What this means is that, to each group I'm involved in, I
hold a number of heterodox sociopolitical beliefs. I left Facebook in early 2012 basically
because of this; it felt like every day one group of people I cared about and
respected would post a "people who believe X are what's wrong with
society" statement that would back-door call me an idiot because they
didn't guess that any of their friends would dream to believe X. Every well I drank from was poisoned, so to
speak, and the ensuing melancholy made it difficult to feel sufficiently good
about myself to get anything done.
"Even a fool who
keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed
intelligent." - Proverbs 17:28
So what ties all of me together? Am I two-faced or cowardly in what I
believe? I don't think so at least. The key for me is apparently rare but
surprisingly simple:
I respect the
viewpoint difference between me and God.
When I explain what I mean, I think you will agree that this
is the single biggest reason (apart from hypocrisy) that some end up hating
religion. Buoyed by passages such as
Matthew 7:1ff (you'll be judged as strictly/nicely as you judge people), Romans
14:5 (being convinced about something doesn't automatically mean everybody must
agree with you), and James 4:11 (only God is the ultimate judge), here's what
I'm talking about.
The Bible claims, as you would expect, that God made the
universe and is over it. What that means
theologically is that God gets to set terms and conditions on the use of the
universe in a way that would make no sense for me to do. Being the lawyer that I am, I like to
conceive of it as God having copyright control over the universe - He made it,
so he gets to say what happens with it.
If Dr. Seuss's estate wants to be incredibly strict with fair
use/parody/all that, I don't agree that they should care so much, but I don't
hold the rights to their stuff. If
Disney wants to warp copyright law just to keep Mickey Mouse under wraps, I
don't agree with that line, but why would I?
It's not my stuff.
So when the Bible says X behavior is offensive, I don't
always see why that is, but it's not my universe, so why would I have found it
offensive in the first place? I don't
care about X behavior personally one way or the other and I have no cause to. Just as you might not care about certain racy
jokes at work but you understand why there's a policy in place against them and
could articulate that policy to somebody who asks, so I can be ambivalent about
a bunch of things that God cares about and be fine with that while telling you
what the Bible says about them.
And this is where the breakdown occurs in society, I
think. There are people who,
understandably at the outset, try to conform their thinking to God's as
outlined in the Bible. But their version
of it - feeling like they have to both ascertain every reason God cares about
something and then care about the thing just as hard - makes them come across
like they are God. If you've ever been pulled over by a cop who
seems way too happy to get you for speeding, that's exactly the type of
Christianity I'm talking about.
Essentially, the cop agrees too much with the speeding law. If the cop ran the universe, there'd be no
speeders, so when there is a speeder, the cop acts like (s)he runs the
universe.
People don't convert anyone; God does. "What then is Apollos? What is Paul?
Servants through whom you believed[.]" (1 Corinthians 3:5) My role in the universe isn't to get a piece
of running it, or act like I run it, or even agree 100%
with how it is run. My goal is to be a
servant and tell people what God says; what happens after that is basically
none of my business. So why go into my
personal relationships looking for a "win" with them, like this was
sports or politics? I'm a servant and a
messenger; neither job has a win-loss record.
And this is how, whether you are an atheist, a Christian, or
something else, I keep some friends you might not expect. I believe in a higher power, but it isn't me.
So while I can tell you some things He
cares about as the One who runs the universe, I'm not in the same position as
Him, so my interactions with you are different.
I'm supposed to love everyone and be a servant as best I can, and I
can't do that if I'm the cop and everybody looks like they're speeding. If I ran the universe, a lot of things would
be different around here. But I don't,
so I'm not going to act like I do, and the goal of my religious activity isn't
to ascertain every reason the universe might be run this way. My goal is to follow, obey, and serve.
Maybe that sounds glib to you - a version of "I just
work here" - but the truth is I do
just work here, so I'm going to pour myself into my work rather than into being
bossy. A bunch of God's concerns don't
make personal sense to me, but they don't need to, and I'm not going to
apologize for believing He has those concerns even as I don't care about them
myself. I don't relish telling people
certain things from the Bible, but as with the example cop, I don't think
talking about right and wrong is a thing you're supposed to relish anyway. You're supposed to figure it out, but there's
no triumph or smugness available in it; it's just a thing. It's a shame that modern western Christianity
seems to have forgotten this (assuming it ever knew) in a culture that overly
cares about publicly taking sides and identifying with groups.
So there's my answer.
Hopefully it's coherent.
