Tjheology
January 2010
Meaning no disrespect, and this isn’t
the first time I’ve found myself in a spiritual wilderness. But in the past few
years I haven’t been able to reconcile membership in a faith community with
what I see happening in the world.
I’m not blaming anyone specifically,
but we have spiritual leaders in the Christian faith wishing our president
death from the pulpit, and we have gunmen murdering medical professionals
because anti-abortion activists aren’t getting their way politically, and we
have pastors declaring people are going to hell for being gay. A lot of this
nonsense is accompanied by the most graphic, demeaning and upsetting of images.
And on the back of being good
Christian citizens, there’s a movement in this country opposing expansion of
health care coverage to all Americans, largely because our president, a “secret
Muslim,” is for it. They’ll deny it. The “Taxed Enough Already” crowd will say,
no, they’re being fiscally responsible, they don’t want to see the U.S. economy
founder in a boondoggle. But none of them said a peep when we were spending
ourselves down a rabbit hole with tax cuts that weren’t offset by anything and
two overseas wars. They’re fine spending billions to kill people, but not a
penny to help people. Forgive my incredulity.
Ten
years ago, a group of religious extremists targeted me as a private American
citizen. They threw planes at us, mailed sickness to us, they didn’t care who
they killed. It was based on what they perceived as my satanic, godless culture.
Since then, Muslim civilians have suffered just like Christians and Jews. It’s
been impossible to ignore the uglier side of organized religion when it’s on
such garish display.
At the same time, it’s hard to buy
into the concept of being so “blessed.” Yes, my life is easier than that of
others. No question. But there have been difficulties, recently. I’ve survived
a rather serious bout with depression a couple years back, and since then I’ve
been a little more “on edge” emotionally and have less patience for nonsense.
The core of Christianity as I
experience it is that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This prompts
a spirit of charity and I generally approve of the ministry of the United
Methodist Church. I have no objection to supporting it but lately between
cutbacks at work and a lack of direction in my local church – honestly, how
many times do we need to replace the organ? – I’m disinclined. If I don’t have
it, I can’t give it, and that includes time, money or any other resource.
All of this sounds bitter and cynical,
and it would. The mythology has meant less and less to me as I’ve aged. Actions
are way more important than words, and what the church has been up to lately
has not, in my opinion, met the challenges we’re facing in a society in
transition. In a world as small and diverse as our own we cannot rely on an
exclusivism that encourages the worst of our baser instincts and spiritual
leadership that encourages division.
To mainstream churches, reiterate
this: Christ is love. Christ loves us all, even people who are not Christians.
Judge not. Love your neighbor. Be in service. He challenged all of us to be
better people, but where there was need or suffering, he did not turn away, but
rather took on our suffering and indeed gave his own life that we be
reconciled.
These were his teachings, and we need
to hear them. Pray for our leaders. Pray for the suffering. Reach out to those
in need and maybe some of us will come back.
May 2010
The Minot Daily News letters section recently
included a letter arguing that Muslims couldn't be good Americans. It closed
with a call for everyone to be suspicious of these strange people who worship
the moon god of Arabia and want to destroy America.
Well, honestly, I'm not in favor of people destroying America. When people
threw airplanes at civilian and military targets, I was moved to put a flag on
my car and indeed it's still there.
But while 9/11 was the responsibility of a rather extremist sect of Muslims and
there were, indeed, outrageous demonstrations in favor of those attacks in
front of some cameras in predominantly Muslim places (maybe spontaneous,
possibly organized, I really couldn't say), eight years of getting the crap
bombed out of them later, probably those enthusiastically celebratory people
have muted their celebrations. Probably they don't feel any better about
Americans, but they for sure know what an eye for an eye feels like.
And indeed there is something suspicious about a world faith whose members get
so bent out of shape by an image of its founder appearing in a Danish cartoon
that they change the name of the Pastries Formerly Known as Danishes to
"Roses of the Prophet." Mind you, I can't help but think of
"Freedom Fries" and all the French did was assert their sovereignty
over their air space, which I suppose we respect until it inconveniences us in
any way.
In that there was then any notion that we would be welcomed as liberators in
the wake of Saddam Hussein's trial and execution, someone somewhere had some
idea that the rank-and-file Muslim in the street held some different view of
America than the more extreme versions.
I'm wondering if it wasn't exactly as theoretical, however. In Minot, N.D.,
people can probably believe whatever they like about Muslims because probably
they encounter such a dearth of cultural diversity in their day-to-day lives.
In the same way people can work themselves up into a lather against "The
Great Satan" America knowing that there's an ocean and next to zero
opportunity to travel there personally.
Probably that's how we get underwear bombers and wanna-bombers in the first
place. Someone convinces them that this is G-d's will and that they're
submitting to it in G-d's name and for G-d's glory, but in point of fact
they're nitwits who are so lacking in critical thinking skills they can't
manage to blow up a bomb – a thing /designed/ to blow up, and something that at
least their brethren overseas have managed in dramatically unnerving ways,
possibly because they have the better support structures, possibly because the
person who's really good at designing the bomb is smart enough not to be the
lunkhead who blows himself up with it.
In response to that letter, by Mr. Faydo, appearing in the May 16 issue of the
Minot Daily News ( http://bit.ly/a8TeOq ), I wrote my
own letter ( http://bit.ly/9Tnslf ) and I was naive enough to believe it would do any
good. You can read from the responses
how adorable I was in imagining that. My letter has spawned pages of
outrageous (and anonymous) responses,
but also an even longer letter in this weekend's edition
(http://bit.ly/d2QysE), which
reiterates all the misinformation of Mr. Faydo's letter and adds cherry-picked
quotations from the Qur'an to assert how it's a terrifically violent religion,
especially if you're not part of it. 
And indeed, during the Crusades, we found that Saladin's armies were a fearsome
foe. Only one of eight Crusades could be called a victory for Christians and
the ones who stayed largely went native. The other Crusades weren't successful
and some weren't even especially convincing to begin with.
But both the online comments section and this new letter take issue with my assertion
that Christians were responsible for the Holocaust. These responses suggest
that from 1933 to 1945, there was no practice of Christianity in Germany, and
that all Nazis were in fact atheists.
I really doubt that. I believe this is something we tell ourselves so that we
can feel good about ourselves. Even the pope wouldn't speak out against the
Shoah while it was going on and it would be hard to argue /he/ wasn't Christian
(although some Christians are wondrous in their ability to deny the Christianity
of others so I won't say impossible). Reflect that decades into Soviet Russia
the Eastern Orthodoxy continued and the State was absolutely discouraging
regarding faith. So really, in Germany, in the very birthplace of Protestantism
already, it died out completely in less than five years as the Nazis came into
power? Come now.
But it's apparently important, in the way that Allah is a pagan moon god with
no relationship whatsoever to the standard, Western, monotheistic G-d, the
great I AM already, and the Qur'an is nothing but a shrill commandment to kill,
kill, KILL THE INFIDEL!
Hmmm ...
I imagine if any especially motivated Muslim scholar were to flip through the
pages of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Psalms, Matthew, Luke and Acts, and any of
the prophets, along with a jaundiced eye toward the media, that scholar would
find sufficient evidence to conclude and pronounce that Christianity is a
bloodthirsty cult, bent on destroying its own and others. That its god – a
crazy bush god of Moses – delivered his people into a desert hellscape. That
sleeping with the wrong person gets you the death penalty (actually, that's in
the Qur'an as well). That no less a prophet than Saul of Tarsus held the cloaks
of those who stoned the early believers and hunted them down himself before he
decided to start giving them a bunch of laws and rules himself. And speaking of
stoned, the writer of Revelations is a wild-eyed nutjob – possibly crazier than
Glenn Beck himself. And that while there might be some good Christians /somewhere/
in the world (and he'll demand names), according to the media /he's/ seen,
Christians are basically child molesters bent on destroying each other and our
great spiritual leaders preach G-d brought about the Sept. 11 attacks, the
destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti as moral judgments
against the U.S., and the most devout Christians protest the funerals of our
fallen soldiers as evidence of G-d's judgment on America.
Is that really true? Of course not! I mean, yeah, that stuff is in the Bible
and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said those things, sure, but the central
message of Christianity is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and for
the rest of it, well, the Bible was written by a lot of different people
reacting to lots of different inspirations. We don't really take it literally –
well, most of us don't, and even those who do mostly don't act on it.
See, I shudder to imagine how three Muslim clerics would discuss Christianity –
just in light of how three letters from relatively uninformed and in some cases
entirely misinformed Christians discuss Islam in The Minot Daily News in
Minot, North Dakota.
Having said all of this, I hesitate to make declarative statements, but I
suspect that insofar as the average Muslim is concerned, that person is being a
good Muslim if he declares the primacy of G-d in his or her life and the
prophetic authority of Muhammad, prays five times a day, gives to charity,
submits himself to G-d's will (to the extent he or she is able to determine
that in his or her decision-making – sort of like a Christian asking
"WWJD?" but I digress), fasts during Ramadan, makes the hajj at least
once in his or her life and reflects G-d's love and mercy in his or her
day-to-day interactions. The struggle against "The Infidel" is
present, yes, but in reality the greater struggle is the effort to control the
self – the Greater Jihad, or effort.
In all reality, Christians could stand to be this demonstrative and reflective.
To one extent or another all of us are. Except for the trip to the Holy Land,
this is pretty much what we do as Christians – we pray, we tithe, we fast, we
declare Jesus is Lord and the Son of G-d, and we are indeed given the Great
Commission to spread the Gospel of Christ, but for the most part it's all we
can do to keep ourselves on the straight and narrow.
So ... lots of words. And an unsatisfying conclusion. Someone of a different
faith attacked my country, and others who shared that faith seemed happy. And
some people of that faith have tried to attack my country again and elsewhere
since then – and I guess I'm supposed to hate them.
And indeed, I find I don't have much trouble at all welling up a lot of anger
against the destructive pinheads in this world.
It's just that I find "destructive pinheads" to be equally present
within all faith traditions, so ...
... 'tis a puzzlement. 
I'll close with a link to an essay by James A. Michener on the "This I
Believe" site, an essay I heard the day Mr. Faydo's letter appeared in The
Minot Daily News, which is maybe why it stood out so much to me. Enjoy: ( http://thisibelieve.org/es
I
dated these entries because the world without and within is in constant flux
and renewal, and as I have more to say on the matter, I will revisit the topic.
Peace.