Ideas that Divide

Last week I posted a bunch of news clippings from various sources. They dealt with controversial issues surrounding human sexuality. I chose each clip because I felt that they were all issues that we should be able to agree on, Christian or secular.

In the case of the canceled high school prom, I think its pretty obvious that the school board behaved inappropriately. I mean, why would anyone go to such lengths to humiliate one high school girl? If that high school's prom is anything like my high school's prom, there's going to be a lot of premarital sex happening afterwords (generally frowned upon), but they weren't canceling to keep out all the girls without hymens.

Likewise, no matter which side of the aisle you sit on, women deserve to know if their baby is going to be born with a disability or abnormality, especially if its life threatening. Oklahoma doesn't want to let them know, because abortion rates are higher in these cases. Apparently Oklahoma can't overturn Roe v. Wade, so they're going to add two wrongs to make a right.

Lastly, I hope we can agree that it is extremely disrespectful to the African-American population to pretend that abortion rates in their community are a conspiracy to kill off black people. The only reason abortion rates are higher in the black population is that unplanned pregnancy rates are higher! (I want you to imagine the irate look on my face, because its frightening.)

In fact, each of these measures shows nothing but disrespect, even disdain, for the people they are meant to change. In spite of the fact that each of these decisions have Christian beliefs behind them, they are profoundly insulting to everyone they target.

When my sisters and I were ages six, ten and twelve, we lied to my parents. We spent all day jumping onto the bed from the top of the wardrobe and we broke their bed frame. I don't remember the story we made up, but they saw right through it. They told us that they were disappointed and that they expect to be treated with respect and honesty. They hugged us and told us that they just want to protect us.

I always believed that God was like my parents in all those "thou shalt not"s. However, where I saw God as a loving Gandalf figure with a smile like my dad's that goes all crinkly around the eyes, others hear the voice of God as vengeful - the God who speaks of death, judgment, and fire.

And isn't he both?

Through a Christian's eyes, there is little to gain from cooperation with those who are lost and corrupt in their sin. There is no compromise between heaven and hell. There are no souls to be won through political debate. Christians believe that the world will only become better when Christ comes again to sort the sheep from the goats.

This leaves us at a total impasse. We cannot agree on ways to make our world better. Ultimately, What religious thought has done is to tear the fabric of humanity into segments of people who are unable and unwilling to see one another as equals.

Now, I realize that religious thinkers will say that religious thought did not DO that. The world was divided from the enchanted tree in that magical garden with the poison fruit, and there was this sign next to it that said "you must not eat". Not your tree. Not your fruit. Not your place.

Then we ate, and we were divided.

However, I want you to take a trip with me. I want you to remove, only for a moment, that package of thought. Remove the memory of that divisive tree that God gave us to test our love for him. Look at humanity as though we are all connected in a common species, on a common planet, with common cognitive ability and dexterity and the capacity for wit and love and sorrow. Look at us as though we have the opportunity, the way no product of evolution ever has, to build the world we want.

We can unlock the mathematics of music. We can pull food from the soil in quantities unheard of a few years ago, and feed the world. We can communicate across all boundaries of language and geography. We have access to every piece of literature, every creed or mission, every event recorded in history.

If we can tear down the disdain and fear that religious thought maintains, and tap the multitudinous resources available to better understand one another, I believe we won't have to wait to die to experience paradise.