The following is a work-in-progress. It’s a draft I wrote for a Writers Group I go to once a month (more or less). I’ll be editing, revising, reworking, redoing it in the future and will post the new versions. Your comments will help me fine tune my thoughts. Thank you in advance.
Does Not Play Well With Others
In this age of diversity, tolerance is required. Tolerance of those diverse from ourselves and tolerance of those so much like ourselves that we can’t stand them. Yet, there are those who are not, and do not claim to be, and claim that they will never be religiously tolerant. The Christian Fundamentalist and Christian Evangelical come to mind. They want to dictate what others believe and how others act. Putting aside the issues of hypocrisy and assuming they are on the up and up, how do we deal with them? Is it possible to tolerate them and let them believe what they want to believe? If so, how do we go about doing this? If not, then what, exactly, do we do when you can’t live with someone and you can’t shoot them?
In other words, how do we tolerate those who do not play well with others?
So as to not “stoop” to their level, we cannot dictate to them what they can or cannot believe. This seems very reasonable because that is the major complaint we have of them. So, is that the answer? Do we let the Christian Fundamentalists and Evangelicals believe what they want and preach what they want and we do on with our lives and with our beliefs?
The answer appears to be “yes” but with a major caveat: Keep your beliefs to yourself and don’t let me catch wind of them. This is the same basic attitude we have grown into regarding smoking. Used to be that a smoker could smoke anywhere she liked as long as she didn’t force a cigarette on us. But now, we are bothered by the smell and fear for our lives and so we’ve told the smokers that they can’t smoke just anywhere. They must smoke outside. And then we started getting bothered by having to walk past the smokers congregated just outside the main doors on cold, rainy days and so we told them they had to move further away or couldn’t smoke anywhere on the premises.
This is the attitude that is brewing towards the Fundamentalist. Don’t bother me with your ideas. Don’t preach to me as I walk into my place of business. Don’t try to influence the government with your crazy ideas. Just go off by yourselves and believe what you want to believe.
The problem is that this is impossible. Not because of the person but because of the belief. Pretty much everyone believes that murder is wrong. We have enacted legislation to this effect and enforce it daily. There may be some discussion as to degree of guilt and appropriate punishment but there are clear-cut cases of murder. No one has an issue with the belief that murder is wrong being inflicted on everyone regardless of race, creed, etc. Even if someone does not believe that murder is wrong and wants to murder in private without bothering us about it, we generally do not accept their belief and still hold them accountable.
Now consider the stance that abortion is murder — cut and dried murder. Anyone holding that belief would be considered immoral if they let others committing or facilitating murder by abortion get away with it. Even if that person did so in private and didn’t bother us with it.
By condemning those who publicly and vehemently oppose abortion and those who try to get anti-abortion legislation passed are we not condemning their beliefs and telling them that they can’t believe whatever they want but must believe what we tell them to?
Separation of church and state seems to be a much discussed issue these days. The separation of moral ideals and religious ideals seems to be the crux. But what if your morality is a direct result of your religion? What if your religion dictates your morals? How can you separate them?
What would you say about a Christian who went to church and prayed piously and tithed and was a deacon or elder on Sunday but then cheated and lied and stole on Monday? A hypocrite, no doubt. If the Christian does not live his Christian life outside of church, then what kind of Christian is he? How can a truly Christian woman NOT shade all her decisions and actions by what she believes? We all do this; perhaps implicitly but we all do this. Some beliefs are not religious in nature but the principle, I think, is the same. Is it reasonable to expect, then, that a religious president not make decisions based on his religion?
The only real way to effect a separation of church and state is to have atheists running the country. I doubt that despite all the so-called, self-proclaimed liberals in this country that a Bertrand Russell or a Richard Dawkins could come close to winning an election. We may not want a president who is influenced by his religion but sure as hell don’t want a president who doesn’t go to some kind of church.
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