It’s fundamendal
Before I get into this topic for the oh, 6 of you still kind enough to check the blog, here’s a quick update. I remain in Kansas City where I’ve been for 3 weeks and plan to begin the drive back to Virginia next week. TS and I continue to get along beautifully even as we face the nuances associated with getting to know one another. I think the degree to which I need coffee in the morning is sinking in with him and I’ve learned that he operates on a time schedule uniquely his own. I have loved not working but had hoped to be more productive. Turns out I have a Vitamin D deficiency great significant enough that I’m on high-dose, Vitamin D or will be when I pick it up this afternoon along with the other prescriptions that I’ve had transferred here from Virginia. Since I drive a convertible, I’ve always thought that I get enough sunshine. Maybe not.
Republican Dude sent me a compelling email several weeks ago asking me if I’d ever had a good experience with a Christian… and his note, in conjunction with a book I’m reading, Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakaur as well as my Denver friend’s recent walk of faith as a Born Again Christian has led me back to the JavaJennifer site for the first time in weeks.
An excerpt from his email reads:
“Believe it or not, lots of good gets done every day by hundreds of thousands of churches right here in the US.
You won’t read about that, but it’s true.
The stuff my church does, feeding homeless people here and abroad, counseling people in pain, comforting the weak and sick, isn’t the stuff of newspaper headlines. Now if my pastor fondled a little boy, the place
would be jammed with the press. But barring that, no ‘journalist’ will ever darken my church’s doorway. How accurate is the picture we get of Christian churches in that scenario, where they only cover the sensational,
the negative sensational that is?
Just a thought, something to think about. I think the sense the media gives us of the average Christian church is skewed to the negative, to say the least. ”
As a general rule, I think that People of Faith which for me includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, expect that the Community of Faith (be they temples, churches or mosques) are out there in the world doing good deeds.
It’s akin to the blanket assumption that you send your children to school to learn. I go to Starbucks expecting to have coffee. You go to the Community of Faith to worship and to represent the best ideals of your faith to the world around you.
If I go into a Starbucks and come out not with a quad-shot soy latte but with a beer and a hot dog, it’s jarring and depending on what the lead story is in Leawood, Kansas that night, might make the evening news. If you are a practicing Catholic and your Priest falls in love with a parishinor and leaves the Catholic church and his last name happens to be “Cutie” which he happens to be, then yes, I think it’s newsworthy because there is a gaping disparity between what the expected and the actual.
Organized religion when it is at it’s best can lift up people and bring them closer to God.
That said, every religious organization exists for two reasons: to convert the unfaithful and raise money so that it can continue to convert the unfaithful and raise more money. In and of themselves these aren’t necessairly bad end goals, but it’s naive to think that when it comes to assimilation and money that a secondary and very powerful political agendas doesn’t emerge, particularly from fundamentalist strains whether they be fundamentalist Christians, Mormons or Muslims.
The Bible, Old and New Testaments are beautifully crafted alegorical stories intended to both explain what in history had been impossible to explain and manipulate people into behaving a certain way.
God did not create the heaven and earth in 7 days, Eve wasn’t crafted from Adam’s rib and when you take communion, it’s a stale wafer and some Franzia that sloshes around in your stomach. I’m not being blasphemous and I’m not suggesting that there isn’t some value in these stories.
Consider 9/11 for a minute. Islamic fundamentalists adhering to the words of the Qu’ran, despise “Americans”, which they regard as synonomous with “Christians” hi-jack 4 airplanes and use them as the instuments to kill several thousand people.
Christian fundamentalists, which is what the Nazi’s were, used the Bible to justify killing 6 Million Jews during the Holocost and use is still to rationalize predjudice against homosexuals: Corinthians 6:9-10 , Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Genesis 13:13 and Romans 1:24-32. Well, duh. Isn’t it possible that during early civilization, maybe people were concerned about the propogation of the species?
God doesn’t think that homosexuality is a sin. MAN wants you to think that God thinks homosexulaity is a sin to ensure the survival of mankind.
Morman fundamentalists believe that the only way a woman can have an afterlife in heaven is through obediance to her husband; that it is her husbands approval of her on earth that paves her way to God. “Celestial wife” is just a fancy way to say “polygamy” so that a man living in plural marriage can have sex with 12 and 13 year old girls, siring more than a hundred children during the course of his life. It sounds crazy, right?
No more crazy than Catholics believing that the only people going to heaven are other Catholics and that the only true church of God is the Roman Catholic Church.
That said, there are church-going-folk who do inspiring things ever day. I am proud of my own church in ways that make it difficult to post this because I know a few members will read what I’ve written and be hurt by it. To them I say specifically that I made a decision to stand in stewardship of the church and it’s mission because I care so much for the individuals. I support all of you and that is why I support Faith Renaissance.
Fundamentalists are scriptural literists and as such have a propensity to believe in smaller government and tax abolition. In The Book of Morman the angel Mornoni suggests that all followers have an obligation to make sure they have a good and just government. Fundamentalist Christians cite Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
You can’t really separate political issues from religious issues. They are enmeshed.
As fundamentalism is to biblical literalism as coffee is to cream, Vincent Crapanzano in his book Serving the World, fundamentalism “encourages a closed, usually (though not necessarily) politically conservative view of the world: one with a stop-time notion of history and we-and-they approach to people in which we are possessed of truth, virtue and goodness and they of falsehood, depravity and evil. It looks askance at figurative language which, so long as its symbols and metaphors are vital, can open – promiscuously in the eyes of the strict literalist- the world and it’s imaginative possibilities”
Back to my example of God creating the world in 7 days, Born Again Christians from a Bible-based fundamentalist perspective eschew the incontrovertible evidence of evolution and think that this wonderful, diverse, fantastic planet was in fact created in 7 days. The Mormons believe that only Joseph Smith with the use of a seer stone, magic hat and his super-secret decoder glasses could decode some solid-gold tablets buried at the base of Hill Cumorah. And both stories are simply untrue.
What gives these stories more power than say, Cinderella (Fairy Godmother), Harry Potter (Pure-Blood Wizard with magic sword) or Yertle the Turtle (Turtle king who climbed atop several hundred other turtles to claim his kingdom) is one thing.
Faith.
As this is shaping up to be one of my longest JavaJennifer posts, I’ll conclude by saying that no, I don’t think that Christians (or Jews, or Mormons, or Buddhists, or Hindus or Muslims) do “good things”. People do good things because they are guided, perhaps by principals of faith, perhaps through a more complicated moral compass to live a right life. I don’t think Christians (or Jews or Mormons or Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims) do “bad things”. People do bad things because they have lapses, perhaps in faith, perhaps through a more complicated network of behavior and choices.
Having faith, experiencing the wonders of meditation, comfort in prayer among a group with a similar belief system can be a wonderful thing. We are fortunate to live in a country where Freedom of Religion is guaranteed constitutionally, even when we disagree with the tenants of that religion.
The majority of recognized religions want to “spread the word” and advance conservatism is a by-product of evangelisim. Conservatives want everyone to think like they do, worship like they do, fuck like they do, have babies like they do and they wield the Bible and the threat of God’s wrath to coerce behavior that meets that agenda
Liberals want to be left alone. And they’ll leave conservatives alone too. In fact, liberals are ok with the conservative agenda, we just hate having it shoved down our collective throats.
If conservatives hate what’s on television, then don’t watch. If conservatives are against abortion, then I would hope they wouldn’t have one, but don’t legislate reproductive choice and use the Bible to do it. If conservatives object to same sex marriage on the basis that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin, then they definitely shouldn’t marry someone of the same sex which should be easy enough because it’s recognized in only 5 states. But if Jeff wants to marry Mike instead of Julie, who cares? I’ve yet to see anything bad come from two people in love making a legal and spiritual commitment to one another.
Republican Dude, alas my soapbox is too tall to climb down from and I will be looking forward to having you and my other conservative friends (you know who you are) push me. It bears mentioning that this post was written from the buckle of the Bible belt, where each corner of Johnson County, Kansas is studded with massive bible-based, fundamentalist churches alongside Protestant and Catholic churches. Each is positive that they know the way to this place called Heaven.
They can’t all be right.
Jennifer,Great writing and I couldn’t agree with you more. My views on religion are very similar. I do think it serves a purpose and gives direction to many, but I find my spiritual comfort elsewhere (nature, outdoors, vigorous exercise). I know of many churches that do wonderful things in their communities, and many who don’t do anything other than collect $ on sunday. As with everything, there are good ones and bad ones, but whether or not one is “moral” or “does good” has nothing to do with whether or not they are “people of faith”. I always strive to “do good” and help others, but I don’t subscribe myself to any faith.I have been trying to make up my own mind lately. Am I an atheist? Do I believe in God? The truth is, I don’t know. I grew up Catholic and am surrounded by people who call themselves Christian, but I don’t relate. It simply makes no sense to me. It would be sad to think that all this is for nothing and that there’s no higher purpose, but perhaps that’s how it is. So I will continue to wonder, maybe for the rest of my life.Anyway, great topic! One quick recommendation for anyone curious about all this. There’s a lecture series on iTunes University from Stanford called “The Historical Jesus”. It’s a fascinating look at how the stories of the bible developed over time.
Part of what I hate about blogs is that they typically result in a verbal slugfest and absolutely no good gets done, no minds are changed, ideas aren’t so much shared as fired like weapons at each other. I’m not going to change your mind or anyone else’s about religion or faith or spirituality, or however you want to characterize it, so I’m not going to bother to counter each of your statements, though I have to admit I think it would be fun to do so. Obviously you’ve chosen to accept only the most negative and cynical ways to think about religion. But I would like to at least provide some food for thought.
All of us believe in something, and at a 50,000 ft level, we basically believe in a Creator, or we don’t. Either way takes faith. It takes faith to believe that God exists and cares about us. And various religions come at that from different ways but that’s what they boil down to in a nutshell. But the other side of the coin is what many atheists either don’t state or fail to realize altogether is that they’re taking a leap of faith as well. Their god is Science. They’re basically saying that all of creation is basically action and reaction, more or less a mathematical result of everything that has come before and everything that will be. So from an atheist standpoint, I have to believe that the discussion we’re having today, the Meaning of Life, is being conducted by beings that are the random result of physical elements that have been combined together over time in such a way as to result in living, thinking, reasoning beings. So “we are stardust”, as the old song goes. That’s a whopper of a story too, that you mix together some carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and various other elements, add some sunshine, wait a long long time and – - VOILA – - you have human beings. Don’t tell me that farcical tale doesn’t take a big bunch of faith too. Atheists like to believe they’re the rational ones, because they’re basing their ‘faith’ on science, but science has made remarkably little progress over the years in explaining how life got started in the first place. Science advances exponentially all the time, even in terms of months, not to mention years, but in terms of understanding how life got started we’re basically no closer to understanding that today than scientists understood 100yrs ago. How life got started is probably the biggest gap in scientific understanding in any field, even after all this time and effort and expense to understand it. There is no scientific consensus, no prevailing theory.
It’s an interesting paradox that many of the most famous scientists in the world turned out to be believers in a Creator. Einstein was one, you may have heard of him. The director of the human genome project, Dr Francis Collins, is another (read his excellent book on the subject, The Language of God). At the risk of oversimplifying, these are men who when they looked further and further into the building blocks of creation, came to an intuitive understanding that the universe is too perfect to have come about by chaos and random events. Instead of science leading them to believe in a natural cause for everything in the universe, it steered them 180 degrees away from that conclusion. And these aren’t just science wanna-be’s, these are pillars of the profession, and examples abound of such people.
None of us have all the answers, we’re all searching. It’s a dangerous conceit, in my view, to believe that mankind is on the one hand a random happenstance of the universe and on the other hand believe that we are the sole source capable of understanding it and we’re basically all there is to it. There’s more to it than us.
Jen,Read “Mister God, This is Anna”, by Fynn. Please.