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I had the radio on for a few minutes today, long enough to hear part of a talk show where the host was interviewing some cat from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Now, I didn’t listen for very long because I can think of few things more tedious than a conversation between a religious conservative who thinks religion is an important part of public life and an atheist who thinks religion is the most destructive force in public life. I suppose someone has to have those conversations. I’m just glad it isn’t me, and I’m glad my radio has an “off” button.
But it reminded me that I’ve been missing the atheists at the Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe as of late. They used to meet the last Wednesday of every month, but they haven’t been there for a while. I was curious, so I went looking for them on the internet, and I found out that they now rotate their meeting locations. I know you’re all as relieved as I was to learn that the group hasn’t split up; they’re just broadening their horizons. Maybe they’re collectively trying to lose weight, too, who knows? Anyway, it’s too bad. I’ll kind of miss them. I mean, I could never get much writing done while they were in the cafe because, you know, of all the talking. Groups of people tend to talk. But at least their conversations were interesting–to me, anyway. Because you don’t often see a bunch of atheists getting together to share their secular-ness.
So I guess the PC term for atheist is “Freethinker.” That term sort of makes me roll my eyes, but as Freethinkers have been rolling their eyes at the likes of me for centuries, I’ll just suck it up and deal. So these Freethinkers in our fair suburban city have started a community to support secularist people living and raising families in a society greatly influenced by religious beliefs. I think this is very smart of them. I for one don’t know how I would get by without my religious community. All spiritual issues aside, religious communities are very handy things to have, for the purposes of making friends and finding babysitters and receiving practical support in times of need. Also, they give you something to do. But you don’t see a lot of atheist get-togethers, you know? Not like the churches, which are always having barbecues and hosting AA meetings and whatnot. Probably because a) there aren’t as many atheists as there are non-atheists, and therefore, b) atheists have a hard time finding each other, because c) if you find it difficult being an atheist in a non-atheist world, are you really going to bring up the subject in polite company? I wouldn’t.
The atheists at my chocolate cafe were talking about starting a school, last I heard. I think this is an excellent idea. This country needs more Freethinkers united for a common good. I hope to see many Freethinker schools and homeless shelters and 4-H clubs as time goes by. Because once the Freethinkers have carved out their collective niche in society, they can stop boo-hooing about how alone they feel in their rationality. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Seriously, though, organized Freethinkers can only mean more competition in the marketplace of ideas. And that’s good for everyone, wouldn’t you agree?
It was interesting to hear the atheists Freethinkers discuss their obstacles when it comes to forming these coalitions and completing ambitious programs. As one of them said, churches wield great power over religious people because they can always threaten you with hell if you don’t do what they say. (I’m paraphrasing. I promise you the Freethinker said it nicer.) Religious people have the threat of eternal punishment and the promise of eternal reward for doing x, y or z. This Freethinker also said, “Even in groups of atheists, you have people waiting to be told what to do. They’re not all rude and obnoxious like me.” (Haha. We all laughed at his self-deprecating remark. Who says the godless have no sense of humor? Not you. Not anymore.)
They talked about the unique opportunity atheists have to promote greater awareness of a reason-based worldview and how this would not be accomplished by sitting around kvetching about religion, but by doing things that are affirmative and positive. People are turned off when you ridicule others and oversimplify their beliefs. Atheists need to attract people in more positive ways. At this point I marveled at how much like a missionary training session this meeting was turning out to be. Well, that’s the way you do it when you’re in a movement. What do you expect?
Then somebody said, “Well, I’m ready for a eulogy. Who wants to pray?” And we all laughed again, because atheists praying is pretty ironic.
They didn’t pray. Instead they made arrangements to meet again and wished each other Reasonspeed. Or something like that.
So I’ll be missing them, my Freethinking, cocoa-swilling brethren (and sistren). I hope that they find success in their endeavors, but I do wonder how they will overcome the inertia that plagues all too many human beings who otherwise have the best of intentions. Someone at the meeting said that
only 1 percent interested in non-religious philosophy seek out others and get involved in organization, and that atheists need to figure out why this is. Religious organizations have the whole carrot-stick/heaven-hell routine, and people fall into line. Seriously, if other religious people are like me and the religious people I know personally, the flesh is often weak–but where the flesh is weak, the spirit is willing to open up the can of whoop-a** known as Crushing Guilt and keep wailing until the flesh stops making Baby Jesus cry. (Or, you know…Abraham, or somebody…depending on your faith tradition.)
Not that people without religion don’t have guilt, but where are their guilt enablers? Well, perhaps Freethinkers are so awesome, they don’t need guilt enablers. Maybe all they need is Barack Obama. (But what if they’re Republicans? Children could be left behind!) As the self-deprecating Freethinker said, “All we have is reason.” Is reason enough?
We went to church with my sister on Sunday. Princess Zurg went to Primary (children’s Sunday School) with her cousins. Princess Zurg has a love-hate relationship with Primary. On the one hand, she finds it a lot less dull than the sacrament service. On the other hand, it is still a little too “churchy” for her tastes. She likes the classroom portion, when they discuss the application of religious principles to real-life situations. She doesn’t enjoy when they read from the scriptures because there aren’t enough girls in them. (She has particular disdain for the Book of Mormon, which is heavy on war stories and mentions only three women by name, one of whom is a harlot of no consequence. That really galls her.) She likes the singing…sometimes, when they’re not singing “annoying” or “childish” songs. In other words, it’s really more of a tolerate-hate relationship.
I feel her pain. I wasn’t too fond of Primary at her age, either. I wasn’t too fond of church, period, and the feeling didn’t become warmer or fuzzier when the teen years hit. I found the church youth programs alternately dull and condescending. Or perhaps both simultaneously. I was probably around thirteen when I decided I just wasn’t going to go to church anymore, because what were my parents going to do, make me? Well, actually, it turned out they could. I think so, anyway. It was a long time ago, and I remember them putting up with my crap for about three weeks, and then the jig was up. I don’t remember exactly what “changed my mind.” I suppose I was just a people pleaser at heart. Anyway, that’s another story. My point is that I sympathize with PZ’s frustration, but at the same time, she’s only ten and not a very responsible ten, and I’m not going to let her just stay home by herself. I don’t think she even wants to stay home by herself. I think she wants us to change religions. That’s not apt to happen. And like I said, we need to take her with us, if only to keep her off the streets.
Historically, PZ has acted out in very loud, very public ways during various portions of the worship service, starting when she was about, oh, two? Two-and-a-half? We were walking into the chapel one day when she suddenly threw herself down on the floor and started screaming, “No! No church! NO JESUS CHRIST!” The incident was all the more remarkable because PZ at that age was more or less non-verbal much of the time. It would take more motivation than I currently have to provide you a laundry list of PZ’s childhood impieties; suffice it to say that the above anecdote is representative of the rest of the iceberg.
We don’t “allow” PZ to disturb other people’s worship–not any more than her school teachers “allow” her to disturb other students’ learning experiences–and in the last couple of years, she’s made great strides in the Appropriate Church Behavior department. In the last several weeks, though, she’s been particularly vocal with her complaints. This Sunday was no exception. Girlfriend was not hip to strange church nurseries, so I was walking the halls with her and happened to pass by the Primary room, where the kids were learning a new song called “Home Is Where the Heart Is.” (Technically, it’s not “new,” but this generation of kids did not know it.) The second verse goes like this:
Home is where there’s Father,
with strength and wisdom true.
Home is where there’s Mother,
and all the children, too.
with strength and wisdom true.
Home is where there’s Mother,
and all the children, too.
Out in the hall, I did my mental Marge Simpson grumble–”Hrmmmm”–and hoped that I had just misheard the lyrics. They didn’t actually set up Father as Mr. Strength and Wisdom whilst lumping Mother in with the rest of the household members who needed his righteous dominion, did they? Well, probably they did, but I was reserving judgment for the time being. Right about then, my sister (who happens to be the Primary president in her ward) came out to the hall and told me that PZ had been quite disturbed that Father got strength and wisdom, while Mother just got stuck with the kids. Yes, we chuckled over it, but I also said, “Good for her.” At least that’s what I was thinking. Inside the Primary room, they were still practicing the song and the music director was telling the kids, “This time, sing it like you mean it.” PZ burst out, “But I don’t mean it!” And at this moment, as much as I wanted her to suck it up and not make a scene or embarrass her cousins, I also couldn’t help but think, “That’s my girl!”
For those of you not up to speed on your Mormon Minutiae, the LDS church has a fully correlated curriculum–it’s a by-product of the David O. McKay era as documented in David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (fascinating read, I assure you)–which means that Primaries all over the world teach their kids the same lessons and the same songs. This “Home Is Where the Heart Is” song is, unfortunately, part of the 2008 Primary program set to take place in October, in every Primary on the face of the earth, including ours. So this was not the last time PZ will have to be affronted by this song, as well she knows. She’s written (and mailed) a letter to the General Primary Board, hoping that the lyrics to this song will be changed by prophetic mandate before the October program. No, we have not yet begun to see the end of PZ angst over this topic. And I have to tell you, this time I’m grateful for my daughter’s utter inability to let stuff go. It may be sad and wrong, but part of me is actually looking forward to her complaining every week about this song. I hope she complains good and loud. It’s nothing new–folks in our Primary are used to PZ’s feminist rants–but it has the potential for something big. Like what? I don’t know. It’s just so rare that I can support my daughter’s righteous anger, and I’d like to relish it, if you don’t mind.
I realize how silly this must sound, making such a big deal out of a little song–really, only a little part of a little song–as though I didn’t belong to a patriarchal church with a treasure trove of gender disparities that are hard to reconcile with my basic sense of justice, not to mention logic. You’re probably wondering, all things considered, if Madhousewife doesn’t have bigger theological fish to fry. Well, yes, ordinarily I do. But this is not a theological fish fry. It is a cultural fish fry. Where the fish are sometimes coated in theological batter. I’m going to abandon this metaphor before it destroys me. Next paragraph, please.
I know I belong to a patriarchal religion. I’ve come to terms with that, in a way. I had to find a way to live with it, so I did. Find a way, I mean. And the fact is, most Mormon women don’t feel oppressed by the church’s patriarchal structure. I don’t feel oppressed by it. It is more an intellectual annoyance than anything–because, in fact, there is much in the religion that is empowering to women. Some Mormon women don’t even find it difficult to reconcile those aspects with the patriarchal ones. I am not one of those women, but that is neither here nor there. The church continues to evolve on gender issues. Some things really have changed; others really haven’t. But the fact remains: back when this “Home” song was written, it was not controversial to assert that men had authority over their wives and children, but these days no one would get up in church and say that without ducking. Today there is an increased emphasis on wives and husbands being equal partners, even while the church refuses to repudiate the patriarchal order.
This is frustrating for most Mormon feminists, who would rather deal with open sexism than this political correctness, but I’ve chosen to take the church at its word. We believe in both patriarchy and equality–fine. It may not make sense, but neither does a lot of other stuff; it’s religion, not rocket science. I can dig that. What I can’t dig–won’t dig–is the notion that this doctrinal paradox mustn’t produce cognitive dissonance. Some folks don’t have the cognitive dissonance; I appreciate that. But they need to understand that their lack of cognitive dissonance is attributable to faith, not reason. Not that reason doesn’t inform faith; it does. But religious mysteries cannot be “solved” by reason alone. That is why they are mysteries. I don’t want to remake church doctrine to suit my personal sensibilities, but I insist on acknowledging the mysteries, so I insist on acknowledging the cognitive dissonance.
This is why I’m happy to have my daughter publicly object to this silly Primary song–not because I think it’s a hill worth dying on, but because I know it’s not a hill the church is willing to die on either. It’s just a tiny thing that niggles at me, and so I niggle back. It’s easy to say, “Well, it’s just a song, and there’s a rhyme scheme and a rhythm to maintain, and it doesn’t mean that Mother doesn’t have ’strength and wisdom true,’ just like Father, but there just wasn’t enough room to say it that way, and for the love of Mike, it’s just a song, what do you want, Madhousewife/Princess Zurg?” But it’s also just as easy to point out this: A hundred little things add up. My daughter hears this song and thinks it diminishes women. I think it infantilizes them. It’s not devastating; it’s not abusive; it’s just annoying–nothing more than annoying, in and of itself. But if the church wants its patriarchy-equality paradox, maybe it should stop teaching my children songs that undermine its professed value of male-female equality. It’s a little thing, precisely. That’s why it’s not too much to ask.
Make no mistake–I labor under no illusion that the church is going to change this song or have it removed from the children’s songbook, nor will I be embittered because of that. I just want other people to think about it, about its implications. Something they won’t be able to help doing when my daughter runs out of the room screaming every time they sing it.
I’m mourning the passing of Gordon B. Hinckley, the late president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s a strange thing to be so emotionally affected by the death of someone you never met, though I suppose this case is no stranger than perfect strangers mourning the death of Heath Ledger. I’ve seen exactly one Heath Ledger movie (10 Things I Hate about You), so while I appreciate the tragedy of a promising and talented actor (and father) dying at the young age of twenty-eight, I don’t feel a sense of personal loss.
There’s nothing tragic about the death of a 97-year-old man. Pres. Hinckley lived a full life, active and relatively vibrant pretty much until the end, and now he can rest and be reunited with his dear wife, whom he lost a few years back. It’s not sad that he is dead, but I am sad because even though I didn’t know him, I did know him. He was president of the church for twelve years, but he’s essentially been the public face of the church for the last almost-thirty years. Most of the men who preceded him in that office became severely ill and incapacitated in their final years, and the burden of leadership fell on Pres. Hinckley as a result. I’m not qualified to give his eulogy, and this isn’t a religious blog, so I’m not going to say anymore, except that I will miss his humor and Christ-centered leadership. And thus am I melancholy today.
On a lighter note, it would appear that I will shortly be mourning the passing of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign, a most unfortunate demise that is all the more regrettable insofar as it was avoidable. (I know Iowa was a lost cause, Rudy, but why did you forsake New Hampshire and Michigan? Why did you forsake me, Rudy? Why? Why? Why?) With Fred Thompson gone and Rudy not long for this world–and not so much as a Duncan Hunter to kick around–all I’ve got left is Romney and McCain. A sorry state of affairs, indeed. Insert heavy sigh here. Oh, well. Things could be worse. Bob Dole could be running. (Insert bad Viagra joke here.)
Which brings me to another point: Whichever one of you cats ends up winning the nomination, DO NOT pick Mike Huckabee as your running mate, no offense to him. And by “whichever one of you” I really mean you, John McCain, because I think the Mittster is too smart for that numbskull idea. (I’ve taken to calling him Mittster in an attempt to inject some humanity into him. Is it working? Well, at least I’m doing something.) No offense to Gov. Huckabee, who seems like a nice enough guy, and he’s folksy and plays the guitar and whatnot, but like the original cast of Saturday Night Live, he is not ready for prime time. Some of you in this race–who shall remain nameless–are 72 years old, and that whole one-heartbeat-away issue should figure heavily into this particular decision. Don’t blow it. And by “don’t blow it,” I really mean, “You don’t blow it. You don’t blow it, John McCain.” That’s all I have to say. (Except P.S. Sylvester Stallone would not be a good choice either.)
In other news, Elvis inches ever-so-slowly toward toilet-trainedness. Sugar Daddy reports that on the last couple trips to the Safeway, which has wheelchair-accessible automatic doors on its restrooms, Elvis has joyfully pushed the button to open the door to the men’s room, gone inside and used the potty, washed his hands, and returned triumphantly, proclaiming, “I had privacy.” I asked SD how much he thought it would cost us to put one of those automatic doors in our house, but he insists on sticking to that six-month moratorium on home improvements. Not one to pander to special interests, that SD.
It snowed last night. The kids have the day off school anyway, so it was kind of a waste, that snow. And you know, several weeks ago I made a special point of buying all the kids new gloves because whenever it snows, I can never find their gloves. And so here we were today, snow on the ground outside and kids home from school, wanting to play in said snow, and where were the gloves? Heck if I know. Stupid snowy day.
This comment was left by TR on my post Tuesday:
Church membership is only voluntary for adults, and questionably so, for those who were raised that way.
I don’t know if this is implying that the social pressure to remain in a faith community compromises an adult’s free will, or if the religious indoctrination they received as children compromises their ability to think independently. I wouldn’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but neither do I want to go to the trouble of asking what exactly she meant by that, because that would go contrary to my agenda for this blog. Regardless of which spin I put on this statement, I actually agree with it to some extent.
Church membership, technically, is always voluntary, except for children who are baptized as infants, but being raised under the spectre of a particular dogma is not. I was raised by Mormons, and it is no accident that I continued to identify as a Mormon even after I left my parents’ home. Some people call this sort of thing “brainwashing.” Which is not an inaccurate term, just a pejorative one. But we all brainwash our children to some degree. I mean, I hope so. What’s the point of parenting if you aren’t going to pass on your values to them? Oh, sure, there’s that whole clothing and feeding thing, but basic survival tools can only take you so far in life. Most parents feel obligated, even privileged, to steer their children on whatever path they consider the Road To Being A Decent Person. Lots of people use religion as a means to this end, but secular humanists also indoctrinate their children for this purpose, i.e. churning out decent human beings. They just have different arguments.
But parental brainwashing is about more than instilling ethics. We also teach our children what we believe about the world. One might believe a particular thing about the world for a religious reason, or one might have some non-religious reason–but still believe the thing with a religious fervor. You could believe that the world is only 6,000 years old. It would be pretty hard to believe that for a non-religious reason, unless you were just pulling random numbers out of the air. But alternatively, you could believe that humans evolved from lower primates. You could believe that there’s no such thing as a “lower primate.” You could believe that Chinese people have a natural facility for mathematics. You could believe that white men can’t jump. You could believe that women are irrational because of their menstrual periods and that this has something to do with why they can’t parallel park. You could believe that homosexuality is genetic. You could believe that sexuality is a matter of free will. You could believe there’s no such thing as “free will.” You could believe that women are innately more nurturing than men. You could believe that gender is a social construct. You could believe that there is life on other planets. You could believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. You could believe that the Constitution is a “living document.” You could believe all governments are illegitimate. You could believe that violence never solves anything. You could believe that the toilet paper should always roll over rather than under. You could believe that Republicans hate the poor. You could believe that Democrats eat their young. You could believe it’s okay to mix plaids with stripes. You could believe that you should talk to your kids openly about sex. You could believe that clothing is oppressive. You could believe that it’s essential for everyone to learn a second language. You could believe that it’s wrong to eat animals. You could believe that people suck. You could believe that Wal-Mart is a major source of the world’s suffering. You could believe that Jews are the cause of all the wars in the world. You could believe that air travel is safe. You could believe Sudoku is a waste of time. You could believe that there’s no point in trying because the Man is always going to keep you down. You could believe that aspartame kills.
Growing up in a millennialist religion during the cold war era, I was convinced that I would not live to see thirty. Either the U.S. and the Soviets were going to blow us all up, or Jesus was going to come, or both. I was well into adulthood before I could wrap my head around the possibility that the end of the world was not immediately at hand. To this day I have difficulty making plans for the distant future, e.g. retirement, even though I now lean toward thinking that the Earth most likely has a few hundred more years left in her, global warming notwithstanding. Rationally I know that living to see my golden years is a distinct possibility, but in my bones I feel that it is a moot point. What is responsible for this world view, which I can’t seem to shake in spite of my best efforts–religion, nuclear power, or mental illness? Most likely all of the above.
Who I am and how I got here is a very complicated story. Fifteen years ago I was a Democrat, which is somewhat subversive in Mormon culture, at least in the Western U.S., but I would have told you then that my religious beliefs absolutely shaped my political views. They still do, even though my political views are drastically different now. The reason is that both my religious beliefs and my politics have been informed by my personal experience.
My mother was a very religious woman, though she was not a pious one. She swore like a sailor when she got angry, but her specialty was sins of omission. I inherited that from her. I did not inherit her strong, natural inclination toward faith in God. My father was religious–a very obedient, religious Mormon–but he was also a scientist and an independent thinker. Some might wonder how one could simultaneously be religiously obedient and think independently, and those people will just have to trust me. One of my favorite stories about my father–and I’m sure I’ve told it here before–is when he was impanelled for a jury and the defense attorney asked him how he made judgments. “If someone holds up this ball and says it’s blue, and someone else says it’s green, how do you know what color it is?” Dad said, “I look at it. If it’s blue, it’s blue, and if it’s green, it’s green.” Interestingly enough, he was not selected for that jury. I did not inherit my dad’s facility for science. But I was profoundly influenced by his unrelenting logic and insistence on seeing things as they really were. I lived with it and saw it every day. I have to tell you, it was frequently as annoying as the religious indoctrination was.
I have never been fully at ease with my religion. There have been times when I thought it was less nutty than others, but I don’t pretend that there isn’t a high level of irrationality involved. At one point I thought I would chuck the whole thing and start over from scratch, but I found that I couldn’t really do that. I would have to forget everything I’ve ever learned, including the stuff I’d rather remember. It’s all so intertwined. Instead I’ve taught myself to work within the intellectual framework that’s been foisted on me–by my church, by my culture, by my parents, by my DNA–and I consider every act of faith, such as it is, a voluntary one. But am I as free, philosophically, to not choose Mormonism as I would have been if I’d been raised differently? Theoretically, yes. In reality, probably not. But ultimately it must be a choice, or else nothing is.
There’s a popular saying that goes, “If you’re a conservative in your twenties, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative in your thirties, you have no brains.” It’s frequently attributed to Winston Churchill, but I don’t know that he ever actually said it. I don’t really care, because it’s actually a popular saying only among two groups of people: those who were liberal in their twenties and conservative in their thirties, and those who have always been conservative and aren’t offended by the implication that they’re heartless.
I belong to the first group, but I’m not fond of the saying. I didn’t like it in my brainless twenties, and I don’t like it in my heartless thirties. Looking back on my twenties, I’m not terribly proud of my track record as a humanitarian, even though I had all the so-called bleeding-heart ideals. Actually, I have a hard time thinking of them as ideals anymore. They were more like fantasies. That’s painful to say, but heck, I’m heartless now, so I can take it.
The interesting thing is that as my opinions have been re-shaped by experience and a healthy dose of reality, I am still frequently accused of being an idealist. The truth is that I feel more like an idealist now than I ever did before, and as much as humanity depresses me sometimes, I’m more hopeful about the future than I’ve ever been in my life. I recognize that my hope is based on a religious faith, so–being incapable of purging the cynicism that’s flowed through my veins since childhood–I’m not terribly optimistic about persuading others to share that faith. My evangelistic streak is sadly deficient.
One episode from my twenties that I cannot export from my consciousness, no matter how hard I’ve tried, happened while I was working as an editorial assistant at my old newspaper. As the low (wo)man on the totem pole, I edited a column called “Helping Hands,” which consisted of a series of short blurbs on volunteer opportunities in the community. It ran on Saturdays, if we had space. And because I was the low (wo)man on the totem pole, I was also in charge of fielding calls from individuals who wanted to be profiled in the Helping Hands columns, to solicit donations from the community.
This isn’t unheard of in the newspaper business–it’s called a human interest story, and we’ve all seen stories like that in the newspaper. Unfortunately, stories of that nature weren’t in my domain, nor were they in the domain of my department, which was the Lifestyles section. Stories about plucky orphans with cancer who needed bone marrow transplants usually fell to reporters in Metro. But the reporters in Metro were too busy to listen to every sob story in the naked city, so such phone calls inevitably found their way back to me, the person in charge of telling people in crisis that we were terribly sorry but we just couldn’t help them. We were a newspaper, not a welfare office. (I wasn’t supposed to say that last part out loud.)
There was one caller that made my job extremely unpleasant. She was an older woman, a diabetic, who had myriad medical and financial issues, the most pressing of which was that her refrigerator wasn’t working properly and she had no place to safely store her insulin. She called every Monday. If I wasn’t in, she left a message. If I didn’t respond, she’d call again on Tuesday. She didn’t take I’m-terribly-sorry-but-we-can’t-help-you for an answer. When I came back to work after my honeymoon, there was a message from her, informing me that while I was off galavanting, she had spent the weekend in the hospital. She just wanted me to know that.
I talked about this woman several times to my editor, who said that yes, this was indeed sad, but you know, there are organizations out there for helping people in her situation, and the newspaper just isn’t the appropriate institution to render assistance of this kind. She did not, however, offer to explain this personally to the poor sick woman who was stalking me and my stupid column.
That I’ve forgotten this woman’s name is no great mystery. I didn’t like her. I felt sorry for her. I felt frustrated over my inability to think of a way to help her, even if it wasn’t, technically, my job. But she wasn’t one of those unfortunate souls that just endear themselves to you. She was a mean, cranky pain in the neck, and every time she called to inform me that she’d lived to see another Saturday (no thanks to me) in which her plight did not appear in the Helping Hands column and that she hoped I could sleep at night because she certainly wouldn’t be able to if she were in my place, I found myself wishing that she would just go ahead and die already. Not a pretty moment for the bleeding-heart liberal or the self-professed Christian, but that’s how it was.
Because I don’t like feeling guilty, and I certainly dislike feeling unrighteous, I felt obligated to help, but I was young and inexperienced in poverty management. If I didn’t know where this lady was supposed to turn for assistance, why should she? The few paltry ideas I had did not pan out–one was a dead end, and the others I just didn’t follow up on. I was pre-occupied with other things, like so many of us are. One Monday she called, and when I heard her voice, I laid the receiver on my desk and continued working. A few minutes later I picked the phone back up and dropped it in the cradle. I would never hear from her again, but at the moment I was too relieved to be ashamed of myself.
In an ideal world, every diabetic would have a working refrigerator to keep her insulin in. We don’t live in an ideal world, of course. People have needs, and the needy are not always sympathetic creatures. In fact, they’re frequently not. It shouldn’t matter. Just because you’re mean and cranky doesn’t mean you should die alone. Everyone I spoke to about this woman said the same thing: that there were programs and organizations out there for helping people in her situation–weren’t there? In my most frustrated moments, I would wonder, didn’t this woman have any family? Friends? Concerned neighbors? A church? Any sort of community she could turn to for support? Obviously not. When you’re calling a snot-nosed editorial assistant at the local paper to vent spleen about how no one cares about you, you obviously have no one else to turn to. And whose fault is that?
A recent post at Feminist Mormon Housewives brought up the topic of appropriately accommodating diversity of beliefs in a family setting. The author’s sister-in-law had a Muslim husband who of course didn’t celebrate Christmas and didn’t want his children celebrating Christmas, but the sister-in-law still wanted to celebrate Christmas with her extended clan, and so what ended up happening was that the sister-in-law brought her little family to the big family Christmas gathering and celebrated Christmas herself while her grumpy husband and disappointed children stood around and watched everyone else open presents and have fun. Seemed odd to me. I think if you’re a Christian married to a Muslim and you agree to have your children raised Muslim, maybe you shouldn’t celebrate Christmas so conspicuously yourself. Do we get to hear our children cry so infrequently that we must make gratuitous efforts to have them do so? I don’t know.
Anyway, in the comments the author said that historically her family has bent over backwards to celebrate Christmas in as Muslim-friendly a way as possible, e.g. not singing Christmas carols, so as not to offend the Muslim husband. (I think they even fasted when Christmas fell during Ramadan, or something like that.) Someone else commented that their atheist relative had similarly ruined Christmas for them by being snide and grumpy and impatient with any expression of religious faith. That seemed excessive to me. If I were visiting people of a different religious tradition during a major holiday, I would not expect them to modify–or abandon–their rituals to suit me. Actually, I don’t think that behavior seems excessive. It’s patently offensive and unreasonable any way you slice it. Some people should just stay home on Christmas. The world would be a better place.
But all of this discussion reminded me of a recent series of letters in the Ask Amy column about a couple who were non-religious and took umbrage at their religious relatives praying out loud before a meal in their (the non-religious couple’s) home. The couple had no problem sitting respectfully through a prayer at their relatives’ home(s) but thought that their own home should be their secular castle, as it were. People responding to the original letter had vastly different opinions, and I wasn’t sure how I would rule on this if someone wrote to Ask the Giraffe with a similar issue. Our family prays before eating in our home, but we don’t take the reins of mealtime ritual in other people’s homes.
As a teenager, when I ate at my Catholic friends’ homes, everyone did the sign of the cross before saying grace. Well, everyone but me, because a) I could never remember what you did in what order (this was before I learned the spectacles-testicles-etc. mnemonic) and b) it seemed, I dunno, silly for a Mormon girl to fake Catholicness. But I certainly bowed my head respectfully and remained blissfully unoffended by a ritual gesture I didn’t happen to be practiced in. When I eat with friends who don’t, for whatever reason, say any prayer before eating, I don’t feel a need to do so myself. But perhaps I’m overly laid-back in this regard. It wouldn’t be the first time.
My husband says that when he was a missionary, this business of praying in public before eating was an issue because Mormon missionaries are so conspicuous to begin with. If you pray aloud over your Big Mac, people think you’re some kind of exhibitionist. If you don’t pray at all, people think you’re a hypocrite (or whatever). So for them the happy medium was to make this ambiguous gesture which involved putting your hand to your forehead and closing your eyes for about 1.5 seconds. They called it the Missionary Headache. It could mean whatever you wanted it to mean. Silly Mormons. It seemed to work for them, though.
I’m sure other people of various religious bents feel obligated to pray before mealtime and would be upset if asked specifically not to pray. I can’t really imagine having someone over to my house and then, when they start to pray, saying, “Hold it right there, bucko! Not under my roof!” Unless they had to be naked or pick their noses or something while they were praying–that I might have to factor in, I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t like confrontation, so if a guest got out her crystals and lit incense before eating, I wouldn’t think to object. (If she had to sacrifice an animal, I’d probably ask her to do it on the patio.) But still…it seems somewhat impolite to insist on your particular prayer ritual at the table of someone who has made it clear that they don’t share your beliefs and aren’t comfortable with the attendant practices.
What do you all think?
I’m getting really self-conscious about bringing up Dennis Prager all the time, like I’m his disciple or something. Perhaps I do qualify as a disciple–as a missionary, really, because I encourage everyone to listen to Dennis Prager’s radio show. The world would be a better place if everyone was as obsessed with it as I am. But today I’m using the excuse that it is Dennis Prager’s birthday–okay, he told us it was his birthday today; it’s not like I…looked it up or something, so get off my back–so I can bring up something he said the other day about God. He said that logic leads him to believe that there is a God–specifically that it isn’t a leap of faith for him to believe in God–but that it is a leap of faith to believe that God is good.
I’d never thought of it that way, but I think that pretty much sums up my religious life as well. I think it’s logical to believe in God. If somebody tells me he doesn’t believe in God, I don’t think, “Gee, that’s illogical.” I actually think of Han Solo saying, “Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff. But I’ve never seen anything to make me believe that there’s one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls MY destiny.” Yeah. That’s what I think. I mean, there’s no way of actually knowing either way, so it’s a moot point, fact-wise. You can use logic to justify either position. (But logic alone won’t make you right, of course. That’s why religion is religion and not physics.)
What you can’t justify logically is the character of God. A quick rewind to PHL 150 and the Problem of Evil: If God is a) all-powerful and b) all good, then why does evil exist? All religions attempt some kind of response to this question, and some responses are more compelling than others, but ultimately it is a matter of faith to assume that God is good. You have to choose to believe that, and I don’t believe it’s a purely rational choice, scripture notwithstanding. Hence unit seven of PHL 150.
Why do I believe in God? Because I find it highly improbable that the universe and human life is an accident. That could be wishful thinking on my part, but given the complexity of our existence, I don’t think it’s an irrational conclusion, even though it’s unprovable. The same goes for atheism–which I can’t give a rational explanation for because my own experience has not led me to that conclusion. I couldn’t read the map for that destination. But obviously others can and do. The veracity of either position is a separate issue.
Why do I believe in a God who is good? I’m not sure, but I do know it isn’t because I’ve been trained to believe that. I’ve been taught to believe it, but for many years the teaching didn’t take. I had too many reasons to believe in a God who was not particularly good. The world is a cruel place. People get cancer. People are mentally ill. Innocent people suffer. Justice doesn’t prevail. Plus, my religion tells me to believe stuff I think is kind of lame. (And no, it’s not what you’re thinking, so no smart-aleck comments, please. Thank you.) So I fought belief in a good God–not because I wanted to fight it, but because I thought faith must be something in one’s DNA because it sure didn’t come naturally to me. But at some point I realized that it didn’t have to come naturally. I could adopt it, just because I wanted to. And I wanted to, so I did. Nothing in my perception of the world has changed. It’s my perception of God that continues to evolve.*
Tell me, because I really want to know, why you believe in God or why you believe there is no God. If you believe in God, do you believe that he’s good? If so, do you know why? I’m not looking to debate any religious issues. I make a really poor evangelist for anything other than Dennis Prager’s radio show. I’m also not looking to incite any religious debates, so in the spirit of your Gentle Giraffeblog, please a) use reasonably respectful language and b) don’t take offense easily. I’ll try to do the same.
* For some hardcore evolution talk, visit S__Diddy’s site.
My husband feels that I owe the world an explanation of the true Mormon doctrine regarding Hell. For the record, that South Park clip was a joke. I don’t even watch South Park because 1) I don’t have cable, and 2) I’m kind of a prude. I still think the clip is funny because a) it’s so not what Mormons actually believe about Hell, and b) we Mormons are such attention whores that we get positively giddy at any mention of us in the media, no matter how rude, immature or inaccurate it may be. We spend so much time saying LOOK AT US! LOOK AT US! LOOK AT US! that when the otherwise uninterested world pulls our name out of the Religions To Poke Fun At hat, we feel like we’ve won the lottery. In our book, any publicity is good publicity because it’s an opportunity to talk about ourselves, now that you’ve brought it up and all. This is one of the many ways in which we differ from, say, Seventh Day Adventists (with whom, incidentally, we have absolutely nothing in common with). Did I mention that Mormons and SDA’s are nothing alike? Because they’re totally nothing alike.
I think most contemporary Mormons can laugh at themselves. Many of us can even laugh at other people laughing at us. This is probably because a) we can’t drink alcohol, so we have to get our kicks somewhere, and b) compared to having our homes burned, our families murdered, our women raped, and our children dying of exposure on the long trek west to Utah, being the butt of some crude jokes is as close as you can get to a walk in the park without actually leaving your home.
To be sure, though, there are some of us with less-evolved senses of humor, sensitive types who will sniff that they are misunderstood and you have no right to judge what you don’t understand–but I think Jesus put it best when he said, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” (It’s in the Gospels, look it up.)
There is, of course, the inescapable fact that Mormons are weird. Sugar Daddy’s best friend is a Christian–you know, a real one–and I think his assessment of Mormons is fairly spot on: “They’re wonderful people, but they have a really messed-up religion.” Not only is bona fide, thoroughly documented, standard Mormon doctrine messed up, but add to that the personal opinions of people who are attracted to messed-up religions, and you’re going to have way too many shards of theological craziness to sweep up in a dustbin. Generally speaking, I am done and done with trying to convince people that I don’t believe what they say I believe. If someone says to me, “Isn’t it true that Mormons believe Jesus is an alien and Joseph Smith injected a sleeping nun with cocaine to bring forth the Kingdom of God on earth?” I am inclined to say, “Sure, Mormons believe that. Mormons will believe any whacked thing, isn’t it obvious?” Because man, I just do not have time for this stuff.
Technically, Mormons, like other people, can believe whatever they like, even if it’s wrong. They’re just not allowed to get up and preach it in the middle of Sacrament Meeting or Sunday School like it’s, you know, not wrong. BYU professors of religion, on the other hand, can pull whatever wigged-out doctrine out of their rear ends and still keep their jobs because…well, that’s what Stephen Robinson does and no one’s fired him yet. (And they say the Cougs have no academic freedom–psh. That only applies to, like, science and junk.*)
* For the irony deficient, this is also what’s known as a joke. BYU has terrible science programs, but it’s mostly because smart science students don’t want to go to BYU and they definitely don’t want to teach there, and not because of the Man.
So I don’t often try to state definitively what Mormons do and don’t believe because sure as the sun rises, somebody’s going to pull out some obscure text from the King Follet Discourses or some verse Brigham Young sang in the shower and prove me wrong. But to paraphrase e. e. cummings, there is some bleep we will not eat, hence my following definitive statements per my own religion that I was raised in and have been practicing more years than any sane person would tolerate:
1) People don’t go to hell for being the “wrong religion.” No, not even the Moonies. Satanists, maybe, but theoretically they don’t mind, do they?
2) A faithful LDS woman is not rewarded for her diligence and long-suffering on earth by being forced to spend eternity a) in a marital relationship that is odious to her, or b) in a perpetual state of pregnancy, complete with nausea, water retention, varicose veins, sciatica, stress incontinence, uterine contractions, and the ever-popular Ring of Fire. Remember the part where Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”? That’s in our Bible, too. Really, sisters. There is so much actual Mormon doctrine that makes no sense. Must we additionally make up stuff that makes no sense? Are there Mormon women who sincerely believe that they are destined to spend eternity birthing babies? Probably. But they’re hysterical. Maybe if you slapped them, they’d snap out of it.
*Sigh.* Sermon’s over. The Diaper Chronicles return tomorrow.
Independence Day is not a comfy holiday for me. Only because I am afraid of fire. Because I am afraid of fire, I am uncomfortable with fireworks. Don’t get me wrong–I like fireworks. They’re pretty. I just like them best when they’re set off by professionals and explode way up high in the sky and not just a few feet away from my children. Unfortunately, for the last three years that is how my family has been “enjoying” fireworks. Because there’s no awesome fireworks show convenient to us, my husband spends a crapload of money on as much legal fireworkage as he can get and he sets them off in front of our house.
Where I am pyrophobic, my husband is a pyromaniac. I trust my husband to be responsible and safe with fireworks. I mean, he’s generally a smart, responsible cat. And he doesn’t want to kill me or the kids, as far as I know, so would he take unnecessary risks? Of course not. But because I am afraid, I still have lingering anxiety. For one thing, he lights fireworks with his creme brulee torch, and that just seems wrong. Not necessarily less safe than say, a match. But still–who does that? I just have visions of him blowing off one of his appendages or something. Granted, my husband works with his brain more than his hands, but still–I prefer him with all his appendages…appended.
So as “fun” as the fireworks were the other night, I’m glad they’re over. Mostly. It’ll be a couple more days until he runs out of the stuff and/or it’s no longer socially acceptable to make stuff explode at all hours of the night in a residential neighborhood.
Speaking of fire and stuff I’m afraid of, though, I read the Newsweek from a couple weeks ago and there was this blurb on a Beliefnet survey about hell. Apparently, conservatives are more likely than liberals to believe that hell is a real place and also that they’re definitely not headed for it but they personally know people who are (some of them in their own families!). This is, of course, not surprising. But the survey also found that if liberals do think there’s a hell and someone’s going there, it will be for evil-doing and not for having the “wrong beliefs.” Conservatives are more likely to say someone will go to hell for having wrong beliefs. Which also shouldn’t be surprising, because most American conservatives are Christians, and accepting Jesus is pretty important in the Christian worldview, especially for evangelical Christians. (Catholics overwhelmingly give more weight to ethical behavior or lack thereof, at least in this survey.)
Myself, I totally believe in hell. Whether there’s actual fire and brimstone going on there, I don’t know. I’ve always rather thought of hell as being like Room 101 in 1984–the Worst Thing in the World. For me, a very strong motivator for staying on the straight and narrow is the fact that I don’t want to spend eternity floating in a sea of wet Cheerios. *Shudder* No, thank you.
Mormon theology about the afterlife is too complex to get into here, but let’s say that while I’m not 100 percent confident about my final destination, I do not plan to spend eternity as Hitler’s roommate. I also don’t personally know anyone I think is going to hell. Though only God can judge one’s heart–I guess [exaggerated eye-rolling]–I strongly suspect that some famous people I’ve never personally met are going to end up there. Stalin–hell. Pol Pot–hell. Idi Amin–hell. Yassir Arafat–ahhhhh…yeah, hell.
Perhaps it’s not obvious from that short list that I’m definitely assigning people to eternal damnation for having the “wrong beliefs.” Like I said,I’m not privy to the divine answer key, but I bet that believing that it’s cool to murder lots of innocent people will probably turn out to be incorrect. I’d be willing to stake my own soul on that one.
I recently read Dennis Prager’s Happiness Is a Serious Problem, wherein he asserted that belief in a just afterlife is more conducive to happiness than the belief that life’s a b-word and then you die, or in other words, that this is all there is. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I do know that if I believed there wasn’t a just afterlife, I would be super depressed. I mean, I don’t relish the thought of souls burning in hell just for the sake of it. I’m ambivalent about the death penalty because merely depriving a murderer of his life is, you know, nothing I can get broken up about, but at the same time, ultimately unsatisfying. Even keeping a murderer alive and torturing him in a Ministry of Love-type building would not slake my thirst for justice. But when El Libro de Mormon says we will awaken on judgment day with a bright recollection of all our guilt, that’s what I’m talking about, brother. To me the worst thing about this life, aside from innocents suffering, is the fact that guilty people don’t feel guilty. I hate that! I don’t care about watching Brutus, Cassius and Judas getting chewed up by Satan himself, but to see the look on Osama bin Laden’s face when he finally gets a clue–I confess I’m going to like that. It might even make it worth being his roommate.
Do you believe in hell, and if so, what do you think it’s like? If you want to tell me who’s going there, that’s okay, too. As long as it’s not me, of course! That would be rude. Use some other piece of cyber-real estate to tell me that. This is my home. If you don’t believe in hell, tell me how you keep from getting super-depressed. I’m interested.
There were so many good comments on yesterday's post that I decided to write a whole other post about it.
I will first tip my hat to transvestite_rabbit, who said:
I don't know, Mad… you are veering dangerously close to "this country was founded by Christians, so the rest of you can go eff yourselves."
I was kind of concerned at first because I thought she said "go off yourselves" and I would never tell anyone to do that. It's against my religion. Technically, telling people to go eff themselves is also against my religion, though, so I guess I'm still offended. [Insert sad emoticon here]
TR made a good point about the Pledge of Allegiance, which I agreed with. I've actually always thought the Pledge of Allegiance was kind of creepy, with or without the God part. I mean, I like the flag and I'm even against flag-burning (though not in favor of criminalizing flag-burning), but I guess I must have an Inner Jehovah's Witness or something (who knew?) because I don't think pledging allegiance to the flag should be a test of American loyalty. But I consider it a holdover from the days when we were fighting global communism, and I confess I don't lose a lot of sleep over the issue personally–though I understand why others might.
But I consider that an issue larger than the words "under God," so I'm not going to delve into it further. I'm going to stick with the "God" problem. The last thing I want to imply is that I think non-believers are all a bunch of whiny neurotics and this country is better off without them. (The country would be better off, at least in terms of its political discourse, without whiny neurotics, but whiny neurotics come in all sorts of ideological flavors, and anyway, I don't see a mass deportation of whiny neurotics being at all practical.) If I thought that were the case, I would not be puzzled as I am about what the big deal is. I would think, "Well, that's just how those godless freaks are," and I'd shrug my shoulders and move on (if not turn them in to the NSA).
I don't actually believe that this "anti-God words" movement is fueled primarily by the righteous indignation of atheists, agnostics or members of minority religions. I admit that I believe it's fueled by the righteous indignation of people who fear the open expression of religion, and I am trying to understand the source of that fear. Rational people who would ordinarily admonish the rest of us not to be afraid of ideas start getting really wiggy every time the President mentions Jesus by name or they hear someone start praying. These people may be non-believers, but often they are not. I've known and been friends with many non-religious people in my life, but that number is dwarfed by the multitude of religious people I've known and interacted with, and I can testify that even people who are personally very religious get very bent out of shape when they see (or hear) public expressions of religion–even when the religion is one they share. Ask a scientific sampling of practicing Mormons how they feel about BYU. (Good grief, ask my right-wing husband how he feels about BYU. He makes me sound like Super Molly Cougarette.) There will be a significant percentage that gripe about how religion pervades every aspect of the classroom and how uncomfortable it makes them. Some of these objections are well-founded, but some of them are just, well, silly. A good friend (and an intelligent person) told me she had to drop out of BYU because she couldn't take the constant references to religion in class–because "separation of church and state is really important to me." I didn't have the heart to tell her that BYU is actually run by the LDS church and that celebrated Jeffersonian wall of separation doesn't apply to them so much. My own alma mater, though not technically run by Baptists, was very kept on a relatively short leash by the Virginia Baptist General Board, which it was affiliated with. Every so often they'd have to throw a bone to the people who pointed out that the school was supposed to have a Christian mission, in conjunction with its educational one, so they'd say stuff like, "No, you may not post naked pictures on the residence hall bulletin boards," and people would get all huffy about their freedom of speech being violated by the religious wackos. But I seem to be veering off topic here. Oh, don't get me started on my college days! [Chuckles suggestively]
I know religious Mormons who get weirded out by Christians witnessing to them, who wouldn't dream of walking up to some random person and telling them about Jesus because it just seems so gauche–they are as uncomfortable with hearing evangelicals pray as an agnostic might be because, golly-darn, religion does not belong in the public sphere. It's personal, like your sex life. Okay to do in private, but please leave the rest of us out of it. TMI! TMI!
My impression is that people feel threatened or embarrassed by public declarations of faith because they associate religion with coercion and judgment. To me, the beauty part of religion is that it is not coercive. It can't be. Your mom and dad might shove you into your best clothes and most uncomfortable shoes and drag you to Sunday school, but no one can make you believe in God if you don't want to. (Trust me, it really irks some people that they can't do that. If religious people bug you, throw that little tidbit in their face. Don't get all huffy about God being on your money because that just encourages them.) I know that people have bad experiences with religion and religious institutions and religious people. Without veering off on another tangent, I ask you to please just trust me when I say that no one has to explain the concept of religious baggage to me. But you do have to explain why religious ideas are so much scarier to you than other equally unappealing ideas that you feel compelled to stifle them–with the force of governement behind you, if necessary.
Ideas, I think, are very dangerous things. That's why they belong in the light. I forget who said that. It might have been some wacky, non-religious type. I agreed with him, so I didn't take down his name and sic the feds on him. That's why I don't get the drive to photoshop In God We Trust off of a nickel because someone might see the word God and require some smelling salts. I don't get needing the smelling salts. It isn't a personal, individual commitment, "with this nickel I thee wed." It's evidence of the heritage of our country and, yes, of our particular brand of government, which owes as much to Judeo-Christian values as it does to the Enlightenment. Perhaps more. I haven't done an audit. But I wouldn't be surprised.
Take the nickel. In addition to the odious God-words it also has an image of Thomas Jefferson, the slave-holder. How offensive is slavery? How did he manage to write the Declaration of Independence while he held other human beings in bondage? Is the fact that he wrote the document that sowed the seeds of black Americans' eventual liberation supposed to balance out all the evils perpetrated by the institution of slavery? What's he doing on our money? Why should we cut Thomas Jefferson some slack and not the thousands of Christians who also helped found the country?
Lately it seems that people are really hyper-aware of the bad that has come from religion and conveniently ignoring the good that has come out of it. The seismic ethical paradigm shift that Judaism ushered in is too large a topic to address here. But the anti-slavery movement, the (first-wave) feminist movement and the "social justice" movement were all started and fostered by religious, Christian Americans. No, not just deists, but full-blown Jesus freaks. Those folks had their shortcomings, to be sure, but then, so do we. That's kind of the nature of humanity, whether you believe in God or not.
If Americans were to hold a vote tomorrow on whether we should take In God We Trust off our currency, I have no idea how it would turn out. Like I said, you can't predict policy by the ratio of believers to non-believers. But let's say the majority of Americans decide that they want their nickels God-free. Let's say they decide they want their nickels Jefferson-free. What does this prove? It's obviously a symbolic act, so what does it symbolize? That's what I still don't understand. I know what it symbolizes to me. To me it says that people pick funny stuff to be offended by, and their taste in Important Causes is even more bizarre. The words are In God We Trust, which you may not agree with. Maybe you don't personally trust in God, and you don't like your nickel putting words in your mouth, so to speak. But it's still just a concept (albeit one that was subscribed to by the vast majority of people who founded the country, as I'm fond of reminding you). It says, "In God We Trust," not "Accept Jesus or go to Hell." Now that would be offensive. Inappropriate for currency, in my opinion, but guess what–still just an idea. Lots of religious people out there think that I worship a crazy Jesus and that I'm going to hell. That's annoying when it gets personal–I know, because someone tried to cast the demons out of me once, and it was freaky. I was young, and it hurt my feelings. Today it would make me laugh because I'm less sensitive and more mature.
Should people go around trying to cast demons out of law-abiding Mormons (or atheists)? Eh, it's a free country, but it seems rude. Do I have a problem with people thinking I'm going to hell, though? No. I don't have a problem with them thinking it. I don't have a problem with them saying it. I don't have a problem with them writing it down. They could put it on the hundred-dollar bill and I'd probably think it was cool because I'm secretly an attention whore. The reason I don't have a problem with it is because I don't fear ideas I don't agree with. If I'm going to hell, that's my business. I don't think Pat Robertson has God's ear, so much. I don't think he has the government's ear, either. (Some of you disagree, I know, but I still believe that the influence of religious conservative nutjobs in this country is highly overestimated. Highly.) He might say stuff that makes me cringe or shake my head or roll my eyes. He might occasionally say something that makes me mad. But even in that case, all he's done is make me mad. He hasn't taken away my freedom. He hasn't forced me to get on the one-way bus to hell (assuming it exists). He doesn't have that kind of power. Neither does his idea. To paraphrase a classic bumper sticker: Christianity doesn't kill people. People kill people.
So while I appreciate everyone's comments, especially those of you who disagreed (even ever so slightly) with me, I still don't understand the fundamental threat of acknowledging America's religious roots. I can understand thinking it's unnecessary to acknowledge them–though I'm not sure I agree with that. I confess I've been preoccupied with the fear thing. I don't understand the fear. You don't suppress ideas you don't fear.
Does it bother you that In God We Trust is on our nation's coinage?
Liberty Elementary School in Texas was afraid you might be, so they erased the words from their reproduction of the nickel featured on their yearbook cover.
I imagine that if you are a right-wing extremist like myself, you are probably sick and tired of hearing crap like this, so I don't really need to know the reasoning behind your views–though you may feel free to vent, if you like. Just keep it clean, it's a family blog.
I'm really interested in hearing–no, wait, reading–the views of people who think In God We Trust is an inappropriate and/or offensive motto to put on anything remotely related to government. Because, my dears, I do not get it. I understand that some people don't believe in God. I know that not all people believe in the same God. I know that not all people believe in only one God. But ethical monotheism is a not-insignificant player in the creation of the United States. (Yes, I understand that "ethical monotheists" stole the land from the indigenous persons living here in the fifteenth century, but I'm talking about the nation that prints its own money. For the purposes of this discussion, let us focus on just that.) I think it may have earned the right to an ambiguous shout-out on our currency.
Actually, I can't really relate to this personal investment in the words imprinted on our nickels and dimes. I mean, I think I know my share of atheists, and they all seem like really reasonable people. I would be surprised if any of them claimed to feel oppressed or disenfranchised every time they fished a quarter out of their pocket to buy some gum. E pluribus unum is on our money, too, and I would think the white separatists in this country would be offended by that–or would be, if any of them could read Latin–but no one seems concerned with what might offend a white separatist, or any kind of separatist (racial, gender or otherwise). Why is that? (Well, I know why it is, but what do you think?)
God does work in a mysterious way.
Years ago–so many years ago that I won't count them–a fellow seminary student asked our teacher if the Lord had a sense of humor. The teacher, Brother P, said he was pretty sure that the Lord did. He then told us about the time he was preparing for a class and he wanted to do an object lesson that involved lighting a match. (I don't remember the nature of the object lesson, but please keep your speculation to yourself.) Well, lighting a match in a church building is technically a universal no-no, so Bro. P, being the conscientious and ethical cat that he was, sought special permission from his supervisor to light this particular match just this one time. Presumably it was to be one righteously cool object lesson. Anyway, the supervisor said, "Lighting a match in a church building is a universal no-no. So–no. No."
And Bro. P, sorely disappointed, walked sulkily down the hall back to his classroom, all the while grumbling about that inflexible, heartless church bureaucracy that ruined his whole lesson plan–when suddenly he noticed that a colleague's class was singing their opening hymn, "'Tis Sweet To Sing the Matchless Love." To Bro. P this seemed to be God's little way of saying, "Lighten up, Greg." (Bro. P's first name was Greg. We always called him Bro. P, but I guess God is a little less formal.)
Anyway, that was Bro. P's big story about God's sense of humor, and I remember thinking at the time, "If that's the best joke God has, He really is a corny sort." And I didn't think anything else about. Except that I've obviously never forgotten it.
Over the years my assessment of God's sense of humor has veered between thinking that He either doesn't really have one (in which case Bro. P's miracle of the Matchless Love was just a coincidence, which I always rather suspected), or that if He does have one, it's fairly sick and not very funny to the rest of us. (At least not at the time. Unless I misunderstand the scriptures, I guess we're all supposed to look back on this one day and laugh.)
So I was in church this morning and we're singing our opening hymn, "The Time Is Far Spent,"a song which has never had any particular significance for me. It's all about spreading the good tidings of the Gospel, and well, you know me. Anyway, we start to sing the second verse, which goes, "Shrink not from your duty, however unpleasant." And I, being preoccupied as usual by my duty as the chief child-tender and diaper-changer of the household, thought, "Pft, that's a laugh." (As it happens, the author of the hymn is Eliza R. Snow, who never had any children. But I'm sure that's a coincidence.) But I was soon distracted further by the following line: "Our little afflictions, tho painful at present,/Ere long with the righteous in glory will end."
Now, compared to to the likes of Eliza R. Snow and her generation of Mormons (nineteenth century, pre-Utah–not a pleasant time for a cult member), my afflictions certainly are little, but they do still manage to be painful. They certainly left the land of the Merely Unpleasant long ago. And for years I have marveled at the way my fellow faith-travelers see God's hand in everything, how they find divine reassurance and assistance for the smallest of life's troubles. Sister So-and-So gets a hangnail, and God comforts her, but Madhousewife struggling with wayward children and mental illness still feels all alone. I've often wondered why God couldn't throw me a bone once in a while. But at this particular moment, this particular hymn seemed to be God's little way of saying, "I've got your number, Mad. You think I don't notice you, but I do. There's more to your life than what you can see right now–I'm not going to tell you what, mind you, but trust me. I'm God, and I know better than you."
And I had to laugh, not only because whenever I hear references to "the righteous" I immediately think of that scene in Dune where Sting sarcastically exclaims, "The righteous!", and that always makes me laugh–but just when I was about to dismiss the whole thing as a cheesy coincidence embellished by my harried, Zoloft-deprived mind…He called me Greg. Just kidding. No, just when I was about to dismiss the whole thing, I remembered that God works miracles according to our faith, and my faith has always been something of a cheesy coincidence. Also, the last line of the hymn says, "His arm is sufficient, tho demons oppose," and I don't know about the rest of you, but in our house "demons" is an ambiguous referent. And one of those ambiguous referents was trying to twist my head off so I could kiss his grubby, Goldfish-encrusted cheek.
And for those of you who have been concerned, my Zoloft shipment should be arriving shortly. At least that's what God told me when we sang the closing hymn, "There Is a Balm in Gilead." (Just kidding, we didn't sing that. But we should have.)
I lifted the following comment off of Dan the Theologian's site, not because I think it's profound but because it's one of a handful of statements that so irritate the living crap out of me that I think if I have to hear or read it one more time, I will probably have to kill somebody. Dan was asking people to give a Biblically-based argument against abortion–just for kicks, you know, because that's his shtick–and here's what this genius cooked up:
I love how people rely on what a fictitious book tells them instead of thinking for themselves.
Back in college, my political science professor–a rightward-leaning chap, which was unusual for a professor even at my Southern Baptist college–initiated a discussion of whether some types of government were better than others. One of my fellow students said that she didn't think it was our place to judge other cultures. The professor asked if she really couldn't judge a culture that produced a system of government that would, say, mandate the sacrificing of virgins on a regular basis. Her response was, "Who are we to say that that's wrong, just because it's not our culture?"
"Well, the virgin might have something to say about it," the professor replied.
"How do we know? Maybe she'd rather be sacrificed than be [bleeped] by some old guy."
For the record, [bleep] was also a word unusual for discourse in my college classrooms, but anyway, that's what she said.
I don't have the actual statistics, but I imagine that at the time I was certainly among the top five percent Most Leftist Students at my school. I was probably to the left of most of my professors. However, when I heard my classmate insisting that we as outsiders had no right to judge other people's cultures, my immediate response was something like "That's the stupidest effing thing I've ever heard." Well, I didn't say it out loud, because I don't like confrontation, but I probably should have. Actually, I think my mind was just so boggled by the idea that I couldn't verbalize how stupid it was.
I had a similar experience in my Philosophy 150 class when we discussed moral relativism and whether there was such a thing as absolute truth. One of my classmates (a different one) insisted that things could be "true" for one person and "untrue" for another person. My professor (a left-leaning guy, if it matters to you) asked if the Nazis' beliefs that Jews needed to be exterminated was similarly "true." After much hemming and hawing and back and forthing, she finally committed to saying that yes, their beliefs were true…for them.
To which I said (out loud), "That's the stupidest effing thing I ever heard."
Okay, so I didn't use those exact words. I used more polite–but equally eloquent–words. To me it has always seemed self-evident that it is our place to judge just about everything–cultures, governments, and yes, even people. To absolve yourself of that responsibility is immoral–not that you'd care, since, you know, what's true for others may not be true for you, or whatever. But that's my opinion, and unlike some people's opinions, it's absolutely true.
For example, this morning while I was upstairs trying to get the baby to take a nap, Elvis toasted every last slice of a brand new loaf of bread. That's just wrong. I don't care what country you live in.
During my sabbatical from blogging, I was listening to Dennis Prager and he did an hour on judging vs. being judgmental. He said something to this effect: that our ability and willingness to judge behaviors and acts is part of what makes us human, and when we refuse to render judgment, we lose some of our humanity. By the same token, when we take judging too far and become judgmental, we also lose some of our humanity. It's a balancing act because it's a fine line, but it's our moral responsibility to find that balance.
What I appreciated most was him addressing the whole "love the sinner, hate the sin" mentality, which I've always found problematic (as most of you long-time readers well know). One of his callers said that while he can judge individual acts, he's unwilling to judge individuals because it isn't his place to make a final pronouncement on someone's soul. I agree that it isn't my place to make a "final pronouncement" on someone's soul, but I also agreed with Dennis's point that if you can't judge a person "bad," you also can't judge a person "good." You might say that Osama bin Laden isn't an evil guy; he just does evil things. But then you can't say that Mother Theresa was a good person; she merely did good acts. Personally, I'm okay with calling murderers evil. I even feel reasonably confident that while it's not my place to send murderers to hell–well, I'd probably have a bone to pick with God if they didn't end up there. That's all.
Dennis–I like calling him Dennis, it makes it sound like he's my friend–said that he distinguishes between acts of evil and acts of sin. This made sense to me. He defined evil as deliberately ruining or destroying other people's lives. I imagine this would include depraved indifference. Is it a perfect definition? No. But it is a good starting point. It allows me to draw a meaningful distinction between sexual promiscuity and rape, for example. It's all subjective, but it's a context in which one can make reasonable arguments for what is our business and what isn't our business.
Meanwhile, I have to attend to Elvis before he commits an act of evil against another household appliance.
A fellow Xangan who likes to pose questions on controversial subjects for the rest of us Xanganites to discuss (he shall remain anonymous, of course–*cough*Dan*cough) recently had several posts relating to homosexuals and homosexuality. What struck me–aside from the fact that the ease of the computer keyboard seems to make people forget their spelling and punctuation, as well as their manners–was how removed from real life most of the comments were. There were a lot of platitudes on both sides–including two of my personal favorites, "Let's not eat shellfish because Leviticus says we're not supposed to," and "Love the sinner, hate the sin." Not exactly the stuff substantive ethical explorations are made of, in my opinion, but maybe that's just me.
As I've said before, I find "Love the sinner, hate the sin" to be only as profound or useful as any other bumper sticker saying. It may be sincere, but it sure doesn't sound like it, does it? I mean, I believe that people can "love" homosexuals and "hate" homosexuality, but I don't think these homosexual-loving/homosexuality-hating people think about how that sounds in real life. True, from the Christian perspective, we are all sinners, but most of us aren't in the position of having our sins singled out by strangers who "love" us. Imagine if someone said to you, "I love you, but I hate that you steal from your employer," or "I love you, but I hate your lies," or "I love you, but I hate that you're not perfect, like God is"–what is the operative phrase in each of those statements? It's not "I love you." "I love you" is a nice sentiment, but if that were all you took home, you'd really be missing the point, wouldn't you?
Gay people are in that awkward position of needing other people to mind their own business while simultaneously putting the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on the gay lifestyle (for lack of a better word–I understand "lifestyle" has fallen out of favor as a descriptive term for the differences in people's…lifestyles…but I really don't know how else to put it). I've never liked the whole "is homosexuality a choice" debate because to me it is so irrelevant from just about every standpoint but scientific curiosity. Really, assume it isn't a choice; assume it's destiny. What else in life isn't a choice? How much control do we have over how many things we do or feel or are? That's a really thorny philosophical issue, as I recall from PHL 150. I didn't do well on that exam. On the other hand, assume it is a choice. Does that really change anything, in terms of the common courtesy and privacy we should all be affording each other? Do bisexuals have a right to their identity, or must we assume that they are, to some extent, psychologically defective because they do have a choice? It gets real silly real fast, if you ask me.
I find that it's easier to hate a "sin" when you don't know the "sinner." Which is interesting, when you consider how personal hate is. When I was in college, I had a good friend who had been married only a little more than a year when she had an extramarital affair and got pregnant. When she told me about the pregnancy, and that it wasn't her husband's baby, she said, "You probably think I'm a terrible person."
"No," I said. "I don't think that." Because I didn't. Did I think what she had done was terrible? Theoretically, yes. I'm against extramarital affairs and that sort of thing, and if I heard this story about a stranger, I might be inclined to think that person was terrible. I talked to another friend (not mutually acquainted) about it, and she said, "Doesn't that just make you mad?"–as in, "Doesn't it just make you mad that some people are so thoughtless/unfaithful/fill-in-the-blank?" I said, "No, it just makes me sad." Because I didn't approve of what she did, but I understood the context in which she did it. And I still liked her. Did I love the sinner and hate the sin, in that situation? Only an outsider could characterize it that way. The idea of "hating" anything never entered my mind. Still doesn't.
I don't think I'm exceptional in this regard. I think most religious conservative types have more complex thoughts and feelings than their rhetoric sometimes suggests. That's why I don't think it's fair to dismiss people's religious beliefs as hatred or bigotry. I've had several good friends who were serious evangelical Christians. I don't doubt that their theology required them to believe that I was destined for hell. Understanding this in the context of our relationship and how they, personally, treated me has given me a much healthier (I think) perspective on the differences that tend to divide people so sharply. Did these Christians love me and hate my "sin"? I wouldn't put it that way, and I doubt they would either. People don't really think that way in real life.
I don't mean for this to become a forum on the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality. This is not The Theologian's Cafe. We don't serve cappuccino. (It's against our religion, and those of you who drink it are going to hell–just kidding!) Seriously, this is not the venue for a discussion of that sort. My point is that questions of policy may require "yes" or "no" answers, but in the real world where real people live, we are not usually so bottom line-oriented. It's easy to dismiss people's arguments by calling something "sin" or "bigotry," but it betrays a lack of true understanding.
I had been very interested in Steven Spielberg's new movie,
Munich, until I read more about it and decided I probably wouldn't care for its moral stance. I'm not the type of person to rail against a movie I haven't seen. I used to think movies were important, back when I used to watch more of them, but over the years their importance has greatly diminished in my eyes. I miss a lot of "important" films, and my life goes on, just as rich and fulfilling as it ever was. Don't get me wrong–I think film can be as enlightening as other artistic media. I just don't think you "have" to see Schindler's List to understand the Holocaust, or that you "have" to see Boyz N the Hood to understand the struggles of inner-city black youth. (Actually, what I think is that you're naive if you think you can understand anything just by watching a fictional movie about the subject. But I digress.) What I'm saying is that I'm not enraged about
Munich. I don't get enraged about movies (unless they're romantic comedies, which I hold to a much higher standard, but that's another blog). I've just lost interest in seeing it, and this is why.
I don't appreciate moral equivalency arguments. I think it's possible for reasonable people to disagree on a variety of controversial subjects, such as abortion, the death penalty, war, etc. I don't think it's possible for reasonable people to disagree that there's such a thing as a hierarchy of evil. There, I've said it. If you think the death penalty is wrong, that's a reasonable position, which I may not happen to share. If you think executing murderers is morally equivalent to murderers murdering innocent people, that's unreasonable. I won't even say "I think that's unreasonable." It's unreasonable. Things can be wrong without being just as wrong as the wrongest things you can think of. That isn't rocket science, but even otherwise-reasonable people can forget it when they're arguing about subjects they feel strongly about.
But I'm not actually trying to blog about
Munich. That would be silly, since I haven't even seen the thing and have lost interest in it. It's just that it reminds me of a book I read last year, In My Hands. It's a memoir by Irene Gut Opdyke about her experience during World War II, when she was a young Catholic girl who wound up hiding Jews from the Nazis. She worked as a housekeeper for a Nazi official, and she actually hid Jews in the Nazi's own house for several months without him ever knowing. Eventually he did find out. Instead of turning her in, however, he said the Jews could stay–if Irene would become his mistress. He wouldn't force her; she had to make the choice. She chose to become his mistress. In other words, she chose to save the Jews.
I remember Irene Opdyke being on Dennis Prager's program a while back, and several people later responded (they couldn't have said it to her face–or ear, I guess, it was radio) that she had committed a sin by fornicating with this Nazi. It didn't matter the good that came of what she did; what mattered was that she'd had non-marital sex, and that was just wrong, period–there was no getting around it. Dennis Prager, of course, disputed this argument. You should know that these people weren't all Bible-thumping morons entirely devoid of the milk of human kindness. Many of them claimed to have compassion for Irene and her predicament and said of course she could be forgiven, but forgiveness was necessary, all the same. She had a choice, and she chose wrong. She should have had faith that God would provide another way to save the Jews without her having to break His commandments. A few said her lack of faith made her no better than a whore.
I happen to agree with Dennis Prager. These people may not all be unreasonable, but they're wrong. They're as wrong as sin on Sunday. (An expression, people–don't lecture me.) Irene Opdyke did have a choice. She could have sex with this Nazi she wasn't married to and save Jewish lives, or she could retain her "virtue" and send Jews to their deaths. Would it have been less wrong if she'd actually married the Nazi before having sex with him? Isn't that rather absurd? In my opinion, this "choice" was no more merciful than rape would have been. Which is not to say that this was a no-brainer for a young, faithful Catholic. She didn't want to do it, but she couldn't save the Jews she was harboring without doing it, and she couldn't not save the Jews. This doesn't make her a moral relativist who compromises her principles for convenience. It makes her someone who valued other human beings' lives over her own personal interest. I don't think I, as an 18-year-old girl, would have been so brave to risk so much. Leave aside your personal opinion of the Church's position on sexual morality. Don't minimize the fact that she was a religious woman. She didn't know if God would forgive her or approve of what she did. (One priest she confessed to condemned her.) She was trusting her moral instinct. That also requires faith.
You shouldn't think that I consider this scenario to be strictly analogous to any other. I chose it deliberately to avoid the usual arguments that come up when you discuss matters of current political significance. (To my knowledge the Congress is not debating the legality of sex with Nazis at this time.) I still think it shows that believing in moral absolutes doesn't require you to ignore moral complexities, but acknowledging that not everything is black and white doesn't relieve the responsibility to discern shades of grey.
EDIT: The reason you all can't find this book is because I not only got the author's name wrong (I'm always confusing my Holocaust rescuers–does anyone else have this problem?), but I got the freaking title wrong. In God's Hands is a surfing movie (and not a very good one, unless you really, really like surfing). In My Hands is Irene Opdyke's book. (See what happens, kids, when you don't proofread?)
I'm glad Christmas is almost here because maybe after it's over people can stop talking about the whole "Merry Christmas"/"Happy Holidays" controversy that was dreamed up by somebody with nothing better to do. I swear I have read no less than six editorials in the last week tsk-tsking Bill O'Reilly for being a(n) *******. Is this really topical? I mean, other than in the same sense that the roundness of the earth is topical? Why are we paying attention to anything Bill O'Reilly says anyway? I tried to pay attention to him once, but I got bored and turned off the radio. The anti-O'Reilly Christmas essays I've read were all very well-written, but it's not so hard, I think, to point out the flaws in Bill O'Reilly's reasoning. Artistic expression: 10. Degree of difficulty: 0.
Speaking of the Winter Solstice Festivities, however, I am the envy of all the mommies at church because my child got to participate in a Nativity pageant at his pre-school. What can I say, ladies? You should have enrolled your kiddo at a Christian school, too, if you wanted to experience the Unbearable Sweetness of four- and five-year-olds acting out the Christmas story, complete with gospel soundtrack and a live donkey. Never in my life have I witnessed something so adorable. I almost started crying, it was so cute. (The kids, I mean. Not so much the donkey, though he seemed nice.)
Mister Bubby played the part of Wise Guy #2–sort of a step down from when he played Baby Jesus five years ago, but with a much cooler costume. He was very much looking forward to the play and became somewhat obsessed with the Christmas story. He even asked us to buy the Playmobil Nativity set for him. (Which we did. Well, officially we bought it for all the kids, but he's gotten the most joy out of it.) He practiced his songs constantly. You don't often see little Mormon boys running around singing "Go Tell It on the Mountain," so that made it extra amusing. MB is notoriously shy, so I was afraid that he would lose his nerve and get stage fright at the last minute, but he didn't. (The cutest thing was that they made him a special left-handed rubber-band harp, which he got to keep.) When it was time to sing, you could hear his voice over everyone else's. I thought I would spontaneously combust with pride. I think he was proud of himself, too. He's been re-performing the play for everyone who visits our house.
An interesting bit of trivia about MB which I don't think I've mentioned before is that within the last year he started refusing to wear anything but shorts, regardless of the weather. Within the last few months he started refusing to wear shirts. I insisted that he wear a shirt (and long pants, when the weather strongly suggested them) when we went out places, but as soon as we got inside our house, he'd take off his pants (under which he still had on his shorts) and his shirt and go about his business. So this last week he's been running around the house with nothing on but shorts and a red Santa cap, strumming a left-handed rubber-band harp and singing "Go Tell It on the Mountain" at the top of his lungs. I'm going to miss this stage. A lot.
So my mother-in-law is here now. During one of MB's many impromptu Nativity performances, Princess Zurg informed Grandma that "MB is really into religious stuff." PZ, historically, is not into religious stuff, but even she has caught a little Nativity fever. For years I have been collecting those little Snoopy figurines that come with the Whitman's sampler boxes (yes, I know, Whitman's chocolate is sub-par, but this is Snoopy we're talking about), and they live among the kids' building blocks and are routinely called upon to play the roles that would ordinarily be played by dolls or action figures. So the other night while MB was acting out the Christmas story with the Playmobil nativity set, PZ was making her own nativity set out of Whitman's sampler Snoopy figurines. She made them costumes out of paper. She chose the littlest Snoopy figurine to be baby Jesus. He happens to be holding a football, but you hardly notice, what with the swaddling clothes and all. I'm taking this as a good sign that some of the holiday's true meaning is rubbing off on both of them. That's what I tell myself every time they tell me yet another thing that I need to buy them for Ch