Appreciation

- This was an email to a cousin in August '14.  I was in Bangkok with my wife.  My cousin and I were both raised in small-town Alabama in a fundamentalist Christian environment.

If i remember correctly, we were raised, through our Southern Baptist beliefs, to think of these Buddhas as idols. I think of the golden calf tale and the other Biblical stories of believers smashing idols to bits.  several years ago, when the Taliban blew up some some ancient stone Buddhas in Afghanistan, it was pretty telling.  What does it say when Southern Baptist evangelicals and the Taliban have a similar mentality?  Even though I am not a Buddhist, of course, nor a Russian orthodox believer, I do appreciate the history and architectural significance of temples and onion-domed churches.  I would say the same for Hindu temples, the Jesus overlooking sao paulo and the like. and it never crosses my mind, "Oh, these need to be demolished."  The difference thought between some of the european cathedrals and the thai temples vs. the average plain jane church in small-town usa is that the former have a museum-like quality, and that appeals to me.