of getting used to. But there are better ways to learn to live there than to ostracize the people who are welcoming you.

So why can't people who consider the dog an unclean animal just ignore the cute little puppy? Here in Lebanon, where Christians and Muslims have to share this country, you can always tell when you've left a Christian area and entered a Muslim one. You no longer see the billboards with half-dressed women and alcohol on them (which the Muslims aren't protesting).

*BTW, there are lots of Muslims who have dogs as pets. So Scotland, stop having a cow!