So it seems as though history has many strange twists and turns that remain to be discovered and challenged. This is the story of a very curious process of a culture retaining its sociological structure over the course of many, many centuries. How this happened is as close to an ongoing miracle as anything that I could imagine.
Read the article: Lost Jewish Tribe Found in Zimbabwe
Okay, so this is going to stretch some of you into places I am reasonably certain you’ve not yet ventured.
Imagine for a moment, that the religious texts with which you’re familiar were actually written by humans and inspired by Allah/God/G-d. Now consider what “inspired” actually means or what it could possibly refer to. When someone inspires me, for example, they don’t sit behind me and whisper editorial comments into my ear as I’m typing along. Rather, they provoke my imagination and my mind to consider things that I’ve yet to bring to bear on some particular issue. This means that in the end, when I hit save on a document or send on an email, regardless of how instrumental another person’s ideas or thoughts were to my own, the words in the document are mine and probably reflect more of what is happening in MY LIFE than the life of my muse.
Makes sense, right? So now apply this to any religious stories that you believe were inspired by Allah/God/G-d. (If you are a strict, [read: "literal"] interpreter of religious text, you can just jump ahead to the linked article.) One can only conclude that both the sacrosanct stories that give form to our religions AND the ways in which those stories have been interpreted have at least as much to do with mundane matters of daily living as they do with some great mysterious relationship between the writer and his or her otherworldly muse.
So this article points to some things that I’ve thought about (seriously!) but never had the time nor the inclination to research. It’s rather interesting and should provoke some challenging brain activity.
Read the article: “Adam’s Family Jewels”
US Airways Express Flight 3079, bound for Kentucky, landed in Philadelphia after an attendant reported a passenger who was praying and wearing tefillin.
Strange how there is so much going on in the world that is boringly normal for one group and totally off-the-hook bizzare for another. While I am undoubtedly in the group of people in the U.S. that could be labelled “more aware” of others and their cultures, I would be quick to admit that there are things going on around me, cultural practices if you will, that I don’t understand and cannot make sense of.
So here is this quirky story about a young Jewish man who made the “mistake” of praying and wearing tefillin while flying on an airplane. Most of you don’t know what “teffilin” is–and why would you if you’re not Jewish? Hmm… Actually, why would you if you’re not Jewish and familiar with a wide range of Jewish religious practices?
What’s interesting about this misadventure in flying and cultural interpretation is how the Jewish families (and other Jews who were interviewed) reacted to it–they were very nonchalant and understanding. “Are you kidding,” you can almost hear them say. “Have you seen someone praying with tefillin?” It’s a very rational response to what could otherwise be seen as a mistake made by a rather provincial and unworldly airline employee.
Read the article from the New York Times: “A Flight Is Diverted By a Prayer Seen As Ominous”
I have spent my adult years piecing together an ecumenical spirituality in which I use the symbols and teachings of many religious traditions to help me comprehend the intangible and unknowable parts of Life that we all encounter. But I have never fully grasped the central idea of Christianity—Jesus as sacrifice. I’ve never understood how one person’s suffering could somehow liberate another person, how the crucifixion of Christ could lead me toward salvation.
Until the earthquake in Haiti. I don’t have to recount the misery that is taking place in that small island nation. We all know that it is simply too much for anyone to bear. It is a calamity completely outside any idea I have of fairness or a spiritual force that might guide our lives if we are in “right relation” to it.
But as I hold still and listen to the news and the jumbled voice of a Haitian friend standing in the rubble with his cell phone and pleading for me to understand something impossible to understand (“No horror movie is as bad as this,” he says), I feel things shift inside of me. I notice that I’m less concerned with my possessions, my ideas, my hopes, the things I think I deserve. I am more willing to give, to help, to care about someone else. “What would someone from Haiti do?” I find myself asking, as the question invokes the otherworldly anguish of the images and stories that have become commonplace broadcasts from this broken land. Time and again, the question pulls me away from self-importance and into alignment with things like caring and community.
Maybe we are in the presence of another crucifixion.
Please understand that I am not saying that the earthquake in Haiti was the will of the Creator, meant to liberate the rest of us, or that it was the destiny of the Haitian people to be sacrificed for the betterment of our souls. Life is a series of random acts and events—and the earthquake was one of them.
What I am saying is that acknowledging this suffering, knowing full well that I cannot relieve it (“No aid can compare to the magnitude of what happened here,” my friend tells me), and allowing it to work inside of me may just be what the symbol of the crucifixion is pointing towards.
I still think my Sunday School teachers got it wrong: Jesus didn’t die for me. But truly recognizing real suffering just may have the power to pull me away from my “sins” (you know, things like desire and jealousy, greed and selfishness).
So, whether it is the image of the cross or the ruins of a nation, maybe the simple gesture of holding the anguish of another in our mind’s eye can transform us—if we just keep ourselves open to it.
Believe me when I say that I don’t need another reason for wishing that Pat Robertson’s “savior” would just go ahead and call him home. And so why am I talking about this man who is posing as preacher who is posing as an asylum escapee? (Or is it the other way around?)
Here’s what he said about Haiti:
(CNN) — Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian and host of the “700 Club,” says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Robertson blamed the tragedy on something that “happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.” The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever,” Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ “
As lame as it may seem, my excuse for bring this up is that I want to make a point about the dangers of living in world of good and evil, black and white while remaining completely surrounded by others who see things just as we do. Seriously. I’ll admit that when I first read Robertson’s words I wanted to go for the jugular. Thumbs to windpipe. But then so many others have done taken up the cause that I decided that I just needed to make a sociological point.
Here’s Olbermann. Ouch. I don’t have to keep up in the ratings and so I don’t need to be so vicious. But truthfully, I can’t say that I’m offended by Olbermann’s attack on a “man of the cloth.” But those are not my thoughts.
Thinking that the “country of Haiti” made a pact with the Devil two centuries ago is probably a pretty good indication that Robertson is mentally ill. Did they actually sign something with ink and a quill? Was there some sort of referendum in which the entire Haitian population participated or was it just a single Haitian leader? I mean really, was the devil hanging out in the Carribean a couple of hundred years ago searching for an unwitting victim in the form of an entire country?
If you encountered someone on the street who told you that the devil is making a pact with, let’s say, Detroit to bring back the auto industry, you wouldn’t give them the time of day. You’d assume that they had gone off their meds and you’d probably be correct. But here’s a guy with a viewing audience in the millions who is saying a similar thing and nobody seems to be changing the channels. Moreover, Robertson himself is not saying that he was wrong in making such statements. This is largely because he doesn’t have people around him to challenge his thinking. The most dangerous position a person can be in, by the way, is that of embracing a black and white ideology of good and bad, right and wrong and not having people around us who think differently than we do and who can reflect alternative ideas back to us.
That the media put a voice to mentally ill people clearly says something about how the rest of us want to see ourselves as superior others or, in this case, be entertained by our own self-righteous indignation. Be clear that few Christians would agree with Robertson and, in fact, I can’t say that I know of any. But when he refuses to take his meds and makes his outlandish comments, then the rest of can feel better about ourselves and so we keep tuning in. “Well, now that guy really is a nut.” Sure, there are a million or so of us who listen to the guy on a regular basis, but even most of these people likely write off these sorts of nutty ideas as a slip of the tongue.
This all goes to say that Olbermann gives Robertson way too much credibility by responding as though the guy is living with a full deck. Let’s just move on.
As a final caveat, the crazy thing is that when I read Robertson’s comments for the first time I actually thought to myself, “Hey, I don’t remember reading this.” Seriously. I got suckered into the man’s insanity for a brief moment. LOL.
In case anyone is interested, here is Jon Stewart discussing these knuckleheads (and Rachel Maddow).
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Haiti Earthquake Reactions | ||||
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So I heard on the radio this morning that Egypt’s most powerful (Muslim) cleric, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, has spoken out against the niqab, the full, face-covering/headscarf (not to be confused with the burka–a full body covering). He has proclaimed that these should be banned from the various schools of the Al-Azhar University. He has asserted that niqab “has nothing at all to do with Islam.”
This is from the Press Trust of India:
Cairo, Oct 9 (PTI) Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar University has barred students from wearing face-veils or Niqab in female-only classrooms and dormitories.
The Al-Azhar supreme council, in a statement yesterday, said that it has decided to ban students and teachers from wearing the Niqab inside female-only classrooms that are taught by women.
The ban extends to women dormitories and to schools affiliated with the university.
It said that the aim of the ban is to spread the spirit of confidence, unison, comfort and sound understanding between the teachers and their students.
The decision was announced by Sheik of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, who was recently criticised for forcing a girl to take off her face-veil inside an institute affiliated with the university.
The Muslim brotherhood, the largest opposition bloc, has asked for his removal, describing his action as part of a larger plan to de-Islamise Egypt.
This struck me because it sounds rather progressive and, dare I say, “feminist.” It does not sound at all like some proclamations I’ve heard recently by other Egyptian (Muslim) clerics. Listen to this one:
Now that’s what I’m talking about. Real machismo. I’ve always thought that God/G-d/Allah wanted straight men to have a way to unequivocally express how manly they were in their own homes so as to show that he is on our side — he is a “he,” afterall, isn’t he?
So here’s the deal. This should show all of us that Islam, like all other religions, is ripe for interpretation. I mean, c’mon, god–the g is lower case now in deference to the atheists among you–either wants women to be beaten or to not cover up.
Not sure if a bikini is acceptable, but these are two very different interpretations of the will of the creator and I’m struck by how anybody at all can speak for god. Reminds me of some words I read years ago: “You can be pretty certain that you’ve created god in your own image when your god hates all of the same people and things that you do.”
I guess I’d like to leave you with the following: Just like your secular and religious leaders have different interpretations for their people’s actions, so too do the leaders of other lands and cultures. Keep that in mind the next time you hear something that sounds really crazy that has been proclaimed by one of a billion or so followers of some belief system. Perhaps it’s just that one person’s sense of reality! Maybe not every so-called follower agrees with that person — like when Ahmadinejad in Iran expresses his desire to Nuke Israel, or when the Pope decides that using condoms will not help prevent the spread of HIV.
I have no idea who this guy is. I guess he’s a former child actor who now works for God. As I have not watched TV in the past thirty years, he remains a mystery to me–even though he seems to be quite popular in our mainstream media outlets because I see his face a good deal on the Web.
That said, he says something here that leaves me a bit perplexed and I’d like some of you to respond. Listen to the clip and get back to me.
“When you learn how to skip to a person’s conscience and circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution disappears.” Poof. It’s gone. Someone questions you about evolution? Just change the subject. Amazing what can happen when we stop thinking.
So tell me what you do when the complicated questions that you cannot immediately answer come at you in a fast and furious way, when your world view is called into question, or when you accidentally and inevitably step into that gray area that so many of us unsuccessfully try to avoid so much of the time. Do you just stop thinking like this guy says you can do in the case of evolution so that the conundrum disappears? Or do you stay in the ring and wrestle with the challenges that are difficult to pin down?
Here’s the issue as I see it. This short little video clip might be taken out of context, to be sure. However, it doesn’t really matter for what I’m asking because I see lots of people turning off their intellect when confronted with things they can’t explain. This includes believers of all sorts of ideas, including scientists and sociologists, and not simply religious folks.
And I know what you might say. You might remind me of what I said the other day in class with regard to religious beliefs–that fealty to God comes mainly from faith. But the problem is that faith is not separate from the intellect. Most people who have faith will give you very logical and rational reasons for why they have their faith. Sure, a great deal of many people’s faith is conditional and based on convenience. Perhaps it’s “I have faith that the Pope is speaking for God but I don’t want to get my girlfriend pregnant so I’m using condoms–even though the Pope/God says it’s a sinful act.” Pure convenience to avoid the inconvenience of having a baby to take care of while taking classes.
Or people posit “There are immutable laws that govern the universe (e.g., gravity) and thus no reason to postulate some otherworldly causality.” A convenient observation until you take the time to read theoretical physics and discover the many brilliant scientific minds that have been led to God when they discover that many of these laws are not as immutable as they previously thought. Pure convenience to avoid the inconvenience of having to read another book.
It’s all faith implicated with rational thought.
So the question is as follows: If we live our lives both “believing” and “thinking,” then when is it acceptable to stop doing the latter for the sake of the former? In other words, do we abandon ALL rational thought or just when thinking would force us to confront some ideas and observations that don’t immediately make sense or mesh with what we want to believe?
The message of the gentleman in the video is that some “truths” he has discovered just happen to accompany a particularly complicated mix of riddles (like evolution) and that it’s okay to “circumnavigate” them so you don’t have to deal with what you don’t want to risk understanding. I’m not so sure I agree.
Once again, it doesn’t matter if this has been pulled out of context because that’s a message I’ve heard all of my life from people who want to avoid thinking about something–like the pervasiveness of racism or where fossils came from or whether it really does lower the morale of the troops if gays and lesbians are allowed to serve in the military.
By the way, those of you who are not disposed to faith persuasions don’t need to use this post as an opportunity to bash those who are. Rather, use it as an opportunity to rethink how you navigate the world of ideas.
