Armistice Day

November 11, 1918. It doesn't mean a lot to many people, particularly in the US. World War I wasn't our war, not really; we became involved but we barely had a horse in the race. We weren't there for the worst of it, and we didn't learn much of anything, and now no one really remembers why November 11 should be anything other than thanking veterans and possibly a parade. Hell, we don't even celebrate the day in sync with the British commonwealth; they commemorate the day as Remembrance Day now, and it is much more like our Memorial Day (only probably fewer barbecues and drunken fights).

But November 11, almost 100 years ago, the War To End All Wars ended. When WWII ended, we had VE Day and VJ Day. Victory! Victory in Europe, victory in Japan! It's impossible to know whether it was relief, satisfaction, or true exaltation that made everyone celebrate Victory, but it was a celebration of Victory, winged and proud, presenting the laurels and saying that we had won and that they had lost.

November 11, 1918, wasn't like that. There was elation, certainly; one can't fault anyone who had been affected by the war for feeling joy now that it was over. But the day was Armistice Day. That should stick with us, because though the Allied Powers staunchly refused to acknowledge it, and though at the time perhaps it seemed that the day was a day of victory, November 11, 1918 was merely a day of armistice. Of cessation of hostilities. The dictionary defines "armistice" as a cease-fire, a truce. An end, however temporary, to war, to the violence, bloodshed, death, horror, and inhumanity.

Of course, if you know your history at all (and you should) you know that it truly was just an armistice, albeit one which lasted decades. There was a peace treaty signed which laid punitive damages on the "losing" side that could never be repaid or even tolerated, and as such it was not so much a peace treaty as it was both a punishment and an incitement. It was almost as if the Allies felt cheated of their victory through armistice and desired the Central Powers to reject the terms and go back to fighting. Perhaps there is some truth in this, because all the powers that be had to have known that the public were tired of the war, even if they were winning.  And the Allies had to have known that their citizens would approve of harsh measures against Germany, but not the arbitrary continuation of war.

There are plenty of arguments both for and against the idea that the Treaty of Versailles caused WWII, and there are arguments that WWI and WWII were really the same war, just with an intermission for everyone to get better at it.  That's not the point.  If I wanted to argue those points (and I do, sometimes) I wouldn't be writing this in a blog supposedly dedicated to homilies.

November 11, 1918 is in my mind because it should commemorate a cessation of violence. It should not be a paean to victory or a useless trotting out of veterans to be thanked one by one, many of whom were never in a war and are being thanked by people whose closest experience of combat was when they played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.  It should not even be a remembrance of those who have died while serving in the armed forces, unless that were to be used as a stepping stone.

The day commemorates armistice. A cease-fire. The day is buried in baggage, but at the bottom, there is a core. "These men died to end all wars," it says.  "They fought and died in places they may never have heard of, for causes that even now can't be completely understood.  And today, 95 years ago, the war stopped.

So I'm not thanking veterans today, and I'm not celebrating. Today is a sacred day, a day to remember that war is not the natural state of things and that no one wins a war, they just lose less than the other side. I will keep holding Armistice Day sacred until it's no longer necessary, when All Wars truly have been ended, when Cease-Fire becomes Peace.

When All Else Fails

I disapprove of crises of faith. Not having them, but referring to them with that nomenclature. It makes it seem like some sort of intellectual exercise, and I suppose that sometimes it is, in which case, call it an intellectual conflict of faith. But your real "crises" of faith aren't intellectual.

Two days ago, I said that the main reason I was sure I would live to be 150 was because God wouldn't kill me until He'd had all the fun He could have with me. I genuinely didn't want to believe in God because I'd rather live in a universe with no cruel deity who derives pleasure from my suffering. Now that's a fucking kick in the balls of faith.

What do you tell someone in a situation like that? If I were ministering to myself, what the hell do I do? It reminds me of a piece by Gordon Atkinson which no longer appears to be on the Internet (but the miracle of the Wayback Machine brings it to your eager eyes) and you should read the whole thing because it's about as good an expression of I don't know what as there is. To excerpt:

… people facing death don’t give a fuck about your interpretation of II Timothy. Some take the “bloodied, but unbowed” road, but most dying people want to pray with the chaplain. And they don’t want weak-ass prayers either. They don’t want you to pray that God’s will be done. …

Actually the post from which I learned of this powerful work has a thing or two to say on the subject as well. But that's neither here nor there.

I don't pray. Or rather, I don't believe in prayer. Yes, sometimes when the chips are down, I beg whomever might be listening to grant some basically selfish request, but I know that it won't work. I don't even believe in the weak, watery sort of prayer where you just ask God to be present in your life and let you be worthy of God's love. God doesn't work that way. Every time we ask God for something, even the basic, general-purpose love stuff, we either get it or we don't, and saying the right magic words or thinking the right magic thoughts won't make it any more or less likely to happen.

So I don't "pray" because prayer is just another way of asking for something. I talk. I argue. I spit venom and bile. Sometimes I whimper. Yes, I know, that's "prayer" but this is all about semantics, ain't it? If I don't do "crises" then I don't do "prayer" even if both are accurate descriptors.

I get where dying people are coming from. I'm addicted to life, and it and I have an unhealthy relationship right now. So even as it's pulled from me, I'll be raging, grasping, wheedling, cajoling. I know they say that there are 5 stages of grief, but how many people actually make it to acceptance?  I probably won't. So yes, when the pastor shows up, I will want some deep hoodoo. Hell, I'll probably call in witch doctors and shamans to cover my bases. And like the man says, I will die anyway, because we're all going to eventually. So even though I will rage, right now I can tell Future Me that he is being a jackass.

But to return to my original question, what the Hell do I tell myself? I'm not going to pray, even if I believed in prayer; that's almost like letting slip more chinks in my armor. You don't tell the bully where it hurts the most. You act like the things you care about the most are the least valuable.

I could try to reassure myself that there's no reason to believe that God operates this way. But why should I believe myself?  I'm not Job; I don't deal well with God proving a point to Satan by fucking my life up royal. So I talk to God. I'm never certain that God doesn't find my conversation amusing too, but what else can I do? I give God my point of view.

And when all else fails... well, I cry a lot. It's piteous and ridiculous and helps no one. I laugh sometimes. They're cousins, you know: laughing and crying.  I've cried so hard I started laughing and laughed so hard that it swung back around to crying again.

All of this called to mind a hymn which I knew as a child. There are so many different versions out there, and if your taste runs more to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, they've got a version.  But my childhood is this one.

Pete Seeger - How Can I Keep From Singing

It's a happy, glorious song which just revels in the wonders of the world, but take that and turn it upside down. Strip out all the joy, take away the hope, and the song still holds.  When all else fails, sing.  When. Not if. Everything else will fail. Your faith will falter, your hope will turn to despair, your love will be lost to you. You'll be walking in the dark and there will be monsters all around you. You won't have the strength to cry out, to call for help, no matter how futilely. It will happen. And if in that moment you have a song, you won't be crying, you'll be singing, and that's better than nothing, isn't it?

It's not much better. And it's harder than simply sinking, letting go, letting it happen. And you're going to die anyway, whether you sing or not. And if there is a God, God is cruel and malicious and there is no love in the world for you. Sing out. Maybe someone's listening.

I'm not a motivational speaker, obviously.  And I still have my doubts about life and my place in it. But I'm a contrary son of a bitch, so you'll probably hear me bitching and moaning about it to a God with whom I might rather not talk. And you might hear me singing a little too, softly, just for me and God. I'm still here. I'm still not broken. All has not failed.

Scriptural History

I am absolutely in love with this:

Victory to the People

The title doesn't at all convey what you're getting. It's the story of the Bible, not the Bible story. The history of the text.  With a tone that I can't get over. Any time anyone can say, "Eusebius of Nicomedia got all butthurt over this, and remained pissed off for the rest of his life," that's worth celebrating.

I spoke with Eusebius of Nicomedia briefly, and he said, "I'm still not over it."  So there you have it.  I won't quote; you should read the whole thing

Okay, I will guote:

(When Constantine heard this he said, “Can’t you guys just get along? Why not agree to disagree like every other friggin’ philosopher since Plato was a pup, and get on with your lives?” to which both sides answered “No!!!!eleventy!!!” and thus Nicea.

Come on. How can you not like that.

Some time after that, Constantine went to Eusebius of Caesarea and said, “Yo, Pamphili!” (Eusebius’ friends called him “Pamphili”), “You’ve got the biggest collection of fanzines in the world. How about you put together the teaching anthology?”

Yeah.  That's good stuff.  Go. Read it.

Metaphor

It's a classic defense to claim that you were employing a metaphor, just as it is a classic defense to claim that your listeners were employing one incorrectly. Metaphor is dangerous, because you never have to say what you mean, and people don't like that.

It's not like a simile, where you say, "Hey, racists are like pigs because they eat slop, their shit smells awful, and they're only good dead."  People expect an explanation to a simile. "Okay, so you're saying that this thing is like this other thing. How so?" they ask.  And the answer satisfies them that yes, while you can describe the first thing by evoking the second, the first thing is distinct and different and it's merely a way of describing and not a literal equivalence.

But metaphor doesn't work that way.  "Racists are pigs, stewing in their own offal, declining to contribute anything of benefit to society except their deaths."  Yes, you might see that I am indeed saying the same thing about racists as I did before: they eat, and smell like, shit, and we enjoy them more dead than alive.  But note: I am not explaining; I am elaborating on the metaphor, thickening it, but I'm not saying anything about racists, I'm saying it about pigs and then saying that a subclass of the pig is the racist.  Racists are pigs.

That's confusing.  I mean, do I really think racists are pigs?  Of course I don't; that's an insult to pigs, which are wonderful, loving, intelligent creatures which just happen to possess certain attributes which can be used to amplify how I feel about racists.  And it's convenient, so I start simply saying, "Racist pigs," when I mean to say, "Racists who embody these traits which can be metaphorically illustrated by a comparison to a pig."  And then I just say, "pigs," because the rest is implied. The metaphor has legs.

Surely not.  Surely it doesn't work that way.  Why would I remove the racist part?  That's the part that's important.  Because language is literal and never figurative, and what I say is exactly what I mean, and I won't die and have my words passed down and translated and misheard.  If I preserve the exact condition of my original statement of metaphor, people can tell that I mean it metaphorically.

But let's look closer: sure, people might know that I meant, "Racists are pigs," metaphorically, but what about "stewing in their own offal?" Do pigs literally (using the term which has come to mean the exact opposite of its literal meaning, which is irony of the highest order, another term that doesn't mean what it literally means) stew in shit?  They cook themselves in a pot filled with shit?  I think not.  Stewing is a metaphor so far removed that it has become simply figurative language.  And do I think that, describing racists as pigs, I am saying that they wallow around in their own fecal matter?  Dear God, there are layers here, and I'm terrified, so instead of following the trail and discovering that maybe there might be turtles all the way down... well, it's hard to be entirely literal because the sentence I'm currently finishing had at least two easily-identifiable turns of metaphorical phrase, and if you keep digging, pretty much everything we say and do that isn't a concrete noun or verb is a metaphor at the bottom.  Language is symbolism. Language isn't literal.

That's terrifying to people who want a straight answer.  Absolutely baffling and terrifying.  You know (or may be, in which case I'm sorry but you should get your head out of your ass, though not literally) one of these people: they were the kids in school who, when the teacher was reviewing what would be on the test, would always want to know what the answer should be, even to the essay questions; they're the folks who don't like long passages when a short summary could do; who don't like nuance; who don't read "hard" books or, if they do, think Moby Dick is about the whale and Dante's Inferno is a tour guide to Hell.  They're not bad people, but they can't deal with uncertainty.

The world is an uncertain place. That's scary. But believing that something is literal, or can be literal, just because it's hard to understand any other way isn't helping. It's sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly while the doctor tells you that the cancer isn't responding to treatment, then going home and having a "Cancer Free!" party, then wondering why everyone is surprised when you get sicker.  It's... well, it's a metaphor, because that's the only thing I can do to continue to talk about it without just saying exactly what it is again, which is, "believing that something is literal, or can be literal, just because it's hard to understand."

A lot of time is spent on "literalist" readers of the Bible (to pick something totally at random) and how they don't get that even though they claim that there's only one literal meaning to the text, they're applying their own interpretation.  There are some very good pieces being written on the subject; I link to this one because, well, it's apropos.

But I think a deeper issue exists than people being unable to understand that there's no way to read something without interpreting it.  It's recognizing that, regardless of "interpretation" you might be missing the fact that the whole thing is a metaphor.  When it says, "Samson slew the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass," maybe we have to take that in context and realize that The Bible isn't sanctioning the slaughter of Palestinians with a very small bone in that verse, but more than that, maybe we have to consider that, "slaying the Philistines," and, "jawbone of an ass," might very well not mean anything like what they "literally" mean to anyone, even if we were able to divine exactly what literal meaning they should have somehow.

I'm not a Biblical scholar. I don't pretend to be. So my example is necessarily wrongheaded and stupid because I don't know what the metaphors were and thus I'm as at sea as anyone trying to read the Bible as a literal text with literal intentions.  But suppose we take "Philistines" for a moment.  In our wonderfully figurative language, "Philistine" has become "philistine" and is used to refer to those who... well, let's let Miriam Webster take a crack at it.

a :  a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values

b :  one uninformed in a special area of knowledge

Because at some point, someone said, "Boy, that materialistic person who has no knowledge and is disdainful of intellectual or artistic values sure is a Philistine, an enemy of God's Word (that's what it means, so let that be a lesson to anyone)."  Metaphor. Give it long enough, it takes off and everyone forgets everything but the object being metaphorically used for comparison.

So there's a legend about slaying enemies of God's Word that didn't make it into the Bible, probably because it wasn't actually about slaying enemies of God's Word and in fact may have predated the whole idea of God's Word(shocking, I know).  And in it, the hero slays his enemies, who happened to be people who could be described as Philistines at the time the Bible was written down, but who may have been Canaanites or Syrians or whoever was the enemy of this particular Semite hero. Now, the audience (never forget that it wasn't written down at first) for the Samson story would have known this other legend, and they would have known that the anonymous Semite hero of that legend was vain and had slain these enemies because he was showing off for a woman, and the audience would have said, "Aha, so Samson is John Q. Semite as he slays his foes, so what does that tell us about Samson?  It's an object lesson in humility, even in the service of one's cause. We must not be proud before Jhvh, nor should we be proud in His service, for He is the one to be exalted and we are merely his instruments."

Eventually, it became, "Oh, so Samson is a slayer of enemies, so we must be humble before God."  Then, when it was written down, the Israelites weren't fond of the Philistines, so "enemies" became "Philistines," and "we must be humble before God," became implied.  And then other people took the story but didn't look at the book of commentary where it explains, "So, you see here that Samson was killing the Philistines because he was proud of his strength, plus he's going to have girl troubles later on, so maybe, you know, make with the less showing off, nu?"  And those other people didn't have a clue what the metaphors were, and Samson himself became a metaphor, and pretty soon you've got folks from the South saying that literally the Bible wants us to kill everyone in Palestine and give it to Israel.

None of the above is true.  I have no idea whether "slaying the Philistines" was a metaphor for something.  And that's the point; I don't know, and neither do most of you, including pretty much every joker who claims to be reading the Bible "literally."  The "jawbone of an ass" might be a reference to a popular folk song of the time where Avram makes a marital aide out of a donkey's jawbone so he can please his wife since he can't get it up any more, and this is all a smutty joke about how Samson was gay, since he was "slaying Philistines with 'the jawbone of an ass' if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge."  As far as I know, that's not true either, but you don't know.

And the scariest metaphors I haven't even covered yet.  Those are the kind where you don't even make a comparison.  Where you say, "Boy howdy, pigs sure do like to wallow in shit.  I wonder if we should buy them some white hoods."  Whoa, too fast for me buddy, slow down.  You're alluding to your subject without mentioning it because you're assuming that the audience has the context to be able to pick up what you're putting down.  And you can be satirical on top of that; my racist pigs don't really support an example because they're too simplistic, but suppose we take Gulliver's Travels and say that not only is Swift using metaphor without telling you what the subject is, but he's deliberately exaggerating the metaphor's characteristics so as to satirize the original, unstated subject.  No, Gulliver's Travels is not a fantasy about visiting different strange lands filled with different strange people.  A literal reading might let you interpret, which is why movies made from the same book aren't the same, but unless you get that it's all a metaphor (in several layers, with satire) you don't get it and you don't even know you don't.

It's like the Bible is a satire that nails its subject too well, and so people don't think it's satire.  It's a metaphor so convincing and complex that people are fooled into believing that it's literal.  Except that's not true; people aren't fooled, they're duped, or they willfully believe against proof, or they know and are lying.

This was all an excuse to link to the post to which I linked in the text, plus this:

Destroying the ballet in the name of artistic freedom

Unless you know the context, it looks like the Federal Theatre Project is about to make a resurgence, and that, while it might seem like a good thing, would not be.  Keep government hands off of artistic expression, I say. Unless you know the context.

A Fine Sermon

I really couldn't say it better, so just read it for yourself.

You Cannot Be Replaced

Depression and sin – not one and the same, but in this alike – tell us that we are replaceable. That those who love us do not really know us, that our failings and our brokenness are the only memorable things about us. That they are all we will be remembered for.

But those are lies. Depression, sin, self-loathing: they lie to us. For we are all, each of us, beloved by God. The Lord God remembers, not the mistakes and fears on which we ruminate and base our self-loathing, but the steadfast love from which we are created and which is ever extended toward us.

I Shall Not Be Moved

I have a dim recollection from my childhood of going to a church service at a church unfamiliar to me, one of a denomination different from that of my family. The town in which I grew up was, and still is, small, and many people we knew were there, all of them coming to this place of meeting, all with a purpose.  I should say also that my home town was (and still is, I hope) fairly liberal and activist, so we weren't getting together to protest Obamacare or demand that the rich take our money (that's what they want, right?).

We were gathering to protest something.  I believe it was Nicaragua, or if not that, some other injustice in Central or South America, land where there have been so many injustices that it's hard to determine which one was happening when.  But we were there to protest, mostly middle-class white people gathered in a church in the middle of a small, liberal town, to say that such things were unacceptable, that atrocity and injustice are never acceptable.  And that's the first time I remember hearing, and singing, "We Shall Overcome."

I sang pretty well as a child, and I didn't then have the baggage that I have now, the fears and neuroses which make me unwilling to simply give up my voice in song whenever asked. So I sang, not really understanding, but knowing that this whole thing was about something important, and that I was singing on the right side, because why else would my parents and all the people I knew be here?  I'm sure I'd heard the song before; one of my favorite childhood artists was Pete Seeger, whom I had the opportunity to see live, but I don't remember that. I do remember singing in the church.

"We Shall Overcome" isn't really a song that the privileged should sing. Yes, if you're on the right side of a cause, you might be justified in joining with others and singing, but even then, you're not really the one who is overcoming.  If a middle-class white man joined in the Civil Rights struggle, he should be viewed as being on the right side, and maybe he could have sung "We Shall Overcome" with his brothers and sisters, lending his voice to theirs as he lent his support to their cause. But he wasn't the one who was going to overcome someday. He wasn't oppressed.

So we were singing a song, all of us lucky not to be in Nicaragua and being killed by death squads or raped or burned or mutilated, and we were doing it in private, essentially, not out where someone who might have been able to help might have seen us and been persuaded to do so.  We weren't going to overcome shit. As Dave Barry puts it:

[W]e held hands, black and white together, and sang "We Shall Overcome," and we were absolutely positive that we would. I got into a friendly argument with a bystander, a black man not much older than I, who laughed and assured me that nobody was going to overcome anything.

 It was that, minus the black people and anyone arguing that we wouldn't overcome anything.

You know the end of the story: we didn't. I'm pretty sure Nicaraguans continued to be killed, raped, mutilated, and generally treated like shit for a while after, prayer and song notwithstanding. I'm not trying to be flip about that either; I wish that it weren't so.  But, like most prayers, our Nicaraguan-oriented, non-denominational ones didn't produce instant gratification.

I'm not encouraging cynicism, far from it.  If all you can do is stand and sing in solidarity, even if it does nothing and you're thousands of miles from those who really need to overcome, even if you do it alone, even if it costs you nothing, standing is a start. It's not sufficient, but it's better than not standing and singing.

We also, I dimly recall, sang "The People United Will Never Be Defeated," (which I went on to hear as a piano work performed by the composer, Frederic Rzewski, in another church, which is another story entirely, but it's an amazing work).  Good song.  Perhaps too Marxist for most people, but still stirring, and since I believe at least one, possibly both, sides of the conflict in Nicaragua were Marxists and Spanish, an apropos choice.

But we didn't sing my favorite protest song. You can probably guess from the title which one I'm talking about.  I prefer it as "We Shall Not Be Moved" because there is strength in numbers, but a great many versions have been done in the singular, and one could make the case that by singing, "I shall not be moved," one is affirming a group promise not to be moved, since the only person one can promise shall not move is oneself.

It's a simple song; most good protest songs are.

I shall not, I shall not be moved
I shall not, I shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's planted by the water.
I shall not be moved.

You can vary the lyrics, but those are the ones with which you can sing along.

Why is it my favorite? Why did I tell you this long, rambling story about an ineffective protest? I'll admit, "We Shall Overcome" makes me cry like a baby in the right circumstances, and it lends itself to Gospel much more. And I'll admit that, unless you're on the line, as it were, singing it is a bit strange because who's trying to move you, really?

But it is the most resolute song. We shall overcome some day, but I shall not be moved ever.  You can sing it on the picket line, when forming a barricade against the onrushing aggressor, when standing up and being counted and saying, "No, I won't go away.  I shall not be moved."

It makes no promises of dominion, because there are none that can be made. Maybe all the singing in the world isn't going to stop them. Maybe they'll never stop, and the world will end in injustice and terror, the soul of man forever crushed beneath the heel of a boot. Not a pleasant thought if you're looking to win, but being right doesn't mean winning.

The Christian tradition from which the song comes has a prime example of this: Jesus was about as right as you can get, and yet he lost. Badly. But he didn't see it coming and turn around, run in the opposite direction, decide that hey, maybe the Pharisees were right all along, even though I for one could completely understand it if he had. Crucifixion is ugly, slow, painful, and just generally terrible in all senses of the word.

So the boot may go on stamping the face forever, and it might be that no amount of singing (or indeed, any other, more "practical" action) will change that. We can say we'll win eventually, or we can say we can never be finally defeated, but what point is there? There's no hope. Everything goes down to dust and all the the efforts of good cannot change that.

But Jesus didn't run. He let the heel squash him flat because he knew that standing was more important than winning. He knew that the only thing that he could guarantee was that he would not waver, that he would stand firm, that he would not move. And in doing so, in dying without giving up, he did win after all.

I shall not be moved. That doesn't say, "I will fight back." That doesn't say, "I will win," or, "I will be where you are some day and then you'll see." It just says, "I am right, and I shall be moved. My roots are deep. Go tell your boss, all the way up to the top, that I shall not be moved."  It's the sit-in rather than the riot. It's the passive resistance of peace rather than the active resistance of war. It's a stand, a line back from which one will not be pushed.

It's faith. "I shall not be moved," is a faith that winning isn't everything. It's a faith that, despite there being nothing else to do but stand and sing, some day that will change. It's a faith that boots may crush, that hope may die, that all may come down to dust, but I still believe and I am still standing and singing, wherever I am.

So why do I remember the useless protest of my childhood fondly, and why do I wish that we'd sung "I Shall Not Be Moved?" Because useless though it may have been, it mattered. Any time someone stands up and sings in solidarity, it matters, even if it doesn't make a difference.

And if we stop standing up and singing, vowing to stay standing and singing, then we aren't going to do anything else. It's the song that gives you courage to go and do more than singing. It's the song that you hear from all corners telling you that you aren't alone after all. Could we be heard in Nicaragua? Of course not. But we could hear ourselves. And though not going backward is a start, the song doesn't say, "I shall not move." Once you stand and sing, then go and do right with a song in your heart. You shall not be moved, you shall not be turned, you shall not be halted.

After the service, I'm sure my family went home. The details swim in my mind; was the fire and brimstone preacher there to whom I enjoyed listening because he was entertaining? Which church in my town was it? Who else was there?  I just remember the songs. They're still with me, long after memory has faded..

Surprised

When I read or hear someone expressing an opinion on something a fundamentalist fanatic has said, I always wonder: why are they paying attention? And also, why does it seem to shock or surprise them? And then I think to myself, "Gosh, that's a jaundiced view of the world." Because I should still feel shock and surprise when a human being says or does the things that fundamentalist fanatics regularly do. I say I believe in the basic goodness of humans; why then am I not surprised when that goodness continues to go un-evidenced?

The first question is a valid one: if you are paying attention to your ideological opposites in order to feel outrage when they do something within their ideology that isn't within yours... well, look at how I phrased that. I'm pretty sure people who do that are the sorts of people who are no better than their "enemy" and in fact probably see their "enemy" as such, rather than as someone with whom they have a difference of faith. In other words, even if I agree with you, you aren't behaving in a much better manner than they are.

But I do think it's important to recognize that there are times when it's not just a difference of opinion. A difference of opinion is when I like sushi and you can't get over the fact that it's raw fish. But if you believe that God told you to kill gay people, I have more than a difference of opinion with that. If you believe that, we can't be friends, no matter how nice you are. I might be civil to you, but only because even though you're a living piece of excrement, you're still my fellow human and I love you, but I don't like you. I might view you as a problem that needs to be corrected. I'm sure that my not wanting to kill gays, and in fact welcoming them as full-fledged members of society, might make you believe the same things about me (although to be honest, I wouldn't expect the same level of civility from you if you believed that).

So sometimes one must keep tabs on the other side. It's a little mean (and I'm using the word "mean" in its sense of "inferior in quality") but sometimes it's important. I get why some people delight in torturing themselves in order to feel self-righteous, and I also get why some people listen to Glenn Beck just to make sure the outside world hears what a wackadoo he is.

But the second question is more interesting: why be surprised? A leopard does not change its spots. And yet, perhaps some (those who are not simply shocked because they want to be shocked) who hear outlandish things coming from the mouth of someone who regularly says outlandish things can still be shocked because at each moment, they hoped for redemption.

I can't find a parable to illustrate this, so I'm making one up on the spot. It's harder than it seems at first glance. Jesus was no mean parable-maker (and here again I'm using "mean" in the sense of "lower quality," not to imply that Jesus was a nasty guy).

There was a trader in Galilee who had a donkey, and he was on his way to Jerusalem with pottery to sell at the local kitsch shop because tourists would eat that kind of crap up. And as he walked, he swatted his donkey on the rump with a stick, and the donkey would bray.

He met another traveler on the road, a Samaritan (every good parable needs one) who happened to be a member of PETA. They agreed to walk together (because their cars were broken down or something, I don't know). Well, the Samaritan saw the trader swatting the donkey again and again, and finally he'd had enough. "Hey, you can't go on abusing him like that!" said the Samaritan.

"He won't walk if I don't give him a little swat," replied the trader.

"Take the pack off him and I'll carry it," said the Samaritan.

So the trader shrugged and took the pottery out and loaded the Samaritan up. The Samaritan was barely able to move, but he staggered forward, only to hear the donkey bray again. "The fuck, man?" groaned the Samaritan, staggering around to face the trader.

"How was taking the pack off of him supposed to make him move faster?" asked the trader, hitting the donkey again.

Okay, that wasn't really a good parable. Let's try again.

A married couple had a routine: every morning the alarm would go off, and every morning it would wake the wife up, and she'd turn it off and then she'd shake her husband until he woke up. And every morning he would groan like the world was coming to an end, curse, and then stagger off to perform his morning ablutions.

This went on for 30 years, until finally the wife said, "Look, why do you act like that? We've been doing the same thing for 30 years. Surely you're not surprised?"

The husband sighed and said, "No, but I keep hoping that this morning is the morning that you stop shaking me, and I've been disappointed the same way every time."

Maybe it's not shock so much as hope being dashed yet again. I mean, sure, there's some shock; how can they keep doing it, how can they do this particular horrible thing, how can they not see, etc. But we're supposed to love everybody, and as such we have to hope that some day all eyes will be opened and the blind will see, and all that. So continued blindness on the part of some people is painful. Plus, the things they say have profound consequences as well; it's all well and good to talk about differences of opinion, but if your opinion is that homosexuals should be hunted for sport and get get elected governor, what you're saying and thinking matters not just philosophically.

But I'm still hung up on my jadedness. Because I may think, "Oh, what a stupid asshole," but I won't usually be shocked by it. I don't usually consider it noteworthy when fundamentalist fanatics say fundamentalist-fanatic things. If they're fundamentalists, they're not going to come out and say that abortion is great or that gay people are wonderful. That this is continually confirms saddens me, but it doesn't shock me.

There were two beggars, one with no eyes, and one with no legs. They slept in the same archway and had formed a sort of brotherly bond, except that every morning the beggar with no legs would moan, "Oh no, my legs are gone!" Which was understandably, a bit annoying to his friend. Still, the blind beggar figured things were bad enough without making them worse, so he didn't complain and offend his legless companion.

One morning, the blind beggar didn't hear anything from his companion, and when he reached out to touch the legless beggar, there was nothing there. The blind beggar immediately began running through the streets, knocking into people, crying, "A miracle! A miracle!" Finally, he calmed down enough to tell people that the legless beggar had grown new legs. No one believed him, and he want dejected back to his place in the archway, with no food in his belly because he hadn't been able to beg all day, what with the running and crying and so forth.

Then he heard his friend's voice. "My God, how does it feel to have legs again?" the blind man asked, rushing up to the other beggar, but when he reached the man, he could feel that the legless man still had no legs, and he became silent. The legless beggar explained that he'd merely gone to beg in a new spot earlier than usual, because someone had said the pickings were better there, but now he'd come back to get his friend. The blind man silently followed the legless beggar, and it was indeed better; the man who lived nearby gave bread to the poor, and there was a better place to sleep as well.

The next morning, the blind man was awakened by the legless one moaning "Oh no, my legs are gone."

"Shut up!" screamed the blind man. "You say that every morning! Of course your legs are gone."

"Why didn't you say something before?" asked the legless man, hurt.

"Because before yesterday, I had hope that one day my sight might return."

I'll get better at parables some day, I hope.

I don't want to be jaundiced, and of course I welcome with joy any sleeper who awakens or any blind beggar who can now see.  Because hope for that is hope for us all; we're all blind beggars, and if the lame can walk, then perhaps the blind can see.  But by the same token, that a legless man doesn't grow new legs is a generally-accepted truth, and if he tells us that he has no legs, that's perhaps cause for sadness but not surprise.

And we shouldn't wait for legs to grow back by themselves. If someone has no legs, offer them a prosthesis. If someone is blind, offer them a cane, a dog, or just a hand to guide them.  But if we're sure that someone will never change by themselves, try to help. It may seem hopeless, but the surest expression of love and hope is to try to help, even though it's hopeless.

So no, I'm not surprised when the latest screed by a right-wing fundamentalist talks about wanting to round up undesirables into camps. I'm not surprised by human nature in many cases, and perhaps I should be. But whether I'm surprised or not, that doesn't mean that I don't do something about it.

There's a difference between reading about some idiotic thing that someone said and reading about some dangerous-to-our-rights thing that someone has done, some law enacted, some election rigged. I might not be able to do much, and maybe reacting and spreading the word to people who can is all I can do. But I won't act surprised. I won't be shocked that there is gambling going on in Casablanca. These people aren't blind beggars. They're rich, they're successful, and if they're blind, it's because they refuse to open their eyes.

One more.

There was a man (I should have more women, but sadly these parables are mostly directed at men) of Galilee (why not) who had a working automobile and so was able to drive rather than walk to Jerusalem, albeit that from my understanding the number of checkpoints make it not a very fast drive either. So he was driving along at 100 mph, swerving around, hitting pedestrians, and the police are chasing after him.  They finally run his car off the road and into an embankment (the west embankment? Huh? Nothing?) and he crashes, totals the car, really hurts himself. So he turns around and sues the police. And he gets up on the stand and says, "It's not my fault; I didn't know those people were there because I had my eyes glued shut."

So the police officer is called to the stand, and the defense attorney says, "My client had his eyes glued because of a medical condition and also he likes to drive that way. If that was a problem, why didn't you get into his car and open his eyes up so he could see to drive? Then you wouldn't have injured him or destroyed his car."

The police officer says, "I was more concerned with stopping him than with opening his eyes. That's his responsibility."

If we lived in a just world, the above wouldn't be true, and moreover the jury would acquit the police department. Sadly, I think it might frequently be the other way around; the willfully blind and privileged are allowed to get away with it. No one even tries to stop them, and if they do, the willfully blind say that they shouldn't be stopped because they like driving with their eyes closed.

Shine a light in darkness. Make the blind to see. But if the blind are hurting others, maybe stopping them, even if they remain blind forever, is more important than opening the eyes that they've glued closed.

What Is Good

He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.

 That's as good a definition as any, although I might argue that the first follows from the second and the second from the third. The passage is Micah 6:8, so we're talking Old Testament rather than New, and maybe Jesus might not have felt the need to split it into three. Or maybe it's worth splitting, to accentuate the fact that justice, love, and a humble faith may all be part of the same thing but are distinctly important.  Or it's possible that a trio works better artistically ("What is good?" tends to inspire trio responses: "Faith, Hope, and Love;" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women;" etc/).

In context, Micah is telling people that it's not the sacrifices that matter, but justice, love, and faith. Those are what is good. He was a prophet, so Christians have seen this as prophetic of Jesus; sacrifices would be unnecessary and love would be what was important.  But one can also see a prophecy of the rabbinical Judaism arising after the destruction of the Second Temple; sacrifice became less important in Judaism as well.

It's an interesting passage and an interesting definition of what is good. I also find it interesting that Micah also feels the need to state that God has told us both what is good and what God requires of us. As if perhaps simply saying, "This is what is good," is insufficient (clearly Micah had met ancestors of some people I can think of). Micah is saying that God has told his listeners what is good before as well: Jesus boils all God's commandments down to two ("You shall love God and love your neighbor likewise.") but Micah makes them into three: justice, love, and faith.

"Basically, God was chiding them, in the way that God typically does in the OT," Micah said to me recently. "So you knew some smiting was brewing. I was saying, 'Hey, God told you this already.' But here's the thing; even if the Israelites knew what was good - and I believe they did - they weren't doing it. It's like if your mother says, 'Kids, follow me,' and then heads off into the store. You're not going to follow her, even though you know that it's a good idea. You're going to go look at the dolls or feel the rugs or talk to the sheep, and all of a sudden your mother is gone and you get sold by a Lebanese camel dealer. Okay, maybe not that last bit, but you lose your mother.

"Well, what does your mother do? She grabs you by the hand and makes you walk with her, because it's not just a good idea, it's what she requires of you. So not only is this good, but it's also what God requires."

What is good? You could come up with a much worse definition than justice, love, and faith. Of course, what good is and how to be good are different things, but that deserves a post of its own.

Intellectual Honesty

I think this just about sums up everything that I believe about faith:

I am an agnostic of the “I’m almost certain God does not exist, but intellectual honesty requires me to admit I just don’t know” stripe, so in a obvious, literal sense Matthew 6 can’t do much for me.

That's John Scalzi talking about Matthew 6 (of the Bible, in case anyone was confused and thought maybe it was an offshoot of Maroon 5) but it could just as easily have been talking about any sort of religion.  He also has some things to say on the subject of what a good person is, which jive nicely with one of my favorite saws: "Someone who is nice to you and rude to the waiter is not a nice person." "Character is what you do when no one is watching" says it better perhaps, but I don't like it as much.

Atheists are certain of something which cannot be made certain. No offense to atheists, with whom I sometimes identify, but whether they like it or not, a lack of faith in God simply isn't enough to be an atheist.  You have to believe God doesn't exist. And that's certainty in something which, as Mr. Scalzi so neatly puts it, "intellectual honesty requires" one to admit is uncertain.

I hold no beef with agnosticism; intellectual honesty requires me to admit that I don't know either, even if my hope is in some divinity and my lack of certainty is in the existence of such a divinity, rather than in its lack of existence.  I admire someone who can say, "I don't know."  Socrates certainly did, and he had a point, I think.  Certainty is dangerous; if you're certain of something, you can build upon that foundation, each brick as sturdy as the last, and you might build a glorious temple or an abattoir, each with just as unshakable foundations.  Not only that, but you might not know your temple was an abattoir (or vice versa, I suppose).  And if the foundation ever becomes less certain, less secure, the whole structure is imperiled.

Those who are uncertain question. They build slowly, and they build carefully, trying to make it so that the building won't fall just because a brick is removed.  I would argue that a faith untested is hardly a faith at all; doubt is important, questioning is important.  Uncertainty helps that. It says, "I don't know," and that isn't a fatal flaw.

Watch out for people who don't have the intellectual honesty to admit they could be wrong. Watch out for those people of certainty, the people who are sure. They may forge ahead under adversity, leading the way to a better tomorrow.  Or they may be unstoppable juggernauts, insuring the doom of today. And you may never know the difference until it's too late, so don't be sure of them.

Science and Religion

From Hemant Mehta, from whom I always get my theology, comes a fascinating bit of atheism:

For instance, there's been talk of finding a better way to reconcile science and religion. Whenever that battle takes place, religion loses.

There are some questions we may never know the answer to, but for the ones we can eventually answer, the scientific explanation will devour the religious one. Mixing science and religion requires a distortion of one or the other.

 I'm not against atheists; despite what they would like to think, it's a belief just like anything else. I myself have had my atheist days. But just as it is frustrating to see religious people saying stupid things, so is it frustrating to see atheists doing likewise. And there doesn't seem to be any process of becoming a more well-educated atheist; you just say, "Well, I don't believe in God," and suddenly you have as much a-religious authority as the most learned theologian.

Atheists frequently make the mistake of believing that a lack of belief in God is a be-all and end-all. That's like saying that a belief in God is a be-all and end-all.  It's not knowledge.

But to Mr. Mehta: science and religion are implacable foes and science always wins because it's true and religion is just a belief that can't be proven. One hears that a lot from the self-appointed anti-theologians of atheism.  Science is provable and true and thus is intrinsically better than religion and its explanations of reality are the truth. As reliable as Pat Robertson blaming natural disasters on gay people, probably more so.  And as ill-informed and annoying.

To say that science and religion are at war is to say things about both that are untrue and should be refuted by both sides. If you say that science will always trump religion, you're saying that science is addressing questions that by their very nature are unscientific.  You're saying science is interested in belief. Quick note: it isn't. In fact, that's what makes science so great; it doesn't give two shits about whether everyone in the world believes something. It cares about empiricism and experiment and data.

Snotty pre-atheists are always saying, "Oh yeah, well prove God exists and I'll believe." Or something similar in tone. The correct response to that is, "No, because science doesn't work that way." They won't listen, of course, because there's no form a-religious training, no way of teaching atheism to people; you just are one because. Science education stays out of religion (and rightly so) but it's possible that a class or two on "what science should and shouldn't be used to do," might be helpful.

But to pick on atheists isn't fair; there are plenty of religious types who reject science completely, saying that religion has all the answers and science is wrong, or that the conclusions science has reached are wrong because The Bible says so. They cite things as proof. Of them I ask, "You're saying that your belief requires proof?" It's called "belief" for a reason, and to have faith in something proven is about as hard as having faith which is never tested. We're supposed to be past the superstitious, magical phase, where we believed in spirits because they caused things to happen, because there was proof they existed. Faith shouldn't require proof.

To say that science will always win in a war against religion is a bit like saying that the Mona Lisa will always win in an art contest against the best chef in Paris' boeuf en croute. Yes, I suppose one could pit the two head-to-head, and one could treat a beautiful plating as a piece of art, but that would be just as silly as trying to eat the Mona Lisa to judge its quality.

And to say that mixing science and religion will cause a distortion of one or the other is like saying that you can't eat boeuf en croute while looking at the Mona Lisa.  Science deals with reality and proof. Religion deals with neither.

I guess this is my call for atheist scholarship that doesn't simply concentrate on the fact that religion is bad. Defining a cause is more than just negating its opposite (politicians could stand to learn that too). Tell me what's so great about atheism. Atheism isn't nihilism; what do atheists belief? It seems that there must be some sort of faith in reality, that the philosophers who have posited that we're not really here are incorrect, that experience defines reality, that there is certainty in empiricism, that because a thing has always been it will always be, that there are immutable laws of the universe. I'm not saying this to be snarky; there is nothing in the word "atheist" which means a rejection of belief, just a rejection of God. I think that the above beliefs are valuable, and with slight tweaks can become beliefs that the religious might (and perhaps should) share.

Atheism isn't science. To conflate the two does a disservice to science. Religion isn't science. They are not mutually exclusive unless the religious belief happens to run counter to the scientific discovery or the religion specifically targets science as being anathema. And in fairness, many religious sects seem to take that avenue. Science will probably win there simply because rejecting science is rejecting reality, and we seem to be living in a world where reality is more important. That wasn't always the case, let us remember.  But science won't "beat" religion just because it might make some members of some faiths question the teachings of those faiths which clash with science and reality. This isn't a contest. There are no points scored for "converts" to either side.

Will atheism beat other belief systems? That's a fairer, but not terribly interesting, question. One might as well ask if Islam will beat Baha'i. It might, in the sense that Islam might wind up containing followers while Baha'i might be left with none. But is that a measure of victory in religion? Does a belief really work by majority rule? Does being believed by more people "prove" a belief, any more than any other attempt to do so?  So even if atheism takes over the world, even if there are no non-atheists left on Earth, will that have "proved" atheism's beliefs to be true?

Belief cannot fight reality; it will lose. But reality also cannot fight belief if belief refuses to fight. I can believe I can raise the dead, but the first time you show up with a random dead body and I can't bring it back to life, you may have your doubts and reality may seem to be trumping my belief (and yours, if you happen to believe that I can do what I say). Sure, I can come up with excuses, but eventually you're going to want me to do something which would violate reality, and I won't be able to or explain it away, and you'll stop believing in me.

But suppose I say that one day, the dead will rise and go to a magical place where they'll live again in a world where there is no suffering, no sin. Is that a fight with reality, or is that something which can be believed without proof? Reality can't really prove me wrong because it hasn't happened yet, and who knows?

"Who knows?" is another one of those powerful questions, like, "Who am I to judge?" Yes, it can be lazy to say, "Who knows?" in the face of questions, but with respect to the future? Scientists and theologians alike can join together and say, "Who knows? It might yet happen in the fullness of time."

If one makes a statement of prediction, whether scientific or belief-based, and that prediction fails to come to pass, that might damage the rule or belief on which the prediction is based. But it doesn't damage either science or faith to acknowledge that such predictions sometimes cannot be made, or that some predictions may be indefinite. They are beliefs, either based in reality or in faith, and they cannot be disproved unless they conflict with reality.

Can science and faith coexist? As long as they stay out of each other's way. It is no more reasonably to try to disprove the existence of God than it is to attempt to read Genesis as geology. Where one or the other loses, it's because they've overstepped their bounds. I hope, at some point, some scientists realize that atheism is trying to do just that.

Not To Be Alone

This article by Disoriented Theology (via Slacktivist) argues that God doesn't want us to be alone, and has some very interesting things to say about that, both in theological and scientific terms. It's worth linking to and reading simply on its own merits, but it made me think of a few things in turn, and since I'm very bad at Web 2.0 interactions, I rarely leave comments.

While I applaud the author for coming to the realization that homosexuality is not a sin and does not deserve condemnation based in faith, I find it fascinating that he, along with so many other recovering homophobes, came to their "eureka" moments in such specific ways, and need such specific and complex rationales for changing their beliefs. It's usually some obscure verse or some complicated chain of reasoning, or coming to know a homosexual (or someone else in the LGBT rainbow) and realizing that this person is not a sinner.

It's been said, but it bears repeating: Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality. Said nothing on the subject.  The so-called "clobber verses" come from sources other than Jesus, some Old Testament, some from the New.  Since Christians don't follow Hebrew law, I'm hard-pressed to say why Christians should... follow Hebrew law?  I don't know; that part has been said before.  Paul gets the lion's share of the NT verses; Jude gets one, but he never actually says "men lying with mankind" or anything like that, he just makes reference to Sodom and Gomorrah, Old Testament, not really about sex but about hospitality, blah blah blah.

As an aside, I do find it intensely amusing that gay men get all the bad press in the Bible, almost as if Christians believe that God likes Him some hot lesbo action just like every right-thinking man. The Gospel according to Kevin, Chapter 2, Verses 17-20 "And the Lord spake and said, 'Cursed are the men who lie with other men as they might lie with other women, for verily is that a sausage fest and no one wants to see that. But blessed are the women who lie with other women, and sometimes kneel in front of other women or behind, blessed be that in particular, but no fatties."

Anyway, anyone who takes Paul's letters as gospel doesn't understand the meaning of the word "gospel," or does understand the meaning of the word "rubric" but has a Bible in which everything has been accidentally printed in red ink. The man never met Jesus. Not once. Didn't hear JC speak. Didn't get to throw stones at Jesus, even. Not what historians would call a primary source.  So if he says something, it's just possible that he might not be speaking for Christ, if you catch my drift. This point has been made before, but it is worth making again and again and again. Augustine: also never met Jesus. The author of the book of Revelation: probably not the Apostle John, and may not have met Jesus. Yes, Christians value divinely-inspired words just as much as those taken down by actual recorders of Jesus (if you believe that) but Mohammed has just as much call to be in the Bible as Paul does, if Mohammed had decided he was talking to Jesus and not God.

But beyond all that, beyond all the convoluted and arcane reasons for coming to realize that gay ≠ sinner, is the fact that Jesus said love everybody. You can't love someone and call them a sinner. We've covered that before. Love everybody.

Just like that. Except maybe with less tattoo artist and more tax collector. Yes, that's what comes into my mind every time I say that Jesus said we have to love everybody.

So why is it so damn complicated?

I do understand that there's a difference between loving everyone and viewing things as sinful; Jesus never said "Nothing is true; everything is permissible!" (and no, I didn't learn that by playing Assassin's Creed; in fact, I didn't even realize it was in Assassin's Creed until just a minute ago).  Which is why the piece way up at the top there is valuable; it contains more than just "love everybody." If you're a recent convert from Paulgustinianism to Christianity, no doubt you can find resonance there.  I've never been a Paulgustinian (or one of its subsects and offshoots) so maybe that's why I find it obvious.

God doesn't want us to be alone. It's as nice a phrasing as any, and one which I think deserves to be put in as commandment 11 or 12.

Separation

We all want bad things to happen to bad people. It's that schadenfreude that drives our criminal justice system, our personal interactions, and a lot of our theology. We like punishments that fit crimes, which is why ,"an eye for an eye," sounds so appealing. And conversely, we tend to get quite annoyed when non-bad or even good things happen to bad people.  It doesn't seem fair.

We also like good things to happen to good people; despite impressions to the contrary, most of us are basically good people, if stupid and weak-willed, and we have fellow human feeling for others even if we can't make use of it much of the time. So we like it when the reward fits the goodness, although we seem less concerned about that than that the punishment fit the crime, possibly because Hammurabi never put in the part about, "a sweet chocolate candy for a friendly pat on the back."  And we really dislike when bad things happen to good people (although we're less willing to make up for the bad things by sharing some of our own good things) because we all like to think of ourselves as basically good and thus we don't want bad things to happen to ourselves.

And we like things to be clear-cut; actions should be good or bad, punishments should neatly fit crimes, rewards should only come to those who deserve them, and life should be fair. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that life is fair and what we want is a bias in the direction of us; that actions are seldom clear-cut, that philosophers will argue forever about morals, motivation, and action, and that most crimes don't present a clear-cut "eye" to take out as punishment, not to mention the fact that taking out the eye doesn't exactly give the victim anything, but rather leaves the state with two half-blind people rather than one.

So when a somewhat bad thing happens to a somewhat bad person, we don't pay much attention because that's complicated and difficult to figure out if the badness of the person deserved the badness of the outcome. And when bad things happen, we look for the evil that must have brought them about in the victims, hence victim-blaming. If we can find something in the victims that is bad, then they weren't like us and we're safe.

And this is why we like Hell.  Sometimes we get deeply into the minutiae of Hell and start ranking people. We like to imagine that it goes something like, "Okay, so on a scale from 1 to Hitler, you rank a 3.7, so you get to have your genitals continually gnawed off by fire ants. You, you're a 5. Big man. Anyway, you'll be heading to the lake of burning excrement." You have to hear the voice in your head; it doesn't work otherwise. But that's subjective, and whether you rank 2 or 7 or 100 (officially known as a milli-Hitler) you're going to wind up somewhere in Hell, writhing about in agony for eternity, with some unpleasant thing, possibly ironic (in a certain sense of the word), happening to your nether regions. It's comforting to think that, even if they don't get their just desserts in this life, bad people will get it good in the next.

We're really nasty assholes.  Essentially good, but also essentially nasty, vindictive assholes.  That's the human condition.

But if you start to really think about it, how can punishment for eternity work? And is it really just as bad to eat meat on Friday as it is to rape children? Wouldn't you get used to it after a while?

If I believed in Hell (I don't, really, but more on that later) I would scoff at these puny descriptions. Hell can't be anything imaginable because anything imaginable isn't bad enough. Putting a human frame of reference on Hell makes it not Hell.  Sure, it might sound bad to have the afore-mentioned fire ants gnawing away, but over the course of eternity, if pain still works the way it does on earth, you're going to get used to it. Over the course of eternity, you're going to get used to anything, and, in fact, everything. Eternity is infinity, and in infinity there's enough to have infinite amounts all of which are infinity. It's a crazy thing like that.

There have been plenty of excellent arguments about the non-existence of a Hell as some people believe, even taking into account a Hell beyond human perception which could be infinitely awful forever. My favorite is simply, "I don't want to believe in a God who would send someone to Hell." And that's true. If God is infinitely loving, how can God send souls to Hell eternally?

But while I don't believe in Dante's Inferno (surprisingly, not a book of the Bible, though you might be excused for thinking so) or even some form of eternal punishment, I do believe that something unpleasant can happen to you after you die, if anything at all happens to you after you die (about which I'm uncertain, and that doesn't necessarily mean I don't believe in God or Gods).  I don't believe in punishment or punishments fitting the crime, because punishments fitting the crime just leaves two people punished. If God was interested in "an eye for an eye," (surprisingly, also not in the Bible, although again you might be forgiven for thinking that Hammurabi was a disciple) then God would take the victomizer's eye and give it to the victim as a new eye. God doesn't seem to work that way, plus again, punishment of that kind doesn't really fit in with my idea of the divine.

There is a Hell, though. And it's why any conception of Hell would work; not because of the ants and the tender areas, but because of one thing; if you're in Hell, God isn't there. You don't have to call that lack of God Hell; you can call it whatever you'd like. You can even remove God from the equation and talk about the Ur-Being, the Oversoul, the Ideal, the Dao, whatever. You can believe that life is this state. You can believe that you keep being returned to life to try to make it out, or you can believe you get one shot. But there is a a state of being with God, and a state of not being with God, and my Hell is the latter.

God doesn't send us to Hell. We send ourselves there. God is waiting, wishing that we would just turn around, just look out from ourselves, feel that love, that oneness. But many of us don't. And nothing is going to stop us from an eternity of Gold Cities in the Sky where only our sort of people are allowed, where there's a big man with a long white beard and Magic Jesus and there's nothing dirty or ugly or unpleasant. And we spend so much time waiting for that, that maybe we get it, and we fly around on angel wings, and many of us are probably bad enough people that we don't care that God isn't there.

"For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

If Jesus is right, being with God is going to involve a lot of hungry, thirsty, naked, sick strangers, probably tax collectors and lepers. You don't want to be there. Go ahead, stay in your Flying Golden Cloud City with the clean people, the right-thinking people. Stay comfortable. Get your solid gold Cadillac, your harem of beautiful houris, your endless bacchanal. Hang out with Magic Jesus and Old Man Jehovah and let them tell you over and over again just how right you were and are.

You think you know what God is and what God looks like. You've followed the Dao and you were sure it was the Dao, so it must have been the Dao because you made sure. You win at life!

And maybe, one day, we'll realize where we are, and what's missing. And we'll run around looking for "the least of these." And depending on how I'm feeling on any particular day, I may or may not believe that God will let us find each other, and find God. And we'll leave our empty golden cities behind.

Love the Sinner

People seem to have moved away from the phrase (probably because it sounds bad) but there used to be a lot of talk about "love the sinner, hate the sin." As long as a sinner was welcome in the group's midst, even if they didn't approve of the sin, they would use that rationale if questioned. It's a bit like "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to things that "sinners" don't find sinful.

The Catholic church has been saying that it doesn't have a problem with people being homosexual, just as long as they don't commit any sins. And the list of sins includes homosexual activity. So basically the Catholic church is trying to have its cake and eat it too; as long as you're not a practicing homosexual, you're allowed in church. Hell, I imagine that even if you slipped up and gave in to temptation, as long as you regarded it as a slip-up and not as finally allowing yourself to be who you are, the church will let you go to confession and then come back. It's a little like premarital sex that way, except not, because I don't know too many Catholics who allow the prohibition on premarital sex get in the way of their going to church.

So you can be gay and Catholic! Great news, guys! And they don't care, as long as you never do anything homosexual. I guess it's a step up from, "Simply being homosexual is an abomination." But not really.

Jesus didn't spend a lot of time hating people. He was all about love, and while he got rather snippy with people, his love was for all. The picture of God one gets from Jesus is that of a loving parent: sure, we may occasionally do things which cause our parents to lose their tempers and snap at us, or punish us, but they love us and they want what's best for us.

So Jesus definitely loved the sinner. Hating the sin on the other hand, was more of a Paul thing. Or an Augustine thing.

Modern Christians seem to have become overly preoccupied with what other people are doing. We hate sin in others because it's sin in others, and that's a bad thing, as if somehow, if they sin, we're responsible.  And in a way, we are; we are our brothers' (and sisters') keepers (talk about a quote that gets taken out of context).

But does anyone really stop to think about why we should "hate the sin?" Why are we responsible, and for what? I think many people hate sin because they think it makes them look bad, or that God will punish us all because some of us are sinful (well, they're usually forgetting that all of us are sinful, and also that God is forgiving), or for some reason which affects them. The sin of others affects them, and thus they hate that sin, and if they're in a particularly good mood, they don't hate the sinner.

Sin doesn't work that way. God doesn't work that way. The Lord's Prayer, which certain Christians seem to have a real problem with needing to say at inappropriate times, goes:

Our parent in heaven, we hold your name in reverence and awe as is fitting. May we be on earth as you are in Heaven. You provide for us and you forgive us as an example and a lesson in how to treat others. Don't lead us astray, but rather protect us from evil, because you are all things in all ways at all times, so you can do things like that. Amen.

Yeah, so that's not how it goes, but that's what it means.  There's a certain level of Old-Time Religion cruft layered in there: do we really need to ask God to protect us from evil and not to lead us into temptation? Or rather, would we want a parent that requires us to ask to be well-parented?  And God's kingdom on Earth has often (unpleasantly) been seen as an appeal for theocracy, although Jesus quite clearly had no political ambitions. It's tricky, I know, but Jesus was always talking about things in oblique ways: the "kingdom of Heaven" did not mean, despite claims to the contrary, a big gold city in the clouds. "Thy kingdom come... on earth as it is in Heaven."  Physical kingdoms don't arrive. Gold Sky City wasn't going to slam to earth at some point, bringing the Kingdom of God with it.

What it boils down to is that Jesus wanted us to pray that we would learn well from God's example. And he threw in some things to appeal to the parts of the human psyche that need to propitiate God.  The important parts are that God provides, protects, and forgives, and we should do likewise.

So, to return to the topic at hand, where's the part about, "Also, please don't smite us because we allowed the heathen to survive?" "Oh righteous and angry God, it was their fault not ours, please smite them and don't hurt us because we've been good and said all the magic words." God doesn't give a damn about "them." God cares about you. Jesus was pretty clear on that too.

Then why is sin a bad thing? Why are we concerned about our own sins (supposing that we are, as we should be)? If God is forgiving, why should we care if we do bad things? How can God be completely loving and forgiving and yet send people to Hell?

For a start, let's ignore the Hell part because that's a can of worms that I don't feel like opening today, and with it goes any concept that God will punish us for our sins. Yes, I'm suggesting that God doesn't punish anyone for anything (and that doesn't have to be true; forgiveness is not the same thing as freedom from punishment). Why worry about sin if we'll be forgiven? Why do we care about our own sins, if we're not supposed to care about others'?

We care for two reasons: sin hurts people, and in sinning, we divide ourselves from God. I'd argue, actually, that the second follows from the first; by injuring someone or something that God loves, we do injury to God and thus we pull away from him. It's hard not to pull away when we hurt someone or something.

Sin doesn't have to hurt others; sinners can hurt themselves. But God loves them, and thus by hurting themselves they hurt God. We don't want to hurt God, so we don't want to hurt things that God loves. Even if sin doesn't hurt the body, it hurts the soul. It takes us away from God, and God misses us. I don't pretend to understand how God loves us; I've been using the "parent" metaphor, but divine love is by nature unexpressible by something non-divine.

If I were addicted to a drug, even if it had no effect on anyone else (and it would), it would hurt me. Would it be right to say that you hate my addiction? You hate my drug use?  One might say that, but what one should mean is that one hates seeing this action or condition hurting me.

So how then can we hate sin? I think a lot of people when they say they hate sin mean that they hate it because it's sin. That hardly matters. They say they want to save people from Hell. But if you're Hell-bound, they don't feel sorry for you, they view you as an ill that must be corrected. I wonder if many so-called Christians of a certain stripe would feel just as good about a wicked person dying as being "saved/"

So "love the sinner, hate the sin," is silly.  God doesn't care if you hate the sin or not. God wants you to love everyone, and if someone you love is doing something that harms him/herself, that removes him/herself from the presence of God, you shouldn't "hate" that. You should help. And if you believe that something intrinsic to someone is the cause of this removal from God, then you're saying that God made this person so he/she could be removed from God, or you're saying that you secretly believe that it's a choice rather than an intrinsic property, in which case you're being a hypocrite.

Love the sinner. That's what Jesus did. He loved the sinner and he wanted us, sinners all, to love each other. No judgments. No exceptions. Love God and love everybody. There's no room for hate in the kingdom of Heaven.

Judgement Is Different Than Wisdom

I find myself in the somewhat unenviable position of having to talk about the Pope. But only as an intro to talking about something else.

Pope Francis recently said, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” My first thought was, "Well, you're the Pope, that's who," because I was feeling slightly flip. Popes in the past certainly haven't felt any compunction about judging people even if they search for the Lord and have good will.  But that's not fair; it is a statement of Biblical teaching.  "Who am I to judge?" is an excellent question.

The favorite scripture to quote in this discussion is Matthew 7:1, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."  It's the beginning of a larger speech by Jesus which basically boils down to, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but is more interesting than that.

First, we've got judgement.  There are Christians who seem to think that this "judgment" is "wisdom," which it isn't. You'll hear them argue, "Well, Jesus just meant that I should keep my house before I judge other people's houses.  Plus, I need to be able to judge people as being good or evil, because otherwise anarchy, dogs marrying cats, rain falling upward, and teh gay!"  A lot of them point to various places in the Old Testament for support, but let's face it, Old Testament God was pretty judgmental.

Yes, we need to use our judgment, in the sense that we should be shrewd as serpents. Whether Old or New Testament, there's no commandment that says, "Thou shalt judge the hell out of thy fellow man, for thou knowest all." In fact, God's pretty clear on that point, even when he's being judgmental. The buck stops with the Big Guy.

There's a difference between judgment as "wisdom or discernment" and judgment as in "passing judgment on someone," but some people seem to have a hard time with that concept. One gentleman (I hesitate to give him traffic, but citation where citation is due) even goes so far as to to say:

All the prisons would be empty and thieves, serial killers, drug dealers, rapists, and murderers would be loose in your neighborhood.

You could not discipline your children and teach them not to steal, lie, do drugs, or give in to peer pressure.

School could not be mandated (by parents or govt) but if children did attend, they could not be evaluated as to their progress. Everyone should graduate regardless of their advance. Students could not be graded or disciplined.

You could not judge any false doctrine and would have to allow it to be taught from your church’s pulpit ("discerning" is the same thing as "judging").

You should leave your children with anyone who said was qualified to be a baby-sitter. You should not bother to check his/her background. Later, you should not be upset if this baby-sitter turned out to be a child-molester, because "thou shalt not judge."

You should marry anyone that asked. You shouldn’t worry about his/her character or beliefs. What if he beats you up? What if she runs around on you? You shouldn’t get so mad because "thou shalt not judge."

 Yes, that's a straw man (because come on, there's a difference between the criminal justice system and judgment of that particular passage) but it illustrates a common perspective: we should ignore Matthew (and by extension El Cristo Grande) because obviously Jesus didn't want us to be all wishy-washy liberal non-judgmental. My first response is, "Which Jesus are you talking about?" because the Jesus I know was pretty non-judgmental, at least about temporal matters. Lepers, tax-collectors, prostitutes, the poor, the sick, and so on: he loved them, and you can't love someone while being judgmental about their condition.

But secondly, Jesus isn't telling his followers not to make judgments, he's telling them not to pass judgment. You can say, 'Oh, he was just saying, 'Don't pass judgment on people when you're doing the same thing,' or, 'If you pass judgment unfairly, it will be visited on you by a vengeful God,'" but that's not true. He said, 'Don't pass judgment, or you will have judgment passed upon you."  He also said, "You judge after the flesh; I judge no one."  Did you catch that last clause there? "I judge no one."

Let's return to the text. "For what judgement you pass, it shall be passed upon you, and what you mete out will be returned to you." Nothing about, "God will judge you based on your own judgments." Do unto others. If you judge others harshly, others will likely judge you harshly. That's practical; elsewhere, Jesus also talks about the less-practical reasons for doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, even if they do unto you in a way which really, really makes you wish you could do unto them with a hammer and fire.  Love one another.  Be excellent to each other. Whatever you want to call it.

Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother or sister, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when there’s a log in your eye? You deceive yourself! First take the log out of your eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s or sister’s eye.

There's more here than meets the eye (pun unintended but once I made it I let it stay, which is usually what people mean when they say anything about puns in writing). First off, don't be hypocritical; if you're judging someone for something you do yourself, don't do it.

Second, really don't be hypocritical, because you can't see what's in your own eye. Maybe you think, "Oh, it's just a splinter, I'll help my brother or sister with the splinter in their eye first." "Oh, what I'm doing isn't as bad as what they're doing." "Oh, my house is a bit messy, but I'll make my neighbor clean up theirs first because it's a sty." "Bullshit," says Jesus (not in so many words). "You deceive yourself! You've got a log up in your eye, and maybe you should get that one out first, huh smart guy?" Splinter to log; see what he did there?

Thirdly, Jesus most definitely didn't say, "But occasionally there are people who don't have anything in their eyes and they should be allowed to judge people all they want because hey, they're awesome." "Why do you see the splinter in their eye but not the log in yours?" You.  All of you. Not, "Why do some people do that?" "Why do you all do that?"

Fourthly, Jesus didn't say, "Why do you see the splinter of elm wood painted green with hints of patina in your brother's or sister's eye and not that exact same thing only bigger in yours?" Jesus was a big one for abstraction. Yes, he could be talking about castigating someone for looking at another woman when you've got three on the side. Or maybe (and go with me here) he could have been saying, "You're all sinners. You've all got logs in your eyes. Big, small, different colors, shapes, origins, there are logs in your eyes, and you don't see them. You don't notice because you're so busy looking for specks in other people's eyes. Guess what? You'll probably find them, but maybe you should check out the logs in your own eyes first, Charlie. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?  Ring any bells?"

Lastly (otherwise we'll never get to the rest) "first take the log our of your eye, and then you'll see clearly how to take the splinter out of your neighbor's eye." "For now I see through a glass darkly..." Jesus is practically screaming, "You're human! You don't know what a splinter is! You can't see your own log, and you're trying to see splinters, and how the fuck can you when all you can see is log, because you've got one in your eye! A log!"

Judge not. You don't know what you're doing. Don't bother.  How much clearer can Jesus be?

"Don’t give holy things to dogs, and don’t throw your pearls in front of pigs. They will stomp on the pearls, then turn around and attack you." Aside from being good advice, it would seem to imply that you need to figure out who the dogs and pigs in this life are, and judge them. What's up, Jesus? Didn't you just say...

"See, everyone gets that mixed up. Look at the context."

I don't claim to have conversations with Jesus. That was my inner literary critic talking. Christians (no names, no blame) are great ones for taking things out of context, even when they're supposedly taking things in context. And the context here is Jesus talking about judging people and how you shouldn't do that. So how can we reconcile this?

I don't propose to answer; there are biblical scholars for that. I merely propose to give my feelings on the subject.  My speculations.  Aided by Matthew, who was, after all, there at the time.

"Jesus wasn't talking about real pearls, right? I mean, come on, nobody's that dumb. Wasn't even talking about real valuables, or real pigs. But in a simplistic way, he was saying, 'Don't give it out to just anybody, man.' Don't open yourself up to bad people because they'll turn around and abuse your trust, you know?

"But Christ was not a simplistic guy. He would be saying one thing, and you get into the shallows and he's saying another, but then you walk out until the water's over your head and he's saying something else. He's not saying, 'Figure out which people are pigs and dogs and then don't give your pearls and holy stuff to them.' Jesus wanted you to love everyone, man, and if that's not giving your pearls to some pretty big swine, I don't know what is.

"Look at what he said before: 'Don't judge, otherwise you're going to get judged.' Do unto others and all that. Judgement belongs to God, and He gave it to you so that you could make sure you're walking that line. Not so you could make other people walk that line. Pull that log out of your own eye. Judge yourself, your actions, with the gift of judgment and morals given to you by the Big Guy.

That's your pearls, man. Holy things. Not, "Oh, don't trust your baby with a rapist." Don't give holy things to dogs and throw pearls to swine, because the Father gave you your judgment not to waste on others but to use on yourself. No one is going to appreciate being judged. They're going to ignore it and turn around and attack you. Result: wasted pearls and angry swine, man."

Some versions of the text break off here, because we now move into "Ask and ye shall receive."  Which is a good part too, but less about judgment, although the whole point of Matthew 7 could be said to be, "I don't care who you are: if you ask, you shall receive, so there's no point in judging.  Anyone can receive. Just ask.  It may not be what you were expecting, but unlike people who promise things they can't deliver, God will deliver."

So judgment: the Bible has more to say about it, as does Jesus. But don't mistake, "Who am I to judge?" with, "Who am I to say whether that's good or not?" We have to be able to say what's good or not, though as Jesus has helpfully point out, our knowledge and understanding are imperfect, so we also have to be willing to change what we say is good or not. Moral judgment shouldn't get thrown out the window just because we're all sinners. "Who am I to judge?" should be understood to mean, "Who am I to pass judgment on my fellow man?"  Hell, the Pope even qualified it by talking about what other qualities his "fellow man" most possess to fall under his statement.

Who am I to pass judgment on my fellow people, on my friends, neighbors, brothers and sisters? What gives me the unmitigated gall to ignore that log in my eye? Why should I use my God-given moral judgment for purposes other than why it is given: to follow God myself. All I can do for my fellow people is to love them. If I see imperfections, that's not my problem; I have to love them as myself, as I love God.

So where do people get off judging anything others do? There's a difference between seeing someone doing something you think is wrong and knowing that you don't want them telling you what's right and wrong; and seeing someone doing something you think is wrong and morally castigating them, telling them they're a horrible person, and saying they're going to hell.  And even if you think what they're doing is wrong, maybe you're wrong. I don't care if you get it straight out of the Bible. You're human. You don't know everything. The Bible is frighteningly clear on that point.  You can only judge based on your faint glimmer of understanding, whatever that might be. Best to keep that sort of thing to yourself.  You don't want to look stupid when you meet God.

There Is No God

As I said, I do have my days of atheism. I suppose one could classify me as an agnostic, but I reject that label because it seems too wishy-washy. I don't know if there's a God (or Gods) or not, but that's hardly unique to agnosticism. And I don't have periods where I don't know if I believe in the divine or not; I have periods where I do, and periods where I don't.

There are two camps of atheism, to my mind, and in which one you fall depends on your own personal bent, I imagine. And of course there are atheists who are just mainline, no-camp atheists in the same way that there are mainline Protestants who aren't fundamentalists or extremely liberal.  No-camp atheists include people who don't believe in God not by choice but by default: they weren't raised religiously, they never really had any experience of religion that was transformative, they don't think about their beliefs or lack thereof, they don't care, or any combination thereof which has resulted in atheism without a choice made. I suspect a certain percentage of the church-going population of the world are secretly just atheists by default; they've always gone to church, but they don't really believe it.

We're also not going to discuss theological nihilists, who reject any sort of belief in anything. That would, on its face, seem to be atheism, but atheism isn't a lack of belief, it's a lack of belief in God.  I don't know of too many people who truly don't believe in anything.  Atheists are even now angrily clamoring that they don't believe, they know, but guess what atheists: you believe in atheism. It's not "faith" but it is a belief in the same way that every idea has its believers. Somewhere at the bottom of your logically-structured atheism is an axiom of some sort that you hold to be self-evident, but axioms are beliefs that we agree to hold in common so we can draw logical conclusions from them. You believe too.

So there are two camps of atheism that I've seen: the Non-Believers and the Can't-Believers. The Non-Believers hold a belief: God doesn't exist. Usually there are corollaries like "the world would be better off if we all stopped believing in God" but "the world would be better off if we all believed [blank]" is hardly unique to atheists. Non-Believers believe in Non, that is, a lack of God. Richard Dawkins et. al. would probably argue this point, but I'm just classifying them, not telling them what they have to believe.

Non-Belief can be beneficial; it promotes science, tries to dispel myth, and seeks truth. Its adherents are no less moral than anyone else, and they ask questions which should be asked. Many of them fall into the trap of confusing a belief in God with being religiously organized, and so they ascribe faults to non-atheists which should instead be ascribed to their churches/sects/creeds. It's too bad, because they do make decent points about religion and about belief, but by conflating the two, they leave themselves open to attacks on both.  Religions will point out that the groups which have caused the most destruction in history were not religious; any fanatical adherents of causes can cause destruction, especially if the cause is inherently destructive, which most religions aren't. And believers will simply say that all the points of the Non-Believers should properly be ascribed to religions, and that belief in God itself is not the problem.

The other camp, the Can't-Believers, are a more interesting group. I would venture a guess that there are more "converts" here, although I have no numbers to support that guess and there are plenty of "converts" to Non-Belief. But Can't-Believers almost have to have previously been believers, or at least on the fence. This is the group that includes people whose faith has been destroyed, either by some tragedy or by coming from a restrictive faith into the open and finding that they can no longer believe at all. One might further classify by what a Can't-Believer doesn't believe in: God as a whole, a loving/caring God, a God who interacts with the world at all, a non-capricious God, etc. And some Can't-Believers still believe in God but have no faith; they may hate God or reject God or some other form of anti-God belief.

Can't-Believers may masquerade as believers in a way that Non-Believers don't. They may continue to be religious because it's habit, because it brings them comfort, for the community, or in hope that they might one day recover their lost faith. They tend to be less proselytizing than Non-Believers: you won't find too many best-sellers written by Can't-Believers for the very simple reason that they probably don't care if other people believe. If they do, then they're probably on their way to become a Non-Believer. I find myself in this camp when I visit atheism.

There's a terrible, heart-wrenching quality about being unable to believe, having one's faith destroyed. You had something and you've lost it, but you're not yet to the point where you necessarily think that you're better without it.  Maybe that's a distinction that could be drawn as well: some atheists feel they're better that way, and others do not. There, I would safely classify myself as agnostic, because I don't know. I don't know if I'd be better with the belief or without it, because I exist in both places simultaneously.

There are days when I think that there can't possibly be a God because if there were, such a God would have to be a terrifying god in the style of the Aztecs and Assyrians, a god who would demand blood sacrifice or who would punish sinners. And I don't want to believe in a God like that. It's a strange feeling, believing that God must be a kind, forgiving, and just God, and yet believing that such a God can't exist. It's a belief in something that you hope is wrong. I don't know whether those who belong to religions where God is an angry, vengeful God feel the same way. I would expect that they don't; they believe in this God and all they want to do is to do whatever their religion says will keep this God happy with them.  Theirs is a faith, a faith I don't envy but which is entirely different from my experience, which is a lack of faith. I lose faith in a kind, forgiving, just God. But I hope that I'm wrong, because I still believe that there could be one.

I don't know if that makes me an atheist on those days or not. I think it fits the bill: I stop believing in God because I believe God can't exist. But perhaps it should be more properly said to be a loss of faith in that in which I believe. Lack of faith doesn't make you an atheist. I'm not sure what it does make you; afiduciist isn't a word and it's not easy to spell or say, and apistisist is similarly difficult and sounds vaguely dirty. But while many times "faith" is equated with "religion," so someone who has lost faith would be said to be a-religious, I think "faith" is simpler than religion. If belief is the rock, faith is the hands that hold you to that rock, that keep you from being swept away in the storm. Without the rock, the hands are useless, but if the hands lose grip, the rock doesn't cease to exist; it simply doesn't help you when you're washed away. You might be washed back up on the same rock or another, and might then grab hold again, but those rocks do not appear and disappear.

So perhaps I don't have periods of atheism, but rather periods of loss of faith. That might or might not be more hopeful, depending on whether I think that belief in God is a bad thing. For the record, I don't; I think that many beliefs, like tools, can be used poorly or wrongly and can cause actions which are evil even if the belief itself doesn't support such an action. I reject the idea that belief in God must be incompatible with science, or that it must mean that I am unrealistic. In fact, in some periods where I lose faith, it's because I can't rationalize my faith with my realism, and realism often wins in such cases. But that is an issue with faith, not with belief.

On the other hand, I don't believe that morality requires a higher power. On days when I'm feeling almost atheistic, I might even say that a higher power is morality, and that God is simply the sum of existence. I'm fascinated with the question of why people are moral, in the absence of belief in God or with such belief. That, to me, is a question divorced from theist/atheist sparring. Atheists get asked the question a lot as if it's an indictment of atheism; I ask the question because I think answering it supports whatever structure a person has. But that's a question for another time.

I think it's beneficial, if sad, to lose one's faith. Not forever. But to get lost is a good way to see things one otherwise wouldn't have seen. Doubting Thomas gets a lot of flak because he didn't just trust Jesus, so Christians assume they are supposed to be blindly faithful as well. But questions and doubts are healthy and important. Debate strengthens both positions, and questions refine faith. Anyone who tells you not to question or doubt doesn't want you to look hard at what they're saying. Which means it's probably either wrong, or it's leading you somewhere you wouldn't go ordinarily.