The Fundamentalist Tightrope

The Fundamentalist Tightrope

Disclaimer:  This blog is going to be about religion.  So if that bothers you, you don’t believe in God, don’t celebrate Lent or whatnot, feel free to skip over to my other e-mails.  Thank you.

Welcome to Lent!  The 40 days of prayer and reflection that people go through every year to prepare for Pascha, or Easter.  Since it’s Ash Wednesday, I figured I would talk a bit about religion today.

I’m a sinner.  I’m also human.  Those two things go hand-in-hand.  I’m human.  I try NOT to sin, occasionally I do.  Lucky for me I believe in a God of love and forgiveness, of compassion and redemption, of hope and future and change.  I believe in what I call the God of the New Testament as shown through Christ.  Many people, though, don’t believe in that God.  They believe in the God of the Old Testament.  Of rules and regulations and pillars of salt and wiped out dead children and Sodom and Gomorrah, a vengeful angry God who sits high above the clouds with his finger on the sin switch-board waiting….just waiting….and waiting….for you to fall, fail and off to hell and damnation you go.  I don’t believe in that God.

For those of you out there who do believe in that God, and the inerrant bible where not a word can be changed, and every word is true and lasting and forever and the writers were “holy scribes” placed in some sort of biblical God induced trance to transcribe words like a 2000 year old teletype machine – I fear you walk that tightrope.

You see, here’s the rub, if you believe in a God that is an angry and vengeful God but also a loving and forgiving God it’s difficult to truly grasp the fact that you’re human (and have a brain).  What ends up happening is that for people in this situation – you either behave (and have heaven and all the glory) or you don’t (and you burn in a fiery pit of hell).  There’s no “middle ground.”  There’s no “gray area.”  Thus, for many fundamentalist/literalists there’s a tightrope to be walked.  How do be fully human (and fall into sin on occasion) and how do you live in the loving presence of a loving God – who, of course, will smite you and kill you in a heart-beat if you “get out of line.”

Certainly the sacrifice of Christ bridges the human and divine, our sins are upon him who took that upon himself.  His sacrifice, his torture, brings about our redemption – but there’s still that nasty bit of a tightrope.

Now, I don’t want to get all liberal v. conservative in this blog but if you look at both the Old and New Testament I see the God of the Old Testament (lots of talk about the wealthy, lots of talk about obeying the rules and punishing sinners) as the Republican and I see Jesus of the New Testament (lots of talk about the poor and giving your money away and hanging out with sinners and breaking some of the rules) as the Democrat.  Maybe it’s the yin to the yang.  But if you truly believe that every word of the bible is inerrant and that God does not change – then the God of killing babies is also the God of love and forgiveness – it can make for some confusion.

Back to the tightrope.  If you’re on a tightrope hovering 200 feet in the air, what would make this easier (besides not being 200 feet in the air in the first place).  Maybe what would make this easier is simply a WIDER tight rope.  How about a plank.  Two, wait, 10 planks.  Well, now you have a bridge…

When I see, and hear, people who fall into this weird dichotomy of tightropeness – I often see them do what anyone would do in their situation:  Make the tightrope wider.  And how do they do that?  Simple:  Rationalization.  Re-explaining or re-figuring or re-configuring their thought process to thus make things “work” for them.

Here’s an example, and I’ll use the bible.  Revelation 7:4  “Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.”  So, okay, if we take that number literally – as people who are literalists should do…then only 144,000 go to heaven.  That seems a bit small, in world of 7 billion living people and the billions that came before us.  Of course the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that is the LITERAL number – but you go on-line and you’ll see that many experts believe this number is “SYMBOLIC.”  But…wait?  Is it literal or is it symbolic?  Tightrope expansion.  Justification and rationalization used together to create a wider tightrope so you get into heaven and not just 144,000 people…or something.

 Oliver "Ollie" North

 

Jerry Falwell

I thought about this years ago with Oliver North had lied to the U.S. Government about running guns.  Say what you will about Oliver North (I personally believe he was/is a dork) – but the truth came out that he was a lying sack of crap.  Soon after, though, Jerry Falwell of the fundamentalist/literalist Liberty University was praising Mr. North – raising money for him and I thought… “Wait just a goldurn minute!  Isn’t this the guy who was lying and perjuring himself?”  Now, call me crazy, but the last time I checked lying was a sin – punishable by death.  You know, one of those silly 10 commandment thingys.  And here was MR. LIBERTY UNIVERSITY HIMSELF standing up there and calling Oliver North a hero.  Uh, what about God and those rules and hell and damnation?  How does one rationalize or justify one’s actions (and thus make the tightrope wider)?  Simply by explaining themselves?  But does that make it right?

A lot has been made recently about gay rights and you betcha the fundamentalist/literalists community is all up in arms about it and they will trot out time, and time, and TIME AGAIN passages in Leviticus that says that “man should not lie with another man.”  But a perfect example of the tightrope conundrum was found on a photo that was going around on the internet (and hopefully I was able to find it).

So...one should be followed and the other not?

In the photo a person has had the quote from Leviticus about men laying with other men tattooed on their arm.  And, of course, someone pointed out that later in Leviticus it says that people should not have their bodies inked or adorned in any way.  Oh snap!  But, I’m sure, if you brought this up to this guy that believes so very strongly in the bible that he’s WILLING TO TATTOO himself a scripture verse he’s got every possible rationalization or justification as to why it’s against God’s holy law for a man to sleep with another man while it’s NOT against God’s law to get a tattoo.  How, possibly, can one justify that?  Last I checked all these laws seemed about the same in ruleness.  But, then again, I’m not walking the tightrope.

Reverend Billy Graham

 

Billy Graham used to do a Q&A column in the newspaper and people would write him letters about whatever was affecting them and he’d respond back.  Someone once wrote to him about gays and homosexuality and ol’ Rev. Graham didn’t back down and called it a sin but then he went one step further:  “Isn’t gossiping a sin?  Isn’t lying a sin?  Isn’t bearing false witness a sin?”  What he did was take this person’s concern about “the gays” and turned it around on them to explain that there are all sorts of sins out there – not just someone being gay.  I, personally, do not believe that being gay is a sin – but I agree with Rev. Graham’s overall point.  We sin all the time, in all sorts of ways, but somehow we’re able to justify it and rationalize it so we don’t fry in the pits of Hades.

I think what bothers me the most about the people who walk this tightrope and widen it out through rationalizations and justifications and explanations is that they simply don’t OWN it.  As for the guy who had the tattoo.  Just OWN that you don’t like gay people because if you truly believe that the bible says it’s a sin – then you must truly believe that tattooing is a sin and have them all removed (and not eat shellfish).  Jerry Falwell – if you truly believe that Oliver North is a hero – just OWN that he lied, tell the world that he lied, call it out as the sin that it is.  Don’t hide behind, don’t justify it, don’t rationalize it.  If you sin, own it.  Don’t say the “devil made you do it” or “I had a lapse in judgment” just say it:  “I’m human.  I did it.  I made a mistake – I’ll try not to do it again.”

I know I’m human.  I know that I sin.  I know that I have forgiveness through Christ’s sacrifice.  I fall, I get up again, I try again, I learn, I do better, I fall down, I slip back, I move forward.  I’m real.   That’s me.  I don’t need the bible to tell me this.  I’m as human as anyone.  I certainly don’t believe that when I sin I’m going to hell and that when I do good I’m going to heaven.  I’m ultimately washed by the blood of Christ.

Billy Idol (not Reverend)

Rock-and-Roll artist Billy Idol, not really known for his spiritual depth, wrote a song called “Heroin” presumably about his addiction to the drug.  In the song there is a refrain:  “Jesus died for somebody’s sins…but not mine.”

When people walk that tightrope.  When it’s soooooo tight and the stumbles to the hell side happen (as they will) on a frequent basis, too many people believe too strongly that they are unforgivable.  Unredeemable.  And many truly believe that refrain that Jesus died for somebody’s sins…but not mine.

For this Lent, understand your humanness.  Understand your reality.  Understand that you will succeed and you will fail and understand that you will ultimately grow and hopefully be a more honest, open, real human being.