“Little Flowers”

My new ‘persona’ on Firefox, until such time as I get a whim to change it, is ‘little flowers’. I was wanting to start a new blog today, to mark the beginning of the era of madness…  but apparently, the era of madness began some time ago, I don’t know how long, because now it costs 17 dollars a year for a new WordPress blog. I’m not going to bore myself by commenting on that one way or another, but what it means is, I get to post on this old blog, which I’m now calling my god vs. mcgod blog. I want to unblock the search engines and/or link the blog to Facebook but I feel like a duck hunter camped out behind a blind (though I would never hunt ducks) and the problem with the blind is the ducks can see me but I can’t see the ducks. Another word for that is paranoia. I know I probably have nothing to say that a righteous teabagger would take a minute out of his or her day to hear; I’m a liberal (at times) progressive (at times) democrat (certainly in tomorrow’s election) and while I adamantly believe that such a person, a person of conscience, is a true patriot, I am well aware that the teabaggers adamantly believe they have a monopoly on patriotism. They, like us, want to be able to decide the direction this country is going. I’m trying not to hate them, because I feel much fear about where they want to take our country, and most hatred is born of fear.

I tried in other posts on this blog to characterize the polarity in terms of the type of faith each side possessed. Of course, some of my liberal/progressive friends would not wish the be characterized as religious at all; it is my contention that the mcgod that many on the right bow down to is a cheap substitute for the kind of thing I sometimes happily admit to believing in–but this is not the moment in which I want to define the word God, or hasten to redefine God as The Universe or The Divine Mother or some such entity (though I’ve read theologians who would cry out in dismay at the idea of God-as-entity). I do think it matters a lot what people believe in, and I do think the average liberal/progressive has a very different set of beliefs from the average teabagger. But I also would venture to say that there is a set of beliefs that kind of come with being human that people on both sides have lost sight of, because on both sides people are so quick to judge, quick to assert their difference from the Other.

I am gay and mentally ill and these two facts probably disqualify me from presenting a version of sanity to the world, though because this wordpress blog is free and no one is at this exact moment actively stopping me, i have the freedom to present my own point of view. Sarah Palin, on her Facebook page which I had the poor judgment to read last night, is quite concerned about freedom of speech. In the case of Juan Williams, she feels the fundamental right of Americans to be open and honest about the “Muslim threat” was violated. I did not feel good about NPR’s firing of Juan Williams, unless it is true as I assume it is, that it was about much more than his stating that Muslims on planes make him nervous. I saw a group of Muslims (apparently) at the San Francisco airport in 2004 and found myself having a panic attack, convinced that the entire airport would soon be blown to smithereens. It was a visceral reaction, against my better judgment. I don’t fly often or well, and I am subject to a thousand fears, though on that particular flight west I did decide against taking the Ativan a friend had supplied me with (two pills, and I had a fear I would be arrested for possession of a controlled substance).

Americans are afraid, I am afraid, and I share some fears with the teabaggers, but I am not afraid that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme or that Obama is a socialist. To say that Europe is coming apart because it is socialist, as Sarah Palin said on her page, is just plain ignorant. I know, liberals and progressives are accused of ignorance as well. Nobody is truly ignorant; people on both sides know things, it’s just that we don’t know the same things. What liberals and progressives know (not that these groups know exactly the same things, either) just happens to make more sense to me, in particular. But if I ‘knew’, for example, that Europe was socialist (I do know that different European countries have incorporated different elements of socialism into their economic systems, but for example, East Germany was socialist, Germany today is not socialist though elements of fascism are cropping up in their attitude toward migrant workers)–if I knew that all of Europe had swallowed the socialism pill and that their economic woes were directly related and had NOTHING to do with our economic woes–and I am NOT an economist but I think what’s going on is a failure of capitalism–I’m not a socialist, either, when I say that–and this sentence is hopelessly befuddled, but I’ll say this again, I think if Europe were alien and distinct from us, instead of suffering from the same malaise, I might say: let’s not swallow the same pill Europe swallowed. But there are stronger and weaker economies in Europe, and it would take several books to diagnose and describe each one.

If I knew what the teabaggers ‘know’, that the rich being richer, that corporations being stronger, is the key to a healthy happy future, I guess my vote tomorrow would be different. I don’t understand the working class and poor Republicans, never have. I get it that those with means want to keep those means. Of course they want to extend the Bush tax cuts. But only the top twenty percent own about 85% of the wealth, and according to my math, 20% of the voting populace isn’t a majority. No, there are a lot of people who will vote Republican who have no business voting Republican, because their interests will not be protected by the Republicans. If only I could make all the Republican’s computers shout that message to them today, like my computer shouted at me today when I turned it on: I received a “message from the future” telling me to vote at all cost. Who else received that message? Was it only one more homily for the choir?

I can’t reach people, I sort of don’t want to if they’re just going to tell me I’m a freak; if they tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m sure they’re right, because I’m only regurgitating what I’ve been told by the liberal media, right? Actually, I don’t need any liberal media to tell me that people I know and love have a right to live and be themselves and enjoy freedom of speech just like Sarah Palin and Juan Williams. The right speaks of the liberal ‘party line’. They want open and honest exchange about the “Muslim threat”. Are they not begging the question a little? Do they not have their own ‘party line’ that wants to dictate that where there are Muslims, there is a Muslim threat? I am contrite about my panic attack in San Francisco. I know the Qur’an does counsel Muslims to feel they are more ‘right’ than Christians and Jews, who are called the People of the Book. I know this because I’ve read the Qur’an. Even apart from my panic attack, I have some negative feelings about Islam. But only to the extent that I would not consider becoming Muslim. Not to the extent that I’m going to automatically regard Muslims with fear and hatred. It’s a way of relating to God, for most that’s all it is. A way of life. Different from out way of life in specific ways. Not wrong, in and of itself.

But I am not arguing with Palin’s people. Facebook has been all about my liberal and progressive friends preaching to the choir about this upcoming election. Most of us probably fear teabaggers more than Muslims. Muslim terrorists may have bombs. But what the teabaggers are up to is more insipid. You can’t destroy America with violence alone. 9/11 did sow the seeds of this intensifying polarity–or should I say, 9/11 intensified the germination of the seeds.  Some people wanted to fight Muslims all along. But some of the intense conservatives are rather like the feared Muslims–in their attitude toward gay people, in their desire to blend church and state, in their aggressiveness.

Let’s not let this election be Where it All Went Down the Tubes. Like the message i received this morning said. Let’s keep the faith–and by this here I don’t mean faith a God we can’t agree on, but faith in ourselves. Faith in sanity, as Jon Stewart described it. Faith in  reasonableness, which he also mentioned. I don’t mean: faith the the Democratic Party is always right. But you know I don’t mean that. You know what I mean. Carry on. With love.

—h.

Half Price Books Gets “A Case for God”

I only got to about chapter five. The book was taking up space, and I thought maybe it would sell for more than fifty cents. But because we sent about 100 books and wound up with 25 bucks, it strikes me that Karen Armstrong’s immortal words were not worth more than a quarter to Half Price Books. I will say I was finding the book a bit tedious, but I told myself that was because I was actively lazy at that moment. But in simple terms: should it take that fat a book to “make a case” for something most people have already made their minds up about?

It’s a problem that most people have already made up their minds. Especially when the very question: do you believe in God? has been shown to be problematic (by, among others, Karen Armstrong). There is a problem about what is meant by the word believe. I can’t look up Armstrong’s exact words because I sold the book to Half Price Books. But it can mean to give credence to something that is intellectually dubious. Much of what relates to God and religion is intellectually dubious to Karen Armstrong.

But if this blog is to go anywhere, we’re going to have to move beyond Karen Armstrong. I’m going to offer a definition of “believing in God” that I think is real in our world: recognizing an extra-legal authority that informs either one’s own moral behavior or one’s opinion about what is moral behavior for others. Because there are laws that protect gays and reproductive choice, for example, if one is against these things one must appeal to an extra-legal authority for support. It is convenient to say: God wants me to believe this or that; for some the word God in a sentence makes the sentence hold more water; my only objection is that I believe such people put far too many words in the mouth of God.

It is far too boring to think about any of this. Anne Rice left Christianity because of homophobia and anti-feminism among Christians. The tensions that exist in our society because of these issues are a cliche. If I met someone who wasn’t “the choir” to preach to, I probably wouldn’t want to talk to that person at all. Because they would probably also feel that Social Security is an enormous brood sow. Because they would be against Obamacare. Because they would feel the Bush era tax cut for the wealthy should be extended. Because they would want to freeze all non-military spending. Because they would be a Tea-bagger. Because they wouldn’t have a viable brain cell anywhere in their head.

I have stated in this blog that there is middle ground between Darwinists and Fundies, that it is possible to “believe in God” without being ultra-conservative in other ways, but is there middle ground between liberals and teabaggers and if there is, do I want to explore it? I have stated many times to many people that I don’t approve of everything Democrats think, say, or do, and that I’m not a “knee-jerk” liberal. There are people with my defining characteristics who are Republicans. Sometimes poor people are Republicans because they are so dumb they don’t know the difference between a free lunch and a gun pointed into their face. They think it’s more important for gays and women and blacks to be deprived of their civil rights than it is for the sun to rise in the east and set in the west. These people are not intellectually disabled; they are far worse. They believe in a God whose fundamental attitude toward his Creation is hatred and loathing. Some of these people conflate Nostradamus with Biblical prophecy and the Mayan calendar and believe it all points to 2012. Yellowstone Park will explode, and throw the planet into chaos–that’s the most recent thing I’ve heard. Nostradamus said so. It’s really easy to throw away the last vestiges of humane values if you are 100% convinced that we all have less than two years to live. Easy but not admirable. I’m with WS Merwin, our poet laureate: “On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree (as quoted by Sherry Chandler on her blog, www.sherrychandler.com)”

So what separates the sane from the teabaggers is not belief in God but lack of belief in a future. The wealthy Republicans have their hands in a South American monkey trap. They don’t want to give up anything now for the sake of the future so they act like spending money now on education or health care or survival funds for the poor is going to “deprive their grandchildren.” But it’s OK to spend money on defense, on destroying things and people in other countries instead of forming peaceful alliances with those countries which will protect not only the people in those countries but the wealthy Republicans’ grandchildren. But look at how much these people value human life: clearly it’s more valuable to die “for your country” than to live for it, so why do we need education?

We can be assured that a large number of Americans will have a crappy future if the non-believers-in-the-future get their way. The End of the World in 2012 is a matter of faith, but it doesn’t follow from faith in God. There are a lot of crappy things to have faith in. Pardon me for being judgmental, but I have license to be, as states the proverb: “Let yourself not be judged, rather judge others vigorously.” That’s what the teabaggers live by, so why shouldn’t I?

Who wants to be a cookie-cutter liberal? I don’t. But I think any middle ground between liberals and the Tea Party must be a no-man’s land, like the area around the Berlin Wall. I think things are so polarized that you have to turn on a different faucet to run the stream of consciousness that issues from each side (now doesn’t THAT make a whole lot of sense). Since blue is liberal presumably we also run cold, teabaggers hot. Problem is, hot is generally on the left–not at my grandparents’ house, in their upstairs kitchen. My mom says when my grandparents voted Republican they thought they were voting for Abraham Lincoln. Must be because the hot was on the right. Life is so logical.

I actually took time out of my work to write all this gibberish. My blog has said what it can say; there isn’t a whole lot left to add to what I’ve said in other posts. Anne Rice left Christianity “in the name of Christ” and I never really entered Christianity, because it didn’t seem to measure up to what Christ promised. Or what I understood Christ to have promised. Though by setting an example he didn’t so much promise anything as establish a standard against which to measure human behavior and I don’t see human behavior measuring up, and among Christians this not-measuring-up is all the more garish and painful.  I do walk around with Christ in my head much of the time, striving to measure up (and most often failing) so to that extent, by virtue of being part of a still somewhat Christian culture, I am a follower of Christ.

It would be convenient if all Christians were teabaggers and then us liberals could just shun Christians. But thank God not all people who still call themselves Christians would also self-describe as teabaggers. There would be just way too many teabaggers then!

Is God ONE?

Here is a link to a conversation with Stephen Prothero, author of a new book entitled “God is Not One: the 8 Rival Religions that run the World.” http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/04/is-there-an-interfaith-god. Also on the show is Susan Thistlethwaite (try saying that with a lisp) who argues that “God is infinite” and while religions are certainly different God is not–the argument that Prothero is trying to debunk.

I have just eaten too many Veggie Straws and I’m feeling a little queasy but I will endeavor to proceed. I have a few things I could say on this topic.  First of all, I have more of an emotional than an intellectual investment in the idea that God is One (and those who don’t perceive this are out to lunch, but it doesn’t matter).

Does it not matter? Prothero says it matters. That there is a condescension in saying it doesn’t, not respecting the views of people like Atheists and Buddhists. He says a millionth of the global population has had mystical experiences and they shouldn’t be responsible for defining God, that what matters is what people believe “in the main”–ordinary people.

Religions are different, God can be one or many or might not exist. So we are giving humans responsibility for saying what God is or isn’t. Saying that there is no objective reality that is God, such that it really doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot what we think. Which, of course, is my position. I think If God is or isn’t, is one or many, then that’s the way it is, and our religions or atheism or cults each see a part of the truth.

I guess I don’t have a whole lot else to say about it right now.

The Installation

I have been looking in on the Unitarian Church for about 12 years. When I say looking in on, I mean very occasionally (5 or 6 times total) attending a service, even less frequently attending Chalice Night, but showing up for some holidays, memorial services, and special luncheons and music events. Would I have even crossed the threshhold of the church if I did not live with two Unitarians? It’s hard to say. My Great Aunt was a Unitarian before she married into my mother’s family and adopted the family Episcopalianism. She used to smile when she talked about the church where there was so much “discussion.” Maybe that didn’t tell me much about what the church was about. I dated a Unitarian in Chicago, who had gone to Seminary a little. I learned nothing from that encounter, but considered attending the small Unitarian church in Hyde Park. I continued to think along those lines when I moved to Kentucky, learned early on where the church was, didn’t attend until I got to know my Unitarian in 1998.

“Why can’t Unitarians sing hymns? They’re always reading ahead to see if they agree with the next verse.” A joke I was told tonight at the Installation of the new minister, who has been at the church nine months, whom I have never heard “preach”.

I put quotes around preach because I don’t imagine a Unitarian minister preaches.

It’s a welcoming congregation. It’s not required or expected that you believe in God, or anything in particular, but there are seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association “which UU congregations affirm and promote:

-the inherent worth and dignity of every person

-justice, equity, and compassion in human relations

-acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations

-a free and responsible search for truth and meaning

-the right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and in society at large

-the goal of the world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all

-respect for the independent web of all existence of which we are a part

The minister of another Unitarian congregation gave the Charge to the Congregation right before the actual installation. He spoke of not having to distinguish between the saved and the lost, but having respect for all humanity. One of the ethical problems of being Christian is deciding how you feel about everyone else, once you consider yourself saved.

Are you part of an elect group that will go to Heaven, while all others who have not had your experience of salvation are doomed to the fires of hell. Or more importantly for some, are you part of an elect group on earth, in this life? Do you belong to a church which consists 100% of the saved, and do you have a right to judge those outside that church?

These are more important questions for me than the ones I raised in my last post–in a way. I mean, the last post examined whether we may only come to God through Jesus–certainly not something the UUs believe. And coming to God through Jesus translates pretty much to “being saved”. The Universalist idea is more or less that all may come to God, regardless of anything. It is seen by fundamentalist Christians as a terrible heresy. But the gospel of grace states that nothing we can do will save us, that salvation is a gift. Except that it does help to have faith. I think the UU idea is that faith is not required.

But some UUs speak of faith, and many but not all speak of God. One of the charges to the minister during the installation was that she delegate responsibility to avoid exhaustion, or in other words “rest in God’s arms.” The person delivering this charge said, “Interpret this as you will.” She said that she herself did not always believe in God.

Who believes in God 100% of the time? I’m sure there are people who would call you a sinner, heretic, or at least unsaved, if you admitted you had times of doubt. But the greatest theologians admitted to doubt, Paul Tillich said doubt was a part of faith. We are human, after all. 100% faith would be a supernatural accomplishment.

Though I have great respect for the UUs because they seem to be oriented toward truth, I also am pretty sure what truth is taught by the wide range of Christian churches is always valid in some way to the people who believe it. If you believe you can only come to God through Jesus Christ, well then that helps you find your way to God. Where i lose interest is where Christians feel too threatened by others who do not believe what they believe.

Because it’s just a fact, you can’t force belief. Of course Muslims are bothered by those who don’t believe as they do. Jews not so much. Jews are just bothered by those who persecute them for what they are. But there are no proselytising Jews, Jews telling gentiles to eat kosher, Jews converting by the sword. Just Jews forcing Palestinians out of their homes.

Christians have imperialistic tendencies. Muslims? Many Americans fear a Muslim “takeover” but that is probably not in the cards. You get in trouble for having Christian ideas not if you’re a Christian but if you’re a Muslim.

Obama said recently, “We are no longer a Christian nation.” He added, “Not just.” The UUs believe the world would be a better place if there were more UUs in it. Because UUs don’t promote fear and intolerance and hypocrisy and misunderstanding. Because UUs are not satisfied to be brainwashed, force-fed.

Jesus did not promote these things either. If I wind up attending the UU church more often, I pray that I will also attend the Christian church more often. I like being reasonable, but there is always that predictable lapse of reason. I like the magic of Jesus; I want to take communion, I want to believe in his presence, in his forgiveness.

The Case for Faith (a Movie)

Up until now I’ve kept this blog under wraps, have not published a link to it on Facebook and have discouraged blogging friends from linking to it. Is it because my blog has a communicable disease? Just don’t put your hands in your mouth after touching the keyboard… but guess what, my blog ain’t got a thing to do with your keyboard. Except for the angry words you might type on it after your read whatever it is I’m getting ready to say…

So what is it I’m afraid of? The fundamentalists might read my blog and decide I’m not saved. Well who are they to say anyway? Anybody who thinks “sinners don’t get saved” is full of it. We’re all sinners. Who could possibly get saved BUT sinners? So I’m afraid atheists and agnostics will read my blog and ridicule me for caring at all about getting saved.

So some readers will condemn me to the fire pit and others will condemn me to that place in their minds where they put fools and others not worthy of their time. WHAT’S THE BIG F***ING DEAL? I’m not even Joe Biden, to be hated and praised across cyberspace for saying something some hated and some praised was a BFD.

I saw a movie last night that my non-Christian partner suggested, called “The Case for Faith.” It dealt with what the narrator saw as the two main obstacles to Christian faith: 1) That Christians believe people only come to God through Jesus Christ and 2) That there is so much evil and suffering in the world.

Well, probably a lot of people I know would not have watched the movie because they would be sure it would come up with answers that supported Christianity. I knew it would, too. And it did.

When I speak of faith, am i necessarily talking about Christian faith? No. How could I? Because while there are days my faith takes an unmistakably Christian turn, I’m also capable of writing a long e-mail to a friend about all the reasons I have trouble believing Jesus is God. And I can make statements like: well if he is the son of God, aren’t we all sons and daughters of God.

But I have to ask myself, for the sake of having asked, is there some kind of resentment of Jesus in me that makes me want to bring him down to the level of the rest of us, that can’t accept what Christianity teaches, that he is the Lamb, the perfect Son of God? I wonder, when in the course of my life has it ever been conclusively proven to me, and with what evidence, that Jesus could not have been God manifest as a man, who died and was resurrected and sits, as God, at God’s right hand?

I have been to Episcopal churches and said the Nicene Creed with full conviction. I have said that I believe in God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Ghost. How many Christians reeally know what the Holy Ghost is? I read the first two volumes of Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology and was OK with them. The first was about God, the second about Christ. I picked up the third, about the Holy Spirit. I got about twenty pages into the third volume. I didn’t understand it.

But one Sunday at the Episcopal church, the priest told us al to pray for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and I prayed. I knew exactly what he was talking about. The Holy Spirit stayed with me for a long time.

As far as Jesus being God goes, i think that is just a matter of faith. If you can’t believe it, you can’t. I don’t think there is any way to prove it. The idea is that God experienced the full extent of being human through Jesus, including terrible suffering. If you don’t believe Jesus is God, then either you don’t think God can experience human suffering at all, or you think God has always experienced it through each of us, anyway. Or the other option, you think the whole God idea is a bunch of bunk, anyway.

The main argument for why God has allowed so much evil and suffering in the world is that God has given us all the gift of free will. Thus moral behavior is a choice–and the big point is, loving is a choice–loving other people and loving God. Because if you’re forced to love, it doesn’t mean anything. People who choose to love God are often the same people who choose to strive to be good, though of course many non-believers subscribe to the notion they can choose goodness and love and compassion and other virtues. They just aren’t giving themselves the convenience or crutch or advantage of a cosmic Teacher who smiles upon their efforts to be good.

Because if you don’t have faith in such a Teacher, then you pretty much don’t. Maybe you have a list of reasons for not having such a faith, or maybe you’ve just got a gut feeling, something about the God story doesn’t ring true. It’s too good to be true, or too treacly to be taken seriously.

I don’t want to sacrifice my faith on the wrong altar. I am easily influenced by others. I forget to pray. I can go for days hearing the things others say, neglecting to pray. When it all is a purely intellectual puzzle, something like a math problem to be solved, I want to move to the head of the class. I want to impress people by getting the right answer. And not believing, to me, takes more brain power than believing. Smart people, often, are non-believers, and I like smart people and I want to be smart.

Those smart people are going to raise their eyebrows if I say I believe Jesus died on the cross to save humankind. Most of them would be OK if I said something more measured, like Jesus had some great teachings, to be compared with those of Buddha and Muhammad. I want to walk around with a convenient cloud down low over my head so I can have privacy to think what thoughts about Jesus I actually am thinking. To care or not to care about being saved. But if a fundamentalist happens along, I’m going to run into some trouble, because the fundie will certainly ask me to account for myself. Do I believe this that and the other. If the fundie was carrying a sign that said GOD HATES FAGS or something about babykillers, I would probably say no, no, and no, and be on my way. Because I’m not accountable to humans, especially intolerant ones.

A Man of Conviction

A good friend of mine feels that one’s views about God are best kept to onesself, or maybe confided to a good friend. At least one person who feels differently is writer Harlan Ellison, who has made a video, or at least allowed a video to be made, of his opinions on the subject of God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le-vDxmIKOI&NR=1  If this is not a live link, you will need to copy and paste it into your browser. Or you could skip it.

Harlan Ellison is pissed off at people who blame God and don’t take responsibility for their actions. He says anybody who claims to have a relationship with God is presumptuous; the universe doesn’t know we’re here, it’s random, no one out there or up there is concerned about us. “There’s no rhyme or reason.”

But then he talks about the toolbox we’re given. We’re given this great toolbox, so we can be good people.

I just am not grooving with Mr. Ellison when it comes to the either/or. Either people blame God and don’t take responsibility, or they take full responsibility? I’m not into blaming God for everything. But I’m not into taking full responsbility either. So when Ellison says he has “no sympathy for bad people”, well I’m not going there with him. To me, while of course people need to take responsibility for their actions, there are SO many factors beyond our control that contribute to making us who we are.

Not that I think all of these factors serve as “excuses.’ Having been abused is not an excuse for becoming an abuser, for example, though I’ve often read that a large percetage of abusers (and violent criminals) were abused. It takes a strong moral character to overcome a difficult background. Still “fighting the good fight” is struggling to overcome (but it seems understandable that people would not be perfect in overcoming; they might avoid being criminals but have a strong “shadow side” to contend with).

But to Ellison, “bad” people are more or less just assholes. The funny thing is, though coming from a position of atheism, his view on ‘bad people’ approaches the view of the very religious. Only the latter would call them “sinners.” At the extreme, the very religious are never sinners but were placed on this earth to condemn them. And that’s why I stick with the middle ground. 

Ellison used an example of the randomness of the universe that “one day you win the lottery the next you get cancer.” To me that’s an example of you win some, you lose some. If there is a God, or if the Universe does care about little us, to me that doesn’t mean it has to dish out runs of good luck to the faithful. In my experience, faith is no guarantee of obvious blessings. Faith may help a person see blessings where a person of no faith might not. People of faith tend to be aware that adversity is a great teacher.

I’ve encountered Ellison’s point of view, or variations on it, often enough to be annoyed, but it is true that the opposite is not much more appealing to me–I don’t want to  listen to some smarmy fundamentalist.  I can’t imagine that Ellison himself, who tends toward potty-mouth, would do anything but demonize fundamentalism, but his position is just as hard-line.  How does this work? If Ellison is as smug as he seems about being a good person, he’s not much different from someone who feels God has blessed him more than average so he has a divine right to what he wants. I don’t think of fundamentalists as people of great faith, I think of them as people with great assumptions.

As always, I’m leery of the extremes.

There is a behavior among male lions that I find shocking–it was described in an issue of National Wildlife recently. Male lions have been observed killing cubs and having sex with females who, in their grief, go into heat. From what we know, lions do not have a legal system which criminalizes this behavior. Though humans do, there are those whose behavior is just as shocking–even if it happens during war, no one is supposed to get away with it. Some do. If there is no authority higher than human law–and the Ten Commandments are supposed to be God’s law, right? Do we even know that any behavior goes unpunished, if God is meting out the punishment? Can someone like Mr. Ellison serve as supreme arbiter? If humans are only accountable to humans, then indeed much goes unpunished, and much is punished that shouldn’t be punished, or shouldn’t be as harshly punished. I would be tempted to punish those male lions, but maybe God puts them in their place.

Which would sound like a feeble statement to an agnostic or atheist. But I’m glad I believe in my accountability before God. I’m glad I don’t believe those who try to tell me what God wants me to do and not do. The way it works out, it’s easier for me to obey human law than every nuance of God’s law, as I understand God’s law for me. “Striving to be perfect” is not so much to expect to achieve a goal, it’s just a direction to move in. I try to be perfect and fail 100 times a day. If I were to fail less often, it would not make me happier, it would mean my standards were to low. Human standards are too low. We don’t expect that much out of ourselves, just that we don’t kill and steal and the rest. Ellison’s “bad people” are probably the obvious lawbreakers, the drug dealers and murderers. But plenty of people would get off easy in his eyes, people who eat too much and don’t exercise enough, for example. There’s no human law about how much to eat or exercise (and there shouldn’t be). But to my understanding, by eating too much and not exercising you are violating your convenant with God, who always has the way of moderation in mind. Apparently, I’ve been violating at least this aspect of my convenant. Does that make me a bad person? It sure keeps me out of the running for Miss Perfect USA.

Atheists and agnostics have no time to hear about sin and sinners, but to me those concepts are important, as long as they are not misused. A misuse of the word sinner is to label all those who break the human law. Another misuse is to label all the people who do things WE don’t like. In both cases the labelers don’t seem to feel they belong to the category of sinners. I tend to go along with the idea that we all are sinners, and I can’t point to a New Testament passage where Jesus said that but I know he did (there’s places that say things like “There’s not one good [except God]” To me, a human can’t help but be a sinner. The very best of people are still sinners because they are not perfect. There’s no shame in not being perfect. Is there shame in being a sinner?

Fundamentalists will say “God hates sinners.” People I want to listen to will say: “Jesus loves sinners.” Now is Jesus a subversive? Did Jesus love people God hated? Why would he do that? If God hates sinners, I can see why people don’t want to be labeled “sinner.” Who wants to be hated by God? Do fundamentalists no longer believe “God is Love?” They must not, because how can Love hate?

I just don’t have any use for it. Now Ellison says God or the Universe (“IT”) doesn’t know we’re here. Well, so it’s entirely up to us whether to be good or to misbehave, and since there’s no such thing as God’s law, there is no sin. We have a tool box, and we can use it to be good people.

I don’t get how a box full of screwdrivers and wrenches can be used to make us good. I guess I’m literal-minded, but to me, tools are used to build things. Yeah, I know, a lot of New Age people will speak of a spiritual tool box. If you’ve got a bunch of hammers and drill bits, it’s pretty easy to know where the tools come from. And the prototypes are handed down to us from cavemen times. But a spiritual toolbox; that must have things in it like patience, and love, and compassion, and honesty. Where do these tools come from? Handed down from cavemen times too? Well, maybe. But who tells us what we’re supposed to build with these tools?

Experience? Yeah, I mean, of course. We’ve evolved, and stuff has been handed down, and transformed with time. Both nuts and bolts type tools and spiritual ones. I mean, I believe that, as much as I believe we have a reciprocal relationship with God, who has given us tools. Here’s where the atheists and agnostics part company with me. But most fundamentalists believe that God gave us the ultimate tool, the Bible, which has every answer written in its pages. So we’re less in relationship with a living God, than with a book. Now mmaybe it’s a good book and all, but isn’t it idolatry to worship something less than God as God?

It’s just my belief that important as the Bible may be, there is a “rest of the story” that isn’t told in the Bible; it’s in other books, and in daily life, even on TV, and much of it is told by science. Humans trying to find the answers, God revealing the answers in myriad ways. I think if you observe a couple of polar bears on the arctic circle, and they do such and such, then that’s God revealing the answer. Or an answer. Darwin down there in the Galapagos was getting the answers God wanted him to get, when he watched a tortoise lumbering along a beach, or observed the different beaks on different birds. My God is not a God that sits on a mountain and hands us a book. We’ve got the book, now let’s go sit in the AA meeting and listen to the drunks talking.

“IT doesn’t know us”? I believe what life IS is an interaction with IT. If we don’t believe in IT it’s like believing we walk through life with our brains hermetically sealed–but then we wouldn’t experience Life, right? Same thing as not interacting with IT. But that’s just my thing. Because like I said, my God is not sitting on a mountain, my God is not something that exists IN the world, at the same time, Sure, that’s the guy, over on that mountaintop with a pack on his back, smoking a pipe. And God is Everything that exists in the world.

But theologians, some of them, say you can’t say God exists. Not like other things. Existence happens on a plane that is too lowly for God. Or something. God is essence; humans exist because they have fallen from essence.

I bet Ellison would say that his “IT” exists, sure enough. So in a funny way, he’s more of a believer than I am.

—H.

Movie Review: “The Secrets”

I have a topsy-turvy relationship with Israel in my mind. Though I feel sad about Jewish suffering through history and sympathize with the Jewish desire for homeland, there are times I hate the modern state of Israel, like during the Gaza war and the war with Lebanon a few years back. When at war, Israel tends to seem cruel to me, crueler than whoever its enemy is. But Israel doesn’t seem crueler than Iran, and when Iran makes its preposterous noises about annihilating Israel, acccompanied by the claim that Israel invented the Holocaust, it makes me want to go join the Israeli army.

What I don’t always think about when I think about Israel is patriarchal religion, mostly because I know so many strong Jewish women, who don’t seem to feel disadvantaged by a sense of inferiority. The movie “The Secrets” didn’t give me any choice but to think about how at least certain Orthodox circles are highly patriarchal, to the extent that a female isn’t really given a chance to study at the university level, to the extent that a female isn’t held accountable or expected to do anything but raise a family.

The most central character in “The Secrets” is Naomi, a brilliant student of scripture who decides to postpone her wedding following her mother’s death and go to an all women’s seminary in Safed. The seminary’s leader is a woman who honors Naomi’s dream of becoming the first Orthodox female rabbi. Naomi has three roommates, among them the smoker Michelle, who has lived some of her life in Paris and speaks French.

Naomi and Michelle are sent to take food to a Frenchwoman named Anouk, who has served 15 years in prison for murdering her lover, an artist, and who is now dying of cancer. Anouk recognizes that Naomi has spiritual gifts and wants some. She wants to “meet God” and receive forgiveness. The New York Times review can’t figure this out, why she should ask for help from the two Seminarians, but it doesn’t seem surprising to me. Naomi and Michelle agree to help; they research and perform kabbalistic rituals, such as a purifying bath at which women are prohibited, and wearing sack cloth to mortify the flesh.

The rituals are supposed to be reserved for Jews, but the women continue even after they find out Anouk is not Jewish. Meanwhile during a visit to Naomi’s home, they become lovers. This is very difficult for Michelle to deal with afterward; Naomi researches the matter in scripture and finds out it is techically not unlawful for women to be lovers, only men (because they spill their seed, which is wasteful–it should only go into a woman).

Anouk reaches the end stage of her life; Naomi breaks off her engagement and asks Michelle to move into an apartment with her; Michelle is courted by a young man. This is the part the New York Times review says would be mawkish, if it weren’t for the acting of the three main women. I will leave the ending along for anyone who has a chance to see the movie.

How can a young woman renounce marriage and family for the sake of another woman? This is certainly not generally understood in her culture. Naomi is presented as identifying strongly with male roles (not that there is anything “butch” about her). The word “normal” does come up, to Naomi’s dismay, because clearly her choices are not going to be seen as normal.

Naomi has a strong feeling that her relationship with God cannot authentically be dictated by her culture. Her sense that God loves and approves of her is made clear by her decisive action in helping Anouk with kabbalistic ritual the use of which is not taught to women (unless of course they happen to be Madonna). Whether or not it ever was, it is not now as simple as male this female that. All humans are created equal but not the same… 

I am left with a bad taste in my mouth about Orthodox Judaism. That doesn’t mean I think Ahmadinejad is right about Israel. Though I have never wanted to be a Jew, I have always, from my distance, found something appealing about the seriousness with which they approach God. So that it seems blasphemous to quote Depeche Mode:

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor, and when I die, I expect to find him laughing…

I just wanted to change the mood.

–H.

“A New Kind of Christian”?

If I might be permitted a digression, I am reading a book by Brian D. McClaren called The Last Word and the Word After That which is the third book in a trilogy which explores changes Christianity might make in the postmodern era. It’s not the first book I’ve read on this topic, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, because I happen to be very interested, even though at present I’m not a member of a congregation of Christians, and though I’ve attended more services and functions at the Unitarian church than at any specific Christian church in the past five years. Maybe ten years.

Still I am not impervious even to some aspects of traditional Christianity. There was a book I once read about fundamentalism that said fundamentalism is about believing in the crucifixion and resurrection–the fundamentals of the faith, not so much about being anti-abortion and anti-homosexual, etc. This book, which was admittedly a bit fervent, got me excited about being a Christian. Other books have gotten me excited about being a Christian, and when I go to a Christian church, like the rock ‘n roll church I most recently attended, I come away from it excited about being a Christian.

But there’s that issue that I founded this blog upon, the chasm between the Creationists and the Evolutionists. I’m probably more middle-of-the-road when it comes to religion than I am politically, even though of course loosely, the chasm translates into left and right wing, and politically I lean left. Still, of course, you can find Creationists whose politics are more on the left–well, at least I remember this one kid at my college who showed up for all the demos and believed we were descended from Adam and Eve; after all we supposedly do still live in a country where there is freedom of worship and religion need not be the same as politics even though the separation between church and state has narrowed.

Now there’s precious little I can DO about the chasm between Evolutionists and Creationists beyond alligning myself with the middle.  And reading books and striving to be more intelligent about the position I allign myself with, or change my position if need be–if further evidence shows me my position is foolish or just plain wrong. The pastor who is the protagonist in McLaren’s book is an evangelical, but like McClaren himself, not necessarily a conservative (intransigent, literal-minded) evangelical. He is learning, growing, changing, because he see that the Christianity of the modern era is not going to cut it in the times we are entering. He gets in trouble with his church, which is drifting to the Right. In fact, at the point where I am now, he is on kind of a disciplinary leave of absence, in danger of being terminated if he won’t shift back to more conservative views.

The pastor is a kind man and an honest man. He is getting in touch with himself with the help of a more liberal former priest and learning that caring for others is more important to him than sticking to a conservative agenda; the third book centers around his view of Hell, his growing feeling that “eternal conscious torture” there for non-Christians is not fair and not in keeping with his view of a merciful God.

But McClaren’s conservative characters believe that the “Saints” have been predestined for glory and that there is nothing wrong with eternal suffering for those who have been predestined for it. Of course the saints are evangelical Christians like themselves.

McClaren has his pastor meet an “intersexual lesbian” whose gender is impossible to determine by any ordinary measure; he is very kind to this person, asks “her” to read him her poetry, thumbtacks her poetry to the walls in his workspace and draws inspiration from it. This person is unwelcome at the pastor’s church because of the hostile takeover.

In the political realm, too, it seems to me that a kind and honest person would behave differently from the way most Republicans and Democrats have been behaving. Our African-American President certainly has not been trying to bring out the worst in people, but the worst is coming out of people, because even large numbers of Democrats can’t seem to handle “change we can believe in,” even when they believe in it. It is my contention that being a good person is not what most politicians are about. It didn’t work for Jimmy Carter to put principles in front of politics, at least not when he was President. Presidents since have been effective to different degrees, but about whom can it be said that he was “good”? But does it matter?

It’s not just Presidents who choose political survival, but just about anyone might do it. It seems to me it’s all about peer pressure and getting the most rewards. Who wants to find themselves, especially in this economic climate, in the position McCaren’s pastor finds himself? But it’s where kindness and honesty will get you.

Because economic well-being and social standing are the most important things, everybody is off the hook. Right? People are just trying to protect–to save themselves. But what if there were a God who saved people.  What if God were not just a universal  principle of some kind but did have a type of personhood and, magical as I know some think such things must be, did witness our lives, even our thoughts? What if God didn’t like selfishness, meanness, dishonesty, hypocrisy?

For some, the fact that kind and honest people can be made to suffer by the human world can be an argument against God. McClaren’s pastor is concerned about the degree to which the world can reflect God’s mercy. The modern era was one in which people of a certain stripe enjoyed great rectitude and certainty. Before he met the intersexual lesbian, the pastor thought he could be certain that homosexuals should be condemned, but here was an example of someone born with undeniable gender ambiguity.  The postmodern version of Christianity the pastor is pursuing in his thoughts (and some of his sermons) is one that recognizes what is, rather than what “should be.”

A Christianity that isn’t about the “shoulds” invented by a bunch of white men with power. A Christianity that looks at who Jesus was and how he lived rather than the powerful white men’s interests and preferences. I once heard a minister at a wealthy Episcopal church tell the congregation: “It’s too hard to follow Jesus. It takes too much sacrifice. God understands if you look out for number one.”

I believe Jesus was truly compassionate, and believe that Christianity should be a religion of compassion. As it is, I don’t aspire to be a good Christian, because I’m not sure that’s synonomous with being good.

Splitting Hairs (With Good Reason)

In her chapter entitled “Faith,” Armstrong suggests that what we in the West call faith is something very different from what characterized the pre-modern relationship between individuals and their concept of the divine.

“Intellectual assent to a hypothetical–and often dubious–proposition” is more or less how Armstrong defines faith as we know it. And even though the Greeks said pisteuo, the Romans said credo, and early English speakers–including those who put together the King James version–said I believe, all of which could be found in many dictionaries to be synonymous, the meanings that were more accurate, according to Armstrong, were “I commit myself to, I am loyal to, I give my heart to.”

Religion used to be more of an activity, or way of life, than it is now, Armstrong has been stating all along. Early humans lived primarly off of hunting and what of religion they practiced was based on their relationship to the animals they killed–at least this is a common interpretation of the cave paintings of animals. The Israelites had their incredibly detailed lists of laws they felt they needed to follow to be acceptable to Yahweh. The ancient Greeks had their rites and mysteries that gave them mental training needed for a practical relationship with the Gods. The early Christians developed transformations processes to prepare people for baptism that were supposed to develop a knowledge of God in the initiates.

In theory, a person could now come to “faith” without any practice whatsoever. A person could “assent intellectually” to the idea that there is a God without ever having had any practical experience of God. At least this is Karen Armstrong’s contention.

I’m not sure I like this definition of faith as “intellectual assent.” If someone tells me such and such candidates are running for President, and this one stands for this and this one this other thing, I will probably assent to this inellectually. I will believe–as the media will report–that these are the candidates and these are the things they believe in. But no one came to me and said “there is a God” whereupon I assented, and said “OK, now I have faith in God.”

Perhaps there are people out there who will state, if anyone asks, that they believe in God, but whose lifestyle includes no concessions to the fact that they believe. Oh, but, come on, how ARE you supposed to live when you have faith? One particular way? Certainly there are groups within Christianity which offer very specific guidelines on how to live. But I am willing to bet there are no two groups whose guidelines are just alike.

I don’t belong to  a Christian group, but do try to live according to some Christian principles because they make sense. Some advice I have tried to take from the Bible has made less sense, like living like the lilies of the field and not being concerned for tomorrow, and in the case of one particular individual, I have given him my cloak and my coat too and he has come back every single day since asking for another coat and cloak and I have only so many to give.

I would not like to claim that I live my whole live according to my faith in God. Probably what I have done most over the years since I met God was try to know God better, and I’ve done that through prayer and contemplation and through interactions of all kinds and through reading and research. When I say “I believe” in God I don’t mean intellectual assent, because sometimes, intellectually, I deeply question whether there is a God, and then I think, well if there is, how am I to know what to do about it? There are certain things I do because I am committed to God, even during times when intellectually I am doubting whether there is a God who cares one hoot what I do and don’t do. I act as if, because it is the best I know to do, and I act in a certain way because I believe in Goodness even when I’m not sure Goodness is a Person.

Most of the time I believe God is Good. But is this intellectual assent? No, it is emotional assent. I have a huge desire for there to be a God, for this God to be Good, and to know this God. Intellectually I have many reasons to doubt. I was raised to doubt.

So I’m a little down on Karen Armstrong at the moment. She is providing much information (within the past ten pages, I have begun taking notes). But I am not sure that even contemporary religion is all about people forcing each other to swallow dogma. I could be wrong about this. Maybe I just haven’t been to Six Flags over Jesus lately. Amen.

–H.

Caring for Creation

A friend sent me the link (www.baptistcreationcare.org/node/1) a carefully worded Southern Baptist statement on climate change. I was happy to see that they are advocating action, that they are letting their people know that they should consider humans responsible for what damage they’ve done to the environment, that they are saying humans should care for the environment because it’s part of loving God. Etc. My first response to this is that it seems like a radical change; I tend to think groups of Christians constitute the reactionary forces that either don’t believe in climate change or don’t feel responsible. My secondary reaction was to think: well, this is carefully worded; whoever wrote this doesn’t want to misrepresent what Southern Baptists believe in any way. Abortion and gay marriage as the most important moral issues of our times are alluded to at least twice each, in case anyone reading might think the change in the position on climate change might represent a complete turnaround in church thinking across the board.

Carefully worded? That’s what my blog is not. And as a result I run the danger of misrepresenting myself at every turn. Since I am not a church, it seems less important. I have always, for example, been a defender of flip-floppers–when politicians change their minds, I often applaud them, because I think they are responding honestly to new information. I have only changed my mind about abortion and gay marriage half a million times, to name two issues which, by the way, I most often do not consider the most important moral issues of our times, but that’s probably because more often I take the “liberal” position on both issues. (I think “greed” is a more important moral issue) Just to belabor the point, the Baptist statement demonizes “population control”; I don’t. I think the size of the population has much to do with why we have the current crisis, the climate change which the Baptists are now saying we should take some responsibility for.I would argue that abortion, while admittedly brutal, is more humane than other methods of population control. And while I can’t claim to know where God stands on it, my gut tells me that if God sanctions mass slaughter in wars, God’s views on the sanctity of human life must be nothing if not complex.

But I get myself into these tight spots when I try to argue with the church. I’d rather feel good about the Southern Baptists, today, because of the overriding sanity of the arguments in their statement about climate change. I feel worlds better about the Southern Baptists now than about people who say: “It’s cold; global warming is a hoax.” Though I don’t inundate myself every day with the latest scientific facts on global warming, I have done so enough, and will do so enough in the future, to be clear on the reality.

That the Southern Baptists are making a judgement in favor of the validity of some science seems to me huge. When my road seems most forked is when I believe that Christians ignore or condemn science while scientists make a joke of Christianity. I came to religion with a background in science; in addition to prefering science classes to others in school I lived in a home where science was synonomous with Reason, and Reason was good. I was taken to see “Inherit the Wind” when I was eight, and my dad told me about a song Christian children were taught to sing (I don’t remember if it was in the movie): “I didn’t swing from a tree.” I loved animals, and it seemed to me at best inconcievable, at worst silly and hypocritical, that humans could despise animals so much that they would be unwilling to accept that humans themselves are just a type of animal. Evolution seemed logical and obvious to me. Of course we are related to chimpanzees, and what on earth is wrong with that? The difference is quantitative–brain size–not qualitative.

Of course I hadn’t read the Bible, but by the time I did, it didn’t change my mind. If you are raised from a toddler on Star Trek, perhaps it takes work to convince you there are no Romulans and Vulcans and no human has yet traveled at warp speed. It’s perhaps a real downer to be apprised of these things, when you’d built your world view around the fantasy. If I’d been raised from a toddler on the Creation story in Genesis, and kept the right company, perhaps I never would have “found out” that the Earth was not created in seven days, and our human ancestors were not made from clay.

Of course, I don’t know how many days it took to make the Earth, but I think there are a lot of zeros after the number.  It may make just as much sense to say seven days. Still, I never could, and still can’t, dismiss scientific accounts, though I do realize that science doesn’t ask all the questions. Often, it asks the Hows without asking the Whys. If you’re not content with a blanket “Just because,” you might end up doing what I did: turning to God.

The question: “Why is there something instead of nothing?” is one I truly believe only God can answer. God has answered in in myriad ways throughout human history; God has answered the question differently for different cultures which feels only appropriate. The Bible is probably pointed to more than any other book as the answer (I don’t actually know, maybe as many fingers have pointed to the Qur’an). But there are many smaller questions which the Bible doesn’t answer directly. That’s why I don’t want my God to be trapped in the Bible. If the answer to the question about abortion is “Thou shalt not kill,” then why, forgive my simple mind, is the question about war not answered there as well, and why did people not heed it, and live in peace?

The answers to my prayers, if I pray asking for advice, may or may not be written in a chapter and verse. Perhaps it is good that large numbers of people, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, have come to agree that x in the Bible has x meaning and no other, because at least those people are clear about what they specifically should and should not do. They asked a question and were told an answer, if not by God directly then by their elders, by their preachers, by their peers. If the answer works for them, great. But if the answer doesn’t work, I think they need to know the universe is not so rigid. Some people have needs that aren’t allowed for in the answers the church gives. When the church imposes its answers on people whose needs won’t allow them to accept the answers, there are problems. When the church says homesexuality is unnatural but some people are naturally homosexual. When the church affirms the sanctity of life and preaches against abortion but the life of the mother is threatened.

The Southern Baptists grappled with large questions in writing their statement about climate change, and as I said, I applaud it. To realize that humans can harm creation and have harmed it and have responsibility to repair it is a big step in the right direction. My disagreement with the Southern Baptists on the pressing moral issues would make me immoral in their eyes while I think they miss the morality boat in some ways themselves. I hope we can all work together on climate change. The other issues were meant to be divisive, but this one isn’t.

–H.