The Tease of Things I Don't Need

The March of Fearsome Faith

I was reading this recent selection of associations and statements by people who've set themselves up as spokespeople for religious faith, and I'll leave it to each of you to find your own levels of distress or insouciance in the connections and words of most of them. I'm distrustful of pithy encapsulations of people and agendas, even when I find myself agreeing with them.

For the record (and this is spoken as someone who was raised a Roman Catholic and came up through 12 years of instruction in their schools) while I have no more confidence in the correctness of the Southern Baptist agenda I do agree with Dr. Mohler's contention that the papacy "is a false and unbiblical office." The RC church is draws most of its power from the post-biblical writings that make up its dogma. Of course, it's important to remember that I have no more confidence in what's written in the Bible anyway, so it's all of little consequence to me. This paragraph is a digression.

Getting back to the piece --

It's the last and lengthiest one that got me the most, because like all effective messages striving to define one's enemies, it couches a lie in the truth.

RUSH LIMBAUGH - I would submit to you that people on the left are religious, too. Their God is just different. The left has a different God. There's a religious left in this country. And, the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else. They despise it because they fear it, because it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes. That God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance, that God doesn't deal in gray area, that God says, 'This is right and that is wrong.'

He starts and ends with essentially true statements.

A great many of the people who are considered to be politically on the left (a position that should be amazingly common given how far to the right the other side has gone) are people who have faith in God. In God's existence. In God's plan & purpose for each of them. In God's mercy. They don't have faith in a black and white God. A polarized God. A God who deals only in absolutes. An unreasoning God. An uncompassionate God. A God crafted for children and the simple-minded.

The trick, the slight of hand switcheroo, lies in the center of the piece, where he labels their version as "the God of Christianity and Catholicism."

None of that is directly my battle - I have no investment in God, Inc. and so have limited interest in which side of the boardroom table holds sway over the public image of Their Lord. Though, given the cultural, social and increasingly political agendas as some Christian soldiers continue to march out under their chosen banners into the real world, where I have to live, I suppose I have to have an interest.

I've been watching - casually and from a distance - especially since the 2004 elections and the claims of "moral issues" being made by those on the political right. It was clear that those claims upset - as they should - the people of faith who were watching a group of activist zealots pull a "with us or against us" gambit with God. The above statement from Limbaugh (and I have no clue as to its vintage -- it could have been from last week, month, year...) is another very public instance of this cultural custody battle over God.

While I'm certainly far closer to the side opposed to the people Limbaugh is championing, I'm apprehensive about the entire issue. I don't care how benign the intent of the people behind it happens to be now, I'm fearful of any political force drawing its agenda from an invisible, supposedly Supreme Being. Even if an absolutely powerful being has escaped the moral trap of being absolutely corrupt, I have no such hope concerning the equanimity of any earthly, human agency laying claim to any of that power, especially as they're the ones telling us what God wants.. Once the answer to anything important becomesBecause It Is Written, we're all on the tracks to oblivion.

Tony, Mike, Tim, John, among others I know who come by here, you fall into the friendly side of this struggle as best I know you, but I'm sure you understand my fears concerning anyone siezing the reigns of political power in the name of God. So it is that you'll understand that I would feel mankind would be best served if you folks could manage to both take God back for your side and lean more heavily on the Kingdom of Heaven. Really, I think I'm being very fair. You people have all of Eternity. My interests lie in the temporal world.

If there's an eternity and a Supreme Order & Plan lying beyond this, I'll have to take my chances. If it's something worth being a part of I'll be part of it, and will be welcomed in. If the whole of reality turns out to be the scheme of a dictatorial, black and white Ass Supreme, different only from any human dictator only in his level of power and length of reign... then I don't want to be part of that anyway. If that means the oblivion of nothingness, or if el Supremo is truly a twisted individual and it means eternal pain... that's how it'll have to be. I'm not interested in signing a lifetime membership to the Nazi, Communist, Bathist, Born Again, Republican or whatever party to be assured a job and place in the hereafter. That might work here on Earth for a while, and is acceptible as a means of survivial, but implicit in that acceptance is that one's living under tyranny.