right wing

Originally published in December 2007, I’m reposting this as the Christian Nationalists have led us into another war. The me of today loves the Jesus who turned over tables in the temple, who washed the feet of sex workers, who trusted God and knew humans have to do the work of being in Beloved Community (scroll down the page to read about this). I hadn’t yet begun understanding the difference between charity and solidarity. We’re all learning, all the time, if we’re curious.

__________________________________

My four year old says, “I’m Mary and this is baby Jesus” and proceeds to sing all the words to “Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel.” The time has come for me to explain why I’m christian. And why I’m not a Christian.

“I’m a Christian” vs. “I’m christian.”

First let’s be clear. I’m not “a Christian.” The right-wing fundamentalists have taken over that term with disturbing voracity. It makes me sick to my stomach to risk being grouped with such generally hateful sorts. Christian (with a C) now means to me, and to so many I talk with, an almost drug induced state of bliss (denial of questions or doubts), glazed eyes (from crying tears of joy when someone is “saved”), rigid rules. Mostly, Christian with a C requires following the strict-father model of living. It means a woman has no right to say what happens to her body. It means taxing the wealthy, stripping social services to nothing, and expecting the poorest among us to support it all. It means same-gender love is wrong. I want nothing to do with Christian with a C.

I am christian, though. I strive to live like Jesus did. That’s the essence of it, how I explain it to my daughter. In four year old terms, it’s pretty simple. Love everyone. Do whatever you can to help rid the world of injustice. Forgive yourself and others for our human frailties. Know that all you can do is your best and that is enough.

The magical fairyland of miracles.

But what about the “miracles,” the loaves and fishes, the healing blindness, bringing people back from the dead? Or, as Baby1 asked today at lunch, “Are angels real?” My answer is also pretty simple. I don’t get hung up on whether or not those things are literally true (it might lean into the sort of magical fairyland kind of thing, would it not?) or if they are only metaphors and lessons. I recognize that humans wrote the Bible, so the stories are most likely stories. I take the lessons from them and move on.

But what about the rising from the dead? Again, I don’t get hung up. Literal or not it isn’t a huge deal to me. The lessons that we’re all Okay, that we are always forgiven for our mistakes, and that the power of god is bigger than any human — that’s enough for me.

The truth is, though, at this moment I believe Jesus literally came back to life. When I’m in my “maybe it didn’t literally happen” times, it doesn’t scare me. Those thoughts fit perfectly in my faith, believing the truth of it as miracle or metaphor doesn’t change the message.

I recognize being raised by a minister and faithfully christian mother has a great deal to do with the likelihood that I’ll not find the story of the resurrection in the land with dragons, trolls, and fairies. Then again, as we all know, it could have pushed me farther away from believing the story. And, again, while I do happen to believe it actually happened, it’s not the biggest part of christianity for me.

I believe christianity is a religion of social justice. Jesus ate with and talked with women. With tax collectors. With sinners and untouchables of all sorts. Talking seriously with such non-people was rebelious enough, but to wash their feet or share a table with them was truly radical. He told poor people that they were the most special of all. He said people should love their enemies. He was a teacher.

After the sadness and revulsion I feel for those people I feel are butchering Jesus’ messages, those cap C’s, I realized there was another great obstacle preventing me from embracing the christian label.

I don’t believe Jesus would want our worship. The Jesus I understand would not want us to bow down to him. He would not want to be treated as someone more special than any other person. He certainly wouldn’t want me calling him “Lord.” Teacher, sure, but Lord, no way.

So, how could I be christian if I won’t pray to Jesus? That’s the question I grappled with for about the last ten years. But my truth has found me and I know now that, for me, being christian means I want to be as much like Jesus as possible. I want to be bold, courageous, and intelligent. I want to stay centered in my connection with god in all times of my life, as much as I can. I want to forgive myself and others every minute of every day. And, most of all, I want to help change the world. I want to help my neighbors near and far. I want people who are suffering to find justice, and I want to help make that happen.

What about Jesus as 100% god and 100% human?
The other hangup I had when I didn’t consider myself christian was the stance that Jesus was 100% God, different than us humans. As with so many of my understandings of my christianity, I realize it’s an issue of translation. The miracles were probably story telling tools. Jesus was a great healer (this is historical fact, not religious belief, though the ideas of what kind of healing he did are disputed), but was he as powerful as god? In my view, no. In my view, Jesus was astoundingly good at staying connected to god. He was clearly “centered” as we might say today. Serene. At peace most of the time. In no great hurry.

Again, I find Jesus to be a role model for my spiritual life. I know from my own experience that staying connected to what I call god keeps me relatively sane. I know peace when I am strongly connected to that strength. It’s my view that Jesus really got it– he found a way to stay connected more often than he was distracted by daily life. He was the ultimately god-connected person. Whether that was through prayer and meditation, through yoga, through great conversations with loved ones, or through times of quiet, I don’t know. But from what I know of the man named Jesus, I can tell he wasn’t easily distracted from his source of peace and strength.

But surely, you won’t stand for the Father Lord King garbage, will you?
No. I won’t stand for it. Mostly. My conception of god is not at all paternal. I certainly don’t think Jesus would dig that kind of reference in this day and age. But, in those days when women were dismissed and not counted, using paternal references to describe power and strength makes sense. In the days of rulers like Kings and Emperors it makes sense that Jesus and others would use the language of the day. Shortcuts, if you will, to explain they believed that god was extraordinarily powerful.
When I go to church with my parents, or continue our search for a church that meets our own family’s needs, I spend a lot of time translating so I can tolerate the paternal and inegalitarian concepts and language used. I usually don’t even like to use a capital letter G on god, it’s too high-and-mighty for me. Through the translation, though, I can still hear the message:

  • Be kind.
  • Be just.
  • Be brave.
  • Care for those who need help.
  • Don’t put up with shit from hateful people.
  • Love yourself and others.
So as Baby1 plays Mary, sings the Christmas hymns with all her might, and hears a bit more of the Christmas story every morning when we sing Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel at breakfast, I feel good being christian. I feel honored that our child asks such probing questions, forcing me to articulate in the simplest terms what I believe. I always begin by saying, “Well, not everyone believes this,” or, “Some people believe that is true, but I don’t.” But I almost always end up telling her the truest truth I know. The most important thing is that we try to love everyone in the world and help people who need it most.
Later that day she was playing store and announced, “I work for the giving store. We prepare food to give to people who don’t have enough.”

I believe Jesus would be glad.
.

I don’t usually focus on the fact that race is a social construct, because I think it can detract from the reality of our institutionalized racism. That said, I think if we white people read things like this and talk about the ideas, we could start some important internal and personal changes that might add to a foundation we need to help make structural changes in our institutions.
If you look at the #blackoutday tag on twitter it becomes really clear how race is a social construct. There’s no real way to “look black.” From the article:

Eliminating the binary definition of whiteness — the toggle between nothingness and awfulness — is essential for a new racial vision that ethical people can share across the color line. Just as race has been reinvented over the centuries, let’s repurpose the term “abolitionist” as more than just a hashtag. The “abolition” of white privilege can be an additional component of identity (not a replacement for it), one that embeds social justice in its meaning. Even more, it unifies people of many races.

Reading bits and pieces of the liberal reaction to the conservative story of the “Obamaphone,” I am once again disappointed in my fellow progressives. The radical right’s communication machine was dragging us and now walks peacefully with Americans as we destroy our constitutional freedoms. They keep getting better at it and we keep helping them.
The radical right (or conservatives, the Republican Party, the Tea Party) understand how our minds work. People understand everything through metaphors. We feel our reality. They use majestic broad strokes, realizing it’s the whole painting that matters. We will feel what they want us to feel (fear, in particular) when we are exposed to powerful metaphors that reach all of our senses. It’s a story of a Black woman getting a phone from a Black man. It’s the Black man giving our money to greedy (lazy), ignorant Black people. We feel it without any facts.
The_Scream
Then, there is the typical weak and disorganized progressive (or liberal, Democratic Party) response. First, it’s not much. Second, it’s peck-peck-pecking away at facts-facts-facts. No broader picture with metaphors we can feel and understand. We’re so distracted by the blatant inaccuracies/lies put out by the radical right’s communication machine, we miss the whole point. And, we have no communications machine. We have no way to keep our messages consistent — using the same metaphors across the liberal/progressive media to make clear how much we value freedom, caring, and responsibility. We peck-peck-peck. No shared concept of the larger picture we ought to be painting.
Until they click on the image to see the larger picture, rare is the person who would have a clue about the complete painting created with the help of this tiny pointillistic image.

We need our own metaphors. We need clear and direct communications among all our factions to determine our own larger pictures. Consistency. No individual responses, peck-peck-pecking at tiny images that don’t even come close to communicating—through feelings—our important message of valuing freedom, caring, and responsibility.

(Edited to add: this article does a more clear and thorough job than I’ve done describing these issues.)
Liberals/progressives/moderates are all in a tizzy because the Republican candidates are comically awful in so may respects. It’s infuriating to see the feeding frenzy as photos of a wildly laughing Obama or the shamed Newt gifs fly all around cyberspace. It’s infuriating because while all the people who think Sarah Palin was an idiot, a fluke, a media spectacle and not much more, are going to be laughing and pointing over here —> the radical right will take their candidate of choice (whether it’s Gingrich or anyone else they select) right into the Oval Office.
The radical right loves a redemption story. Entire industries are built on it. The machinery in place that speaks to most Americans (most Americans, not just a few lunatic Tea Party-esque misspelling freaks), the one that has co-opted the language of freedom, rights, independence, and patriotism, just needs the perfect candidate and they will win. We liberals (progressives) will be so stunned that this group could select such a screwed up candidate that we’ll miss the point.
The point is, they want someone who has screwed up a lot. They want someone who has made serious errors. They want someone who will feed into their values: people screw up and they learn their lessons through hard knocks and make things right and we must forgive them (if they are one of our own). (Especially if they are leaders in our hierarchy.)
It’s even worse than when the liberals/progressives who I have considered like-minded people until the last few years glommed on to calling the Tea Party the “tea baggers.” Talk about feeding the fire that the liberal elite are laughing at the rest of us.
We’ll all be laughing our heads off (well, I won’t be) because the candidates are farcical and we won’t take them seriously (Obama’s got it in the bag!). Or, we’ll be terrified about the prospect that they might win so we’ll focus on their weak qualities in an effort to appeal to voters’ logic and reason. We’ll write editorials and op-eds and talk on Sunday morning news shows about how this candidate is weak in x, y, z areas and how they aren’t holding positions in the best interest of their constituents instead of speaking about our progressive values and… we will lose.
I’m tempted to say it won’t make that much of a difference if they win because obviously Obama’s no radical progressive. But, it will make a difference. The radical right, the fundamentalist extremists, the “Left Behind”-led core leadership that counseled and guided George W. Bush. These are the people who will have the power. Last year some significant polls found that 41% of Americans believe Jesus will be returning (before 2050). This is not a small number of people who believe in this, it is not something to take lightly or laugh off as ludicrous.
It’s deeply disturbing to see all of the energy being poured into mocking the Republican candidates when so few people seem to understand how people make choices because of their values, not because of “their best interest.” Visit Focus on the Family’s website. Check out the related industries cited in Ehrenreich’s Bright Sided. Talk to someone who gets glassy-eyed when they discuss “The Gift” with you. Recognize that the machine that started with Reagan, the framing, the understanding that people vote with their values not in “their best interest.” We left/liberal/progressive and even the moderates (those “social liberal/fiscal conservatives” in particular) are still stuck in the Enlightenment view of the mind. We are stuck looking at facts and figures thinking that is what matters. What matters to voters is their values. The radical right fundamentalist extremists are the only ones who understand this (save a small handful of academics like Drew Westen and George Lakoff). They are going to win because of it.

Bloody rare. I like my meat. I’m an omnivore, not a vegetarian. Once my first daughter was old enough to start asking questions, I began more seriously investigating my own relationship with my carnivorous tendencies. I taught her that this was “cow meat,” and this was “pig meat,” instead of hamburger or bacon, for example. Around that time I read Barbara Kingsolver’s fantastic book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.” Mindfulness, or intentionality in my food choices became important to me.

Fast forward a few years and where my food comes from is still important to me. As much as I love eating meat, I don’t love pretending that’s not what I’m doing. I like the idea of knowing the animal, for example, before eating it. Or, if that’s not an option, knowing the farmer and trusting they provided the animal with a good life.

I got the idea last summer that I’d like to harvest my own meat. Our landlords won’t let us have chickens, so that’s out. I would like to explore the relationship between taking an animal’s life so I can eat its flesh and my own thoughts and ideas about mortality, what it means to be human, all those big ideas. I’m toying with the idea of going hunting. Deer hunting, I guess, is what has crossed my mind.

In On Killing (an incredible book—if you’re a peace-loving liberal like me—as it instilled in me more respect than I thought possible for our military) he talks about how death is taboo. How as in Victorian times sexuality was hidden and therefore became the Holy Grail. Everything was about not dealing with sexuality and sexuality was perverted from those days. These days most of us aren’t familiar with death. In past times death was a part of life. Killing chickens or other animals for meat was no big deal. If someone in your family died, you dressed the body for the funeral. It was close and real and undeniable.

I would like my meat’s former life to be undeniable to me. Not every moment, but I’d like to face it head on.

In the quest to face the truth of meat, I signed up for a firearms training course sponsored by the North Berwick Rod & Gun Club and the NRA, Women on Target. The experience was spectacular. Most startling to me was what it felt like to be on foreign territory. It was clear that no one, even those people who seemed to think they understood where I was coming from, had any idea. Every single person there had experience with guns in some form or another. I once touched a rifle that a boyfriend had for when he and his father would go duck hunting in the boundary waters of Minnesota, but that was about three minutes of contact with a firearm. That was it. Everyone else was used to them. They had them in their homes. They talked about using them “to protect themselves.”

Of course, with the horrible shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a lot of people are talking about “gun control.” There were a couple times in my workshop where I decided to go ahead and bring up some of the issues I knew would be controversial. I surprised myself with how much I held my tongue, honestly. I wanted the guys to like me. But I also didn’t pretend to be who I wasn’t. It was just difficult to sit back and hear them talking about how “this light’s gonna shine on an intruder and scare him away before I even take a shot” as if the terror of a home invasion wouldn’t render them immobile (maybe it wouldn’t but there was something so television/movie about the way they described protecting themselves).

One of the greatest things I learned in this experience is what an intellectual or even spiritual experience it is to work with guns. There are so many different levels of appreciation or talent. My addict’s personality was definitely into it. I wanted to shoot more. Keep shooting until I mastered it. I immediately had a favorite gun (if I were a real fan of the things I’m sure I’d call them firearms, as that’s what the guys of the club did) because of how it felt. I was totally drawn into the experience of learning how to hold them, how to not anticipate the shot, how to aim correctly with a variety of different weapons, etc.

What I’m saying is those of us on the outside of gun culture don’t understand, or, I didn’t, that it’s a complex experience. It’s not necessarily just a bunch of yahoos who want to go explode some shit with bullets. There is mastery of a skill. There’s a major psychological component to the experience. Even writing about it I’m reminded how I wanted to arrange some practice time again.

It’s my position that outside of a military or police context, only cowards use fully automatic weapons. This is a statement I think that should become the norm in our society. It’s something I think even the most radical right wing fanatics would agree about. I’m not discussing issues of legality or control here. I’m talking about our moral compass as a culture.

If we all agree that fully automatic weapons = cowardice, we can begin to find common ground. Stepping outside the “control or no control” argument seems key.

It’s also my belief, and the workshop confirmed this for me, that we must require significant levels of training and testing before anyone is allowed to own or operate firearms of any kind. It’s not like riding a bike. Even riding a bike takes practice. We ought to, as a society, put firearms in the same category as automobiles. Our government (we, the people) is responsible for our protection. Part of that protection ought to be the requirement that gun owners train, practice, obtain licenses after testing, and get re-tested every year or so (to be determined). We ought to be free to own and operate any kind of weapon we see fit. But those weapons also ought to be available to us only after we show we have the skills required to use them. It’s just common sense.

At some point I’d like to detail the entire experience of the workshop. For now, here are some highlights.

My first shot:

The Henry. My favorite. It was smooth and steady. I felt it was my favorite before I saw how I did firing it, but I did alright with it and that made me like it more.

When they took us out at the end to shoot… I forget what they called them, the things that get shot up into the air, several things were interesting. First, there was almost no guidance about how to do this. I liked that, though, because I like doing things to learn them rather than being told how. It was less satisfying, though, than shooting the (very close) targets because it was hit-or-miss. With the targets there was the satisfaction of knowing how close I was getting. Still, it was a fun way to end the morning.

Keeping ourselves safe shouldn’t be about getting guns into everyone’s hands. It should be about making sure that everyone who has guns is trained in their use. And, of course, criminals will always have weapons. That’s not the point for me, here. Guns are scary, powerful things. Holding a loaded gun in my hands was freaky and strange and exhilarating. It was a meditative experience that brought up many philosophical issues that I’d like to explore further. I will explore them further, in fact. I am glad to understand that it’s not just idiots who like guns. That’s pretty much how I felt, though I knew intellectually that wasn’t the case. It was my sense that only idiots would like guns, what was the point in them anyway, right?
Well, if this social anarchist peace loving empathetic and caring liberal can learn the gun culture isn’t about assholes and power (only) I think maybe some of those guys from that side might learn that those of us who believe regulating firearms aren’t against them entirely. It seems there are opportunities to learn from each other, find common ground, and still hold true to our own values.