Love thy neighbor or why Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King were naive goody-two-shoes
Love thy neighbor. And if that doesn't work, kick the shit out of them.
I'm pretty sure that's what Jesus said. Or at least that's what you'd think watching the contemporary politics. Everyone loves Jesus. But everyone loves bullying their neighbor. Because Jesus didn't have a mortgage to pay.
We're all such fuckin' shitheads. And noone wants to own up. And our world will continue to be a huge fuckin' mess until we face up.
Love they neighbor is the only way out of this mess. Because an awful lot of people are going to need an awful lot of forgiveness before it's all through.
Love,
Ben
3 comments:
One could use the abuser's rationalization:
"I am beating the shit out of you because I love you so much, baby."
We ate w/ a friend of mine last night who is a dyed-in-the-wool, too close to Evangelical for my tastes, already-filled-out-my-absentee-ballot-and-voted R-down-the-line kind of guy.
He says, "I know two things. A society without morals is sure to perish. And, a society that tries to legislate morality is sure to perish, too."
He still comes down on what I think to be "the wrong side" of many issues, but it was nice to talk to someone from "over there" who isn't a knee-jerker.
My point is that there are undoubtedly many out there who know the J-Man, et al., weren't ready to rumble but that many adherents have a tough, tough time trying to figure out how policy and political institutions should reflect and/or embrace their beliefs.
So, they tend to err on the side of whoever seems to be the most like them in terms of perspective on religion and morality, even if they aren't wholly comfortable with the policies to which that leads. And even when they know their Jesus probably isn't a lot like Phill Kline's version.
Thus, they talk about Jesus and vote for asswipes who are ready to kick ass, contrary to ol' J's teaching, I think, even though they'd probably rather not go that way.
The left's embrace of political secularism has transmongrified into some kind of "we don't talk about or faith or beliefs" thing and it makes those guys a littel scary and sketchy to the Sunday-go-to-meeting crowd.
Anyway, I know your comment wasn't really necessarily directed to that kind of thinking alone, but I felt like mentioning it with last night's conversation still on my mind.
CDB
Yeah, it's refreshing. I'm hearing a lot more of what you described among conservative Christian folks. I have a really good friend in Milwaukee --
http://thoughtfulconservative.blogspot.com/
-- who writes these really excellent editorials for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that almost inevitably I agree with his larger points. Dean is an Evangelical Christian, which I'm not. But almost all of his public writings argue that he has his beliefs, but he doesn't want them imposed on others. Like me, he's never owned a gun, but he's lived in a country which had gun control and more gun violence than the U.S. He thinks homosexuality is wrong, but he's publicly opposing the gay marriage ban in Milwaukee. It is an awesome thing to see conservative Christians saying, "I am who I am, and I think what I think, but that doesn't mean that I have to impose that on others." It is an excellent development. And as I told Dean, it makes it much easier to consider the strengths of conservative arguments when it involves an implicit respect for the choices and freedoms of others.
And I think what it going to really change the political landscape, Carson, is conversations between people like you and your friend and people like Dean and I where we learn to respect one another's thinking and conscience and choices and commit ourselves to a politics that has government intervening in our lives as little as often and us kicking the shit out of each other as little as often and having frank, open discussions and disagreements that don't necessitate that we assume bad faith in one another because we may see things differently or because we may make different choices. That kind of good faith will only come, I'm convinced, with less ass-kicking and arm-twisting and more respect for one another's freedoms, choices, thinking, and consciences.
And the amazing thing to me, Carson, is how much the discussion opens up. How much I begin to understand conservative and liberal positions the less they are imposed on me or threatening to be imposed upon me. As I was telling Dean, I obviously don't believe that adultery should be illegal. But the more I develop an antipathy for liberal impositions as much as conservative impositions, the more I understand why people would want adultery illegal. I don't agree with it. But I understand why conservaties would want adultery illegal as much as I understand why liberals would want to criminalize thought and speech with hate speech laws. I understand concerns with adultery and I understand concerns with hate and racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. I just don't want any of these things criminalized, because I think they are both counterproductive places for the law to intervene and I think they are both violations of conscience, no matter how ugly or hurtful the thought or the behavior (in the case of adultery) might be. I don't think people should cheat on their spouses or spew hate speech or beat up people because of their sexual orientation. But I think it's important to take freedom for things that themselves do not constitute physical aggression seriously if we want to more effectively argue against and criticize harmful or destructive thinking or behavior. And in the meantime, I think we are all better off if we weren't so damned self-righteous about most moral issues, whether they be traditional religious morality or less traditional moral issues like racism or sexism or homophobia (although Dean makes a powerful argument on his blog that you can disagree with homosexuality and not be afraid of it or even, necessarily, disgusted with it).
Anyway. That's where I think progress is most likely and powerful. In our honest, open discussions of conscience and intelligent reflections on issues, and the way that changes our thinking and behavior to better care for issues. And the flip side to that coin is that I don't think that coercing one another, generally, changes behavior beyond the moment. Gays and lesbians will still want to marry and find a way to do so whether evangelicals want that to happen or not. Businesses will find ways around taxes and regulations whether liberals want that to happen or not. What matters, though, I think, is the purposes involved more than the enforcement mechanisms.
And the amazing thing is that despite all of our past cynicism about, say, adultery, most people don't think it's a good idea to cheat on their spouses or significant others, whether it's legislated or not. A lot of people learn this lesson from experience rather than from reflection, and there are certainly opportunities for us to intervene when people are screwing up. I just think it's more effective for effecting lasting change on behavior for us to intervene with the most engagement and least aggression possible and necessary.
Most people, I'm learning, are working with decent intentions, even as our collective road to hell is paved with good intentions. But the more we respect on another's freedoms and choices and thinking, I think, the more we can appreciate those good intentions, since, at least for me, it's the impositions that I'm most concerned about, not the intentions.
We're working our way that way, slowly, I think (though this weekend, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed with the impositions of my colleagues, and more, my administrators). I hope that's the direction we're moving in, at least. Because I just can't handle people imposing on me all of the time or threatening it. It drives me crazy and it is the single most important thing in my life that undermines my ability to be happy it is constantly dealing with people thinking that their self-righteous notions of life are more important than my capacity/need to think about those same issues and make up my own mind. The idea that so many people who do not think about serious issues of life as much as I do trying to impose their notions on me is really, really condescending and drives me up a fuckin' wall. And if there is one thing that would really significantly make my life happier, it would be to have less of that shit in my life.
Maybe we're moving that direction, despite this election and the current political moment. I can only pray:).
Ben
If you gentlemen can keep your comments pithy...
concise, I'd like your comments on my Weblog. Don't write a book, O.K.
It's my Blog, my rules.
Fair warning: We Delete you if
you insist on using FourLetterWords. Fair enough?
See latest post on Kerry & Kennedy.
Record a first name & town.
www.lazyonebenn.blogspot.com
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