Is Disagreement Religious Bigotry?

David Hayward at nakedpastor presented the following cartoon on his blog...



Often the discussion of ideas breaks down because the accusation of rudeness is used to imply that whatever the person being “rude” is saying is untrue. In my experience those who follow any of the three Abrahamic traditions generally expand rudeness to anything appearing to question the nature or existence of their god. Accusations of blaspheme tend to be brandished about in these situations.

When I was a believer I noted how easily I could be offended. It made me wonder how solid my idea of truth was if it was so vulnerable to criticism. I have noticed that if something is true, it doesn’t need to be defended. I simply came to the point where I couldn’t defend my Christian beliefs in any objective way. And on the subjective level I came to realize how many of my Christian beliefs were extremely destructive to my quality of life.

On a personal level the subjective is absolutely needed to make life full. Love, beauty, art, music, and whole host of inner experiences make life quite wonderful. So if one claims their belief brings them a sense of wonder and joy, there is no argument since the truth of their wonder is based solely on their interpretation of the experience. They are absolutely the arbiter of their own truth as far as how it affects their enjoyment of life.

Now its quite different when that person decides that since their subjective experience is wonderful then everyone has to have the same exact experience to feel wonderful and until the whole world has that experience, the universe will simply not be “right.” And this person decides that those who do not agree that this experience is the one and only true way, are in fact condemned to burn in hell forever. That is essentially what many Christians are doing. This has no basis in truth or fact and is simply untestable in any objective way what so ever and yet confident claims are made of its universal veracity. In addition I would guess most Christians don’t actually have an experience to reference, but are simply defending something they have been told is true.

Now I can be dishonest and tell you that I respect your belief, when in fact there is nothing believable about it to me, other than I can believe that it makes you happy. And even though Christians feel it is their duty to “love” me so much by telling me that my lack of belief makes me amoral and a evil influence on society, I can still appreciate the obvious joy something like “God loves me” can bring to a person.

When I look at Christianity’s track record of violence, manipulation, and oppression, I find no evidence that it should be the universal “truth” that the whole world needs to follow. I really can’t find any philosophy or religion that could fit that bill. I do know a number of methods for learning and adapting I could recommend.

The deal breaker for bridge building is the fact that every Abrahamic sourced religion believes that the whole world should be like them. Any bridge building done by them would be a lie. It would simply be a means to convert everyone to their idea of what is true. The type of bridge building implied by the cartoon can only be done when religious belief stays in the realm of subjective experience and communication is done for the motivation of curiosity and understanding.
Christians gives a lot of lip service to truth and yet becomes offended when someone who disagrees is completely honest. When someone is honest with me that information is very valuable. When someone simply tells me what I want to hear, that person doesn’t care about me, but sees me as a means to an end. And this happens too often in Christian communities as the latest “mission” project or “cause” defending Christian values sweeps through town.

We live in a weird world where large groups of people holding rigid views of god and truth are in a continual collision course, even among themselves. One simply needs to publish the right offensive cartoon, say a particular “liberal’ phrase, or accidently misunderstand a small point of a complex culture to ignite a holy outrage. This spawns leaders telling the group they need to fight for their truth and how the world is going to fall apart unless they give everything. They claim that they are the persecuted one’s even if they are the majority and that anyone who is against their beliefs is motivated by evil intents to destroy all that is good and wholesome. And the latest is that anyone who is against their religion is bigoted. I guess I should never under estimate the power of fear.

What is our True Nature?

When I was growing up I was taught that human nature was depraved and if left in its natural state would degenerate into total depravity. The only thing holding us from total chaos was the moral teachings of Christianity, going to church, accepting Jesus as my savior and the worship of the one true God in the form of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As a child this created a fear in me of people who weren't Christians because supposedly they didn't have the restraints we Christians had and they could just degenerate into absolute evil at any moment. And even if they were Christians but didn't hold the specific beliefs of my particular denomination, they only had a tenuous hold on moral restraint at best.

This was explained in the doctrine of original sin. This doctrine solved the problem of why everyone on the planet needed salvation. Today some have even put a scientific spin on it and believe that original sin is within our DNA. Or you can take Eddie Izzard's approach when he talks about Original sin.

"Original sin! What a hellish idea that is. People have to go,

“Father, bless me for I have sinned, I – I did an original sin – I – I poked a badger with a spoon.”

“I’ve never heard of that one before! Five Hail Mary’s and two Hello, Dolly's.”

“Oh, all right…”

“Bless me, Father, for I have slept with my next door neighbor’s wife.”

“Heard it. I want an original sin.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.”

In my observations of humanity I have suspected that the opposite is true. I find most people really want to be thought of as good people. In this short presentation by Daniel Goleman the author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, he presents evidence that we are hardwired to be helpful. We have this ability to empathize with other people through some type of common emotional connection. This is activated when we give our attention to the other person. Take a look at this presentation from him at TED.



There are a number of indications that we gain a lot of benefit from doing good deeds. This particular article called The Science of Good Deeds talks about 50 studies going on right now by The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, headed by Stephen G. Post, PhD, a professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

I think I prefer to see humanity as having great potential that is built in rather than see us set up to fail. There certainly is more and more evidence that we have some pretty wonderful things built in simply waiting to be awakened.

One example of this is the professional percussionist Evelyn Glennie. She is able to hear with her body. In fact she has to because she is deaf. I will close with this video of her presenting her motivational view of life to a very appreciative audience.

Truth, Grace, and the American Way?

I read Bart D. Ehrman's book "Misquoting Jesus" a few months ago and have been processing the information he presents in that book for a while. What is most interesting to me is his reasons for becoming a Biblical scholar in the first place. In the introduction he tells the story of becoming a "born again" Christian his sophomore year in high school.

He states, "There was a kind of loneliness associated with being a young teenager; but, of course, I didn't realize that it was part of being a teenager--I thought there must be something missing." He then began to attend Campus Life Youth for Christ club which met at member's houses.

"The leader of the group was a twenty-something-year-old named Bruce who did this sort of thing for a living--organized Youth for Christ clubs locally, tried to convert high school kids to be 'born again' and then get them involved in serious Bible studies, prayer meetings, and the like. Bruce was a completely winsome personality--younger than our parents but older and more experienced than we--with a powerful message, that the void we felt inside (We were TEENAGERS! All of us felt a void!) was from not having Christ in our hearts. If we would only ask Christ in, he would enter and fill us with the joy and happiness that only the 'saved' could know."

He tells of how he admired Bruce, who could quote the Bible and answer all kinds of questions. He became friends with Bruce and eventually was convinced that he should become a "serious" Christian and attend Moody Bible Institute. He refers to Moody Bible Institute as a "Christian Boot Camp...where Bible is our middle name." Each student and teacher had to sign an agreement to the effect that the Bible was the inerrant world of God and contains no mistakes.

While at the Moody Bible institute he committed to a life path of learning all he could about how the Bible was put together. He eventually learned how to read the ancient Greek and Hebrew languages as well as a number of modern languages to be able to read what other scholars had to say about how the Bible, particularly the New Testament, was put together.

While at Princeton he came to a realization that it was simply too difficult to maintain an inerrant view of the Bible in light of all the evidence he was confronted with. He states, "The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the texts of scripture. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own needs, their own desires, their own understandings, their own theologies; and these perspectives, beliefs ,views, needs, desires, understandings, and theologies informed everything they said."

What does this all have to do with the title of this blog? The familiar saying, "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" plays out in many ways in our culture. What if it were "Truth, Grace, and the American Way?" The contrast of Grace and Justice have come to mean a different way of seeing the world to me. In a world view that sees the Bible as inerrant works in a certain way and can be difficult to maintain when confronted with the complexity of the world. It requires what I would call a "Justice" mind set.

This mind set believes that the world is orderly and predictable. It believes that God intervenes and has things under control. It believes that everyone will be rewarded for their choices. In cases where things don't work out, it becomes the fault of the person rather than God. It would be unthinkable to consider that God or the Bible could have errors. (In the early Christian Gnostic myths it was the creator God of the Old Testament that messed up and was at fault and Jesus came to save us from this messed up world and directed us to the true Father.)

In this world view things are ultimately true or untrue. And when things become too complex for us to understand then we need to have faith in God and his word to sort things out. So when we read in the Bible that God orders the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, and animal of their enemies we must assume that God had a just reason for doing so. And that He also had a just reason for asking the Israelites to carry it out rather than killing them Himself.

One of the definitions of Grace that has caught my attention is that Grace is giving up the need to punish. Or that Grace gives up the need for justice. One saying that illustrates this contrast with Grace and Justice in a more pragmatic way is, "If we hold fast to the justice of an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth, then the whole world will eventually be blind and toothless." This would extend Grace to others as a means to preserve the benefits of seeing and eating. Imagine the threat to our survival and well being this justice system would create if executed without exception. "Le Miserable" is one such brilliant exploration of this world view by Victor Hugo.

In my exploration of the idea of Grace, I have found that it is very difficult for many people to extend Grace to themselves. Enlightened self-interest was a concept that Alexis de Tocqueville discussed in his work "Democracy in America." The idea was that self interest rightly understood would result in ethical behavior in a group setting. I think the same thing could be true on a personal level.

For example if Justice is my primary mode of motivation for being a "good" person then I may apply justice to my every act and motivation. If these are not in line with my ethical expectations then I "punish" myself. Jesus may have been referring to this when he stated that when one judges others they judge themselves. If Justice is my ethical standard for others then it becomes my own ethical mode whether I carry out the "punishment" on a literal basis or not. The other dangers of a Justice model is that I can be resentful when Justice is not done fairly to others and they "get away" with things that I perceive bring harm to me. Or I can be in fear that punishment is always waiting to come down on me as soon as I do something wrong.

In this description Grace could be seen as something I could apply as self interest rightly understood. It would not be so I could "get away" with something, but a completely different world view. It is interesting that Jesus referred to self interest in his statement that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. It appears that the assumption is that we love ourselves or we should love ourselves. If I were to apply this in a literal sense then if I hated myself, then I should hate others.

Another model of Grace versus Justice that I have explored is with idea of sailing. Lets say I had the 10 commandments of sailing and I was told that as long as I followed these 10 commandments I would never get into trouble and I would have a wonderful sailing experience. Sailing is a fairly complex skill and while most of the time its pretty relaxing, when you do get into trouble it can happen rather quickly and one has to make choices pretty quickly or you will end up on the rocks. There's not a lot of time to be looking things up in the book. And the book can't really give you the experience of sailing and how the timing works and how it feels.

Lets say one of the commandments is, "If you push the tiller to the right the boat will go left." This works most of the time, except when the current is going the other direction and you don't have any wind. The boat will point left, but the current is still going to put you into the rocks. Its generally a good time to start the engine. But if my sailing denomination is purist, then if I started the engine I would be demonstrating that I didn't have enough faith. Or if I do end up going into the rocks then I am at fault for being tempted to sail too close to the shore.

A Grace model still has the object of not going into the rocks, but doesn't waste energy on blame. If I go into the rocks even though I start the engine and do everything in my power and understanding, then punishing myself makes no sense. The rocks and the loss of my boat pretty much cover the lesson. I would rather put the energy into making sure it doesn't happen again. Beating myself up and telling myself that I am a lousy sailor only serve to lessen my ability to make a decision and takes away energy and time from learning how to sail more skillfully.

The other thing that I have noticed is that I can feel almost any emotion, even sadness, and not feel pain as long as shame is not mixed in. If I feel sad and judge that I shouldn't be feeling sad because that means that I am being weak, then sadness becomes painful for me. If I am angry and judge myself that I shouldn't be angry then anger becomes painful. But if I take a Grace approach and simply let myself feel the emotion and see what it has to tell me then most often the emotion goes through its cycle and shifts. Sadness can become a means to connect with others and anger can become a force for positive change and setting healthy boundaries.

Justice and Grace each have a different "story." Each creates different expectations and perceptions.

In an article titled "How Scholarship Affects Scholars Losing Faith 2 Who Did and 2 Who Didn't" in Biblical Archaeological Review there was a transcription of a discussion moderated by editor Hershel Shanks. In this discussion Bart Ehrman says this about his faith in Christianity. "Faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition has a God who intervenes. That's what the Exodus event is, that's what the crucifixion is: it's a God who intervenes, and when I look around this world, I don't see a God who intervenes."

This article is talking about Scholarship and yet the statement that Bart Ehrman makes is a very emotional one. There could be an element of disappointment or of relief and freedom in it, depending on how you feel about a God who intervenes. I would imagine that at some point Bart Ehraman was disappionted, based on what he was taught to believe. I can't determine how he feels now, but I can resonate with both disappointment and relief.

I can say at this point the pursuit of Grace has brought me farther than the pursuit of Justice. I have come to believe that Justice tries to bring a sense of balance, but I often think that equal punishment only differs in the order the pain is inflicted. If we really are all one, then Grace extended to others is really Grace extended to myself and punishment extended to others is punishment extended to myself.

Source of Truth

As I begin the new year I have been meditating on what is the source of my truth. What I have been following is contained in my own life experiences. What I have found is that, while the experiences of other people are valuable, I really don't understand something fully, until I go there. When I dialog with people and they tell me their stories I certainly can observe the results of their individual experiences.

I just read an article in the latest Scientific American where some researchers have hooked up a device that measures brain wave activity on two people. The first person is doing a particular activity and the second is observing the activity. The interesting result is that their brain patterns are identical, possibly indicating that we can feel what another person feels through sharing an experience.

I have been exploring the idea that God is expressed, in part, by every person on the planet. So, the reasoning goes, the more people I can connect with the larger picture of God I can see. Obviously its much more complex than that, but it does provide me a picture that I can start with.

The other idea that came to mind was that as we become more skilled at expressing that piece of God we each have and we support each other in that expression, the greater manifestation of God. And if one believes that God is Love, the greater expression of love.

I'm sure this is not a new idea, but I've had more of an emotional connection with it lately and am interested in putting it into practice and see what becomes of it.