A Fresh Start, A New Purpose

This is the time of year when people pause to look both backwards and forwards. As I look back on the year 2007, I am struck by the tremendous intellectual changes the deacon and I went through this past year. The processes began years, even decades, earlier, but it was only within the past year that we set our minds free and dared to examine our lives, our world and the universe in ways that are, to us, completely novel.

Looking ahead to 2008, we have decided to use this New Year to mark the start of a new, faith-free life together. We will be doing this by renewing our marriage vows in a private ceremony. The vows we exchanged in 1979, which we composed, were heavily laden with Christian language and ideals. The vows we will exchange tonight, again composed by us, have been stripped of all religious imagery. The old ideals that constrained us will be replaced by a new vision of our life together. The new vows reaffirm our commitment to each other’s individual growth and fulfillment, as well as to our relationship, and express our joy in venturing forward into a future unbound by the shackles of religious dogma.

People who are steeped within religious traditions often have difficulty understanding how non-believers can face the world. They ask, what is your purpose in life? Or, what do you hope for? At this point, the deacon and I are still developing our answers to such questions. We are excited by the idea that we are free to design our own purposes for living. Our hopes are to live our lives in ways that will honor our families, our friends and ourselves, and to do whatever lies within our small powers to leave this world a better place than it was when we entered it.

I think these excerpts from two well-known humanist authors, one still very much alive and the other long dead, summarize our thoughts very nicely.

The first selection is excerpted from Richard Dawkins’ lovely essay, To Live at All is Miracle Enough:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here….

[W]e have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?

The second excerpt is from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass collection:

O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless–of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light–of the objects mean–of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all–of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest–with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring–What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here–that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

I hope all of you will join the deacon and me in contributing a few humble, worthwhile lines to the drama of life!

–the chaplain

 

Faith + Politics = Tragedy

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a poignant reminder of the dangers of merging religious zealotry with political affairs. When that merger occurs, free exchange of ideas is not respected and thuggish actions soon follow. Those who disagree with the zealots are demonized and viewed as having little value.

While many Americans believe that such thinking does not exist in America, they need to think again. The seeds are well planted in the minds of Christian fundamentalists who, if they had the full power would in the name of doing what is best for the nation and in the building of the “Kingdom of Christ,” would force their beliefs upon school systems, have students indoctrinated in fundamentalist beliefs in the classroom, withhold government jobs from those who are not Bible believing and Sunday worshiping Christians, limit public exchange and discussions on televisions, reinstate prohibition, segregate the education system into the haves and have nots, etc.

While most Christians who sit in the pews do not have such intentions, the fundamentalist leadership and many of the zealots who fill the fundamentalist colleges would be all for it. These individuals, in the name of building up the Church, would help push the ball progressively forward until they have established the 21st century version of John Calvin’s Geneva. Fortunately, the checks and balances of the American political system and marketplace of free speech prevents them for gaining the power they need to transform their nation.

An example of such thinking has been on a recent comment by “antipelian” posted on “Atheism Sucks”.

In case anyone’s wondering…the guy that shot up a mall a few weeks back…was an atheist. I’d say he was a “pure” atheist. He lived out what he thought. It’s a beautiful thing when men rid themselves of any vestige of Christianity. Let’s keep looking for these maverick intellectual atheists that are also cultural atheists.

A poster who questioned and cautioned his blaming such actions on atheist thinking is responded to in a dogmatic black and white fashion. It is antipelian’s dangerous thinking, almost at its rawest form, that indicates the evil versus good dichotomy mindset of the zealous fundamentalist Christian:

I think you missed my point. Atheism *leads* to murder,rape, pretty much anything horrible. I know Christians do bad things, but what they do is antithetical to Christian teaching. When a Christian does something wrong, he can explain why. When an atheist does something “wrong”…he can’t say its wrong.

Contrary to what Calvin, Wesley and Luther wrote about grace being upon the world, including those who are not believers, antipelian holds that atheists are devoid of any goodness. He says that atheists if they are true to their belief system that they will naturally conduct such atrocities. Hence, if he and those like him had full power they would have to use any means at their disposal to restrict the freedoms of atheists and those who have contrary beliefs. As they did in the late Roman age and during the Inquisition, they would force people to say the magical phrases, to act by a restrictive code, go to chapel at designated times and dress in keeping with a narrow standard.

Not surprisingly, antipelian distances the Church from anyone who claims to be a Christian and does such an atrocity and can readily explain why he does it. A) the person was not really a Christian to begin with, b) the person was controlled by sin (sin such thinking is a type of living demon), c) the Devil made the person do it…in other words the Holy Spirit was not sufficient to protect the person from the Devil’s manipulation, or even worse d) God directed the person because it is serving a higher purpose of building the “Kingdom of God.”

Individuals who demean others who are not of their faith and think that they are bound to commit atrocities have laid the intellectual foundation for justifying the eradication of others who they perceive as being dangerous to a Christian society. This is the thinking that created the Crusades, the Inquisition, genocide, forced conversations, the imposition of western dress by missionaries upon the peoples of Africa and Polynesia, Bosnia and the civil war in Northern Ireland. Those who think along the lines of antipelian are just as dangerous as Islamic extremists because they have set in their minds the foundation to justify unjust and unloving actions in the name of Jesus Christ.

–the deacon

 

Pink Polka Dotted Elephant

An acquaintance of mine stood in a marketplace in India watching a man selling a magical cure. The man claimed that the concoction would heal every ailment from the common cold to migraines to cancer to speeding up the mending of broken bones. The sale came with a money-back guarantee. Before passing the bottle to the purchaser, the vendor would caution the buyer to never think about a pink polka dotted elephant when he took the medication. With such an absurd image planted in the mind, no purchaser could ever look at the bottle without thinking about the pink polka dotted elephant.

The Church is replete with such thinking. The faithful are told repeatedly that God wants them to be successful and fruitful. Charismatic and success theology preachers proclaim from their pulpits that if the congregants have “enough faith” and “sacrifice enough” for the Church, then they will be successful in business, discover the love of their life, have a flourishing professional career, etc. If business does not flourish, if health fails or other disappointments occur, the disappointed person is left feeling guilty because he or she lacked enough sincere belief, or did not given enough money or time to the Church, or was not tuned into God enough.

Dishonest and deceptive teachings enable swindlers to bilk the faithful of their money. These hucksters betray the trust the congregants uncritically place into their hands. These preachers demonstrate that they, just like the teachings they herald from the comfort of their pulpits, are bankrupt of a meaningful message.

–the deacon

UPDATE: Check out this related story on CNN.

 

Heavenly Endorsement

–the chaplain

 

Merry Christmas!

Today was a quiet, enjoyable day in our household. Everyone got the presents they wanted and, most importantly, enjoyed spending a relaxing day together. I fell asleep in my recliner while the family watched We Are Marshall, (well, we had just finished dinner!) but I woke up in time to watch The Simpsons’ Movie. The second movie was followed by dessert. I hope all of you had a pleasant holiday. As you can tell from the photo, the Deacon loves lots of red lights and ornaments on his Christmas tree.

– the chaplain