The More Things Change
Why I am so perplexed these days and so very, very tired
In 1991 I shared a room in a two-bedroom apartment with a young lady who had, up until just before she moved in, suffered a severe drug addiction problem. She had found Jesus, and evolved into just as serious an addiction to her religion, if not more so, than she was ever a drug user.
Some would consider this a positive move.
You weren’t her roommate.
When she found out that I didn’t share her beliefs, and in fact I felt that her right to believe the way she did was just as valid as MY right to choose to believe the way I did, she instantly saw me as the reincarnation of the Devil, living in her space. In fact, a threat to her very existence.
She believed with all her heart and soul that anyone who believed that others had the right to believe as they chose was a deep and immediate threat to her and fellow believers.
Didn’t matter one whit that I went out of my way to be kind, to demonstrate what most folks would refer to as Christian values to her. Her deep terror that anyone would choose to think or feel differently than from what she had chosen drove her to the edge.
When I went to work or headed out to skydive on weekends, she and friends from her church would come into the apartment and pray out my “evil essence.” My “bad spirits.”
When I started dating the man who would become my husband she called me a “fornicator.” I didn’t drink or do drugs, I lived a very clean life, but that I had a boyfriend was deeply disturbing to her sense of safety.
Things escalated to the point where I genuinely feared for my life. I quietly made plans and got the hell out. I will never know what she and her friends were planning, but it wasn’t good. Like, say, whoops, accidental fire.
Too bad, so sad.
We are in the same place on a national scale.
Tolerance of other’s views, ways of being, skin color, sexuality is seen as a character flaw. In many folks’ minds, downright evil.
I can make plenty of space in my world for others to choose to believe differently. I can listen to, explore, seek to understand and put genuine and sincere effort into exploring why others don’t share my views. None of what they believe threatens me, nor does it insult me, nor does it scream at me that I am wrong. Just different. I’ve often shifted perspectives as a result of those talks.
International travel, a great deal of it, has taught me to revel in, enjoy and celebrate those differences. They lift me up, inspire me and underscore for me the vast variety of life and human expression.
Tolerance teaches more tolerance.
Here is one Biblical quote, Romans 14:1–4, that speaks very specifically to this:
As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
But some of those same people cannot tolerate my tolerance, even to the point where some would love to see me drawn and quartered in a public square. A few commenters have made that pretty clear.
More than a few call themselves Christian, as did that one-time roommate.
I can feel empathy and compassion that fear, hate and propaganda drive such feelings. My “Lord” may be female, she may be the Goddess, and my terminology may differ from others, but the thoughts and ideas around love, grace and tolerance live side by side. Only the dogma makes the difference.
It’s interesting to me that my compassion engenders even more hate and disgust in some of the folks for whom my choice of being is deeply offensive.
Just like with my roommate.
There are strongly Christian writers on Medium like Bebe Nicholson who put real heart and soul into practicing what they read and believe. Bebe gives me hope, for while I may not share her beliefs per se, I applaud her courage in calling out the hypocrisy and hate in the Christian community. I don’t have to believe in Christ as my savior to behave by what is commonly considered the Golden Rule, or what folks like to think of as Christian ways of being.
No one religion owns goodness, nor does any one religion own the key to what it means to be Good. Kind. Gracious. Patient. Courteous. Respectful. To have the backbone to value and acknowledge people who choose differently, even those who hate us outright. Based on what I understand about Christian teachings, I believe we were rather strongly admonished to love our enemies as ourselves.
I have two Bibles in my house. The one that belonged to my family has a bright red ribbon on the Sermon on the Mount, which is by far my favorite passage. From that passage, Matthew 5:44 (King James version):
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
Unless I am seriously misreading this, when I make plenty of space to accept and understand those who deeply dislike who I am is putting into practice this very thing.
With respect to Bebe, I don’t have to be Christian to read the Bible, nor do I have to be Christian to live those values, or understand how important they are.
Marley K. threw a gauntlet down the other day, albeit this was more along the lines of racism, but it has a place here. In effect, her challenge was what would happen if we as a society removed the “Black boogey man” from the argument? If suddenly, Black folks as targets of our collective hate just flat disappeared?
We might discover that said boogeyman is within us.
Therein lies the great truth. The boogeyman, the Devil, the enemy IS within us. Psychology teaches this. It’s the fundamental rule of projection. My roommate projected her terrible- and likely justifiable- fear of regressing to drugs again on me. I had nothing to do with it. However as long as you and I firmly believe that the Devil or demons or whatever are outside us, we will be subject to such manipulations. There is no other. There is only us.
My buddy and brilliant psychology doctorate Rosenna Bakari regularly reminds me that the only relationship I have is with myself. As it is with us all. That can be both terrifying or freeing. It depends.
For our enemies ARE ourselves. There is only one place where an enemy exists. Just as there is only one place for God-Goddess-et.al. to exist: inside us. The Kingdom of Heaven is within, a concept taught in one way or another by every single great religion on the face of the earth. Yin and yang, good and evil, the twins exist within.
Because, and you will forgive my again pointing this out that the Bible speaks plainly to this as well, in Luke 17:21: the kingdom of heaven is also within us.
At the risk of riling folks up, as in how dare I point out the obvious from the very book that others would like to beat me to death with, therein lies the challenge.
I don’t need to be a Biblical scholar to point this stuff out. I already believe it. I don’t have to be a Christian. I already live it to the best of my stumbling, bumbling ability. I fall down like everyone does. But I do NOT blame others for tripping. I trip myself. As do we all.
Some years ago I found a small book that spoke to such collective wisdom: Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions, by Jeffrey Moses. Another, published some ten years later is Unifying Truths of the World’s Religions: Practical Principles for Living and Loving in Peace by C. David Lundberg. Both books are exhaustively researched, and took a loving and careful look at how the world’s great religions share the same fundamental principles.
I am aware that this is offensive to some. However, when a group of young men in the Netherlands tested this out, they found out something interesting. They read passages of the Bible to a number of folks on the street. Most thought they were Koran quotes. Here’s what happened:
That piece speaks to me of how very little time and effort we make not only to understand the book that so many love to use as their bedrock, but also how little most of us understand about the religious books of others.
What I have learned, as I have sat and meditated in mosques, temples, churches and sacred places the world over, is that we all have vastly more in common than we are led to believe. But that takes work. Courage. Compassion. Curiosity. Respect.
Recognizing that in those grey areas of disagreement is the sacred opportunity to grow, understand, and learn tolerance, acceptance and mutual respect. That’s true for religion, race, creed, culture, gender, all of it.
There is room for all of us. There is room for everyone to worship, to be, to believe. There is endless room in this extraordinary Universe for each of us to find a path which is sacred to us.
Yet by making that statement I deeply offend many. By being tolerant, accepting and making space for others, I have become the enemy. The more we seek to find the enemy without, the more space it takes up where the enemy resides within.
During difficult times, many people, understandably, turn to religion for answers. Most who are drawn to extremism want something black and white, right or wrong, absolutes.
We who love war in America, want an enemy. We love a THEM, and THEM is to be obliterated.
But THEM is us.
When we attack others, we attack ourselves. Kill people for their color or religion or culture or creed, we kill ourselves. This to me is part of what Marley is pointing out. And she’s right. For in acting in poor faith against each other, but claiming to be faithful, we are demonstrating how faithless we are.
Faith is designed to help us navigate life’s grey areas. That’s the whole point. Religion wielded as a weapon is just one more instrument of hate, becoming precisely the opposite of what true faith is intended to do: give us peace.
My roommate needed an enemy. She found an easy target in me. Had she decided to kill me off as a way to assuage her deep internal discomfort, of which I was most certainly not the author, she’d have had to pay a very steep price. Whatever drove her to drugs, then religion, had nothing to do with me. Those lived deep within her, just as those battles that Marley referred to live within those of us who harbor racism. Black folks aren’t the authors of that hate.
We are.
The other day I was loading books into the new shelf right next to my bed. On that shelf are the following: The Bible, The Dhammapada (Buddhism), the Qur’an (Islam), the Rig Veda (Hinduism). There’s also an ancient copy of As a Man Thinketh, along with six shelves of similar texts which push and prod and expand my thinking and understanding of folks who may not necessarily share my beliefs, but who have every right to believe what they wish….
as long as it doesn’t bring harm to others.
If you’ll pardon my pointing out, as my beloved George Carlin was wont to do, dogma (disguised as religious righteousness) has been behind all the best wars. Murders. Torture. Mayhem.
Like now, writ large.
My roommate wanted me murdered. So do a lot of folks who consider my way of thinking, believing and voting offensive.
And here’s the best part: I wore a uniform to protect their right to believe and feel that way.
In other words, I took an oath to die for their right to want ME to die because I don’t believe or vote the way they do.
I’m fucking exhausted. This is partly why. But I also have faith. Faith that, apparently, lotta other folks don’t seem to have access to. Faith that allows me to navigate the grey. Faith that allows me to accept differences. Faith that keeps me standing.
I stand for your right to believe what you choose. As long as you do not hurt others.
To that, I will offer a kind reminder:
Thou shalt not kill.
Just saying.
