Brain no open good?

Apparently, I’m closed-minded.

This isn’t something I’m normally accused of being, but I had the accusation sent my way by my mother, of all people. Feeling slightly offended, I decided to press her on the topic and figure out why exactly she saw me this way, when not a whole lot of other people (I hope, anyways) don’t seem to perceive me in such a way.

Mom, a very religious person, says that she sees me as closed-minded because I haven’t gone to church regularly in several years, and only go on special occasions. Having not put a whole lot of thought in it, when I started to give my reasons I realized that there was an implicit understanding for my actions that I hadn’t quite realized: I’d become rather bitter at the Christian community in general.

Now, before certain people get offended by that, let me have an opportunity to explain myself. That bitterness isn’t directed at anyone specific from my congregation. Most of the people I met at that church are very good people that I continue to see as great contributions to the local community, our nation, and the world as a whole. My bitterness doesn’t necessarily mean there are local people that have tarnished my view of faith (although, admittedly, one or two names come to mind) as much as who and what the standard bearing figureheads have become.

Just so you know, here’s a disclaimer: the social and political bias begins here. My father was a student at Berkeley in the 1960’s. He instilled a core set of values in me at an early age that very quickly took on its own shade of liberalism as interpreted by people like T.H. Green and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In a speech in 1880, Green referred to the main difference between welfare liberalism and neo-classical liberalism (popularly known today as “conservatism”) is that the former emphasizes “positive” liberty, and the latter emphasizes “negative” liberty. “Negative” liberty is most obviously expressed as having freedom from things. Freedom from interference or authority to do what you will. “Positive” liberty emphasizes freedom to do things, which has much more emphasis (I think) on the human spirit and the desire to achieve.

Standard bearers of many religious institutions today, men like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Franklin Graham are doing something that I believe has no place in a civilized society: they are intertwining politics with religion. Now, on a personal level, this is an inevitability that cannot be stopped. Wherever you get your political or religious beliefs from, they’re bound to intertwine.

But these men use their pulpits that are supposed to give people guidance and peaceful direction in their own lives instead use it to try and affect political change which only represents their own narrow-minded vision of what constitutes true morality. They appeal to you through fear, effectively saying that, “Unless you do things the way that God (here meaning ‘we’) tells you to do, you will burn in hell and never be saved.”

The most basic reason that I reject this ridiculous notion is because they try to scare me into doing what they want. I was taught that a belief in and relationship with God is something that is supposed to be a purely personal matter. That you would try and use the lessons presented in the Bible as a possible roadmap to how you could live your life in a personally rewarding way. I was never taught to try and impose my beliefs or standards on others. I’m a teetotaler, but I don’t go around my family gatherings slapping champagne glasses out of peoples’ hands because that is my personal choice and a way I have decided to live my life.

Religion should be the same way. So many people on the right wing of American politics have been fooled into thinking that the Republicans or the Libertarians present the only “moral” options in defining your political beliefs, because they have become entwined with religion so much that it’s become difficult to see where religious conviction ends and political ideology begins. A year ago, I wouldn’t have included Libertarians in the subsection of the “Religious Right,” but with messianic televangelist-lites like Glenn Beck identifying as Libertarian, he’s created a mass movement that’s pushed the largely secular message of Libertarianism aside into something that’s far more paternalistic than it used to be.

The Religious Right have also made a baffling attachment to economic ideology, particularly capitalism. This is completely unreasonable. Would Jesus have denied healing a blind man for a preexisting condition of blindness? Jesus himself said in Matthew chapters 19 and 20 that “the first will be last and the last will be first.” So multi-millionaires like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, or men who have gotten rich off of their religious affiliations will surely be at the front of the line, right? No. If anything, Jesus was a socialist if he says the poorest among us will be the first to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, and that we will all be judged by how we treat the lowest in our society. Those who have a lot of money and a strong belief in the class system, keeping the rich rich and the poor poor, will have a lot to answer for when they meet their maker.

Now, do I believe that all Christians fit into this category? Absolutely not. I still consider myself a Christian (albeit a Humanistic one) and am friends with good people who use the word of God as a personal compass, not a societal critique of perceived moral decay. Some of the absolute best people I know attend services regularly and would help anyone when they asked for it. These are the best examples of humanity.

Conversely, many other great people I know maintain no religious beliefs whatsoever. Again, this is a right that they are guaranteed. They live their lives perfectly fulfilled and feeling that their moral compass doesn’t need a religious supplement.

What I want from people on all sides is to see people from organizations like al Qaeda as cut from the same cloth as people that bomb abortion clinics. Both of them are terrorists, but too often the Religious Right is completely intolerant of one kind of terrorism that doesn’t worship their God, and a little too tolerant of the other type of terrorism that does worship their God.

I will always reserve the right to change my mind on things when new, sensible information is presented to me. Until then, though, I think I’ve thought this through relatively well. Does that make me closed-minded?

I don’t think so, but hey, what the hell do I know?