jimrigby.org

1. Never assume just because someone is beating you with a Bible they’ve actually read it.

2. Even if a bible bully has read scripture they still don’t know squat if they don’t understand the punchline is love.

3. Bullying does not become Christian just because the weapon employed is a Bible.

4. Remember Jesus never saw, much less signed off on, the Bible, the creeds, nor the institutional church. A little humility is always in order.

5. And, finally, if as the Bible says the aim of Christianity is to love, then cruelty not unbelief is the ultimate heresy.

(Originally posted on my Facebook page in 2021)

My favorite etiology of the word “religion” means to “reconnect.”

When I use the word “religion” I am not interested in the sects or institutions that most people are referring to when they use that word. I am curious about how you personally put the pieces of your life together.

In philosophy the subject of “first things” is sometimes called “metaphysics.” It deals with the assumptions we have to make to begin thinking about topics like meaning and purpose. We simply do not have the information to put a worldview together and yet our minds will move to some sense of the whole of things. Science can do some of that work, ethics can do part of that work, art can do part of that work, but how do you enough pieces of your life together to feel integral within and harmonious without?

The task of metaphysics is both necessary and impossible. How do we experience life completely when so much of it is a mystery to us? How do we blend the rational parts of our awareness with the irrational glandular fluids that give our life meaning? How do we work around our tendency to believe what we want to believe?

Make no mistake, how we do this task of reconnection affects everyone. If my religion cannot stand the light of day my mind will live in the shadows like a toadstool. More than that, if my religion is dishonest it will call light itself a heresy.

What I personally believe about such topics as homosexuality, or a pandemic, or America does not belong to me alone. If my morality is based on my own cultural comfort zones, it will come to consider difference itself to be an abomination. Somehow my ethics must submit itself to a common scale or what I call ethics will be an exercise in justification of myself and my group.

If I believe the mystery of things can be outlined into human language like one of Euclid’s theorem I will be unable to tell the difference between what I can think and what can exist. To think I can privatize reason is an act of piracy against my human family and the web of life. I must rigorously test my beliefs and recognize that whatever belongs to me alone is but the shadow of truth. Life is what we share.

So when I use the word “religion” I am not interested in your sect and tradition. I am curious about how you are integrating your life within and how you are harmonizing your inner life with the web of life and with the cosmic process to which we ultimately belong.

Religion consigns me to caves of illusion if it has not learned to breath the common air and live in the light of day common to us all.

When Christianity seeped into Europe, Augustine covered the naked love of Jesus with Neo-Platonic metaphysics. Later, Aquinas constructed a gilded cage for love within the rational framework of Aristotle.

Soon Christianity would be tainted even further with the seeds of colonialism. Christian empires would feel themselves “called” to bring their Christ to the nations. Conquest and exploitation were justified under that mantle of evangelism. Unfortunately, the Christ imperialists praised looked more like themselves than the dimly remembered Jewish rabbi who called followers to leave just such systems of domination, to sell what they had, and to share the world.

Eventually, cultural Christianity would help give birth to a new Christ. Imperialist propaganda would replace the teachings of Jesus with the false Christ of Colonial Capitalism. Believers could still give lip service to love, but one’s allegiance was now to generic creeds, and one’s loyalty was to cultural hierarchies of power.

There was no longer room for naked love in the new Imperial Christianity. As capitalist empires celebrated Christmas, the cold dark night of the Christmas story was replaced with garish lights. The “silent night” of the new birth was lost in a cacophony of commercial music. Most tragically, the message of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to All” was replaced with nationalistic pride and to a narcissistic form of Christianity where Jesus served as a mascot for systems of greed and domination.

Jackson Browne is not a Christian, but, he wrote one of my favorite Christmas songs of all time called “The Rebel Jesus:”

“We guard our world with locks and guns

And we guard our fine possessions

And once a year when Christmas comes

We give to our relations

And perhaps we give a little to the poor

If the generosity should seize us

But if anyone of us should interfere

In the business of why there are poor

They get the same as the rebel Jesus.”

Whether or not you, the reader, are Christian, you have an incredible stake in this conversation. The insanity being expressed in the name of a nationalized and capitalistic Christ affects us all. Ignoring Christian nationalism will not work. Pathological religion does not leave us alone just because we leave IT alone. Bad religion does not die gracefully, it becomes predatory to every alternative point of view.

It seems to me this discussion requires that we not to get stuck in the dichotomy between theism and atheism long enough to find our common ground of sanity in the unifying depths of naked love.

I always find it interesting that early Christians were accused of being Atheists. To some observers, the threat of the early church was not that they had a wrong creed, but that they seemed to have no real creed at all. The “creeds” they recited were more like hymns than philosophies. Their faith could only be reduced to a life of love.

Bad religion affects us all but Christians bear a particular responsibility to renounce the false Christ of Capitalism and empire and to return to the naked love of humankind that Jesus and all great spiritual teachers have called us.

When I was young I thought there was a path in life I was supposed to find. Lacking information, I felt frustrated and lost. Here are a few thoughts for any who similarly find themselves floundering for a way through life’s fog.

First of all, realize that metaphors like “path” can be a part of the problem. The metaphor of life as a journey can make us feel we are currently in the wrong spot and need to grope our way to something better. We can only start where we are. In a sense, the journey is always to here and now.

The point of metaphors is to give us insights about living. Religion becomes a serious problem if we ever come to believe in our symbols are ends in themselves. By studying various cultures we can learn the difference between our vessels for understanding and the lives we seek to live.

Beware of any teacher who only knows one path. It is almost guaranteed they will assume what has been helpful to them will be helpful to you. A good teacher will be like an eye doctor trying different lenses to find which produces clarity of vision for YOU. Instead of trying to sell their own understanding, a good teacher will help us try on different metaphors and symbols to discover what is illuminating of YOUR experience. They will seek to deepen our awareness not to convert us to THEIR understanding.

Returning to our metaphor of life as a journey, we begin with our first insight: “We can only start where we are and with who we are.” Perhaps the most helpful advice I have ever found on the subject was the Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Patanjali is the person credited with the development of Yoga. He said, “Yoga is stilling the fluctuations of the mind. Then the seer abides in itself, resting in its true nature. Otherwise we identify with the fluctuations.”

I hear those words as saying that spiritual practice begins with listening, not speaking or acting. Whatever practice we employ should settle us down into an awareness of where our nature expresses nature itself. Whereas, we usually identify with thoughts and feelings, it can be enormously helpful to discover the deeper part of ourselves that is observing those “fluctuations.”

After we are looking out from our own center it can be helpful to contemplate what practices have been helpful along the way. No one outside of us can replace this particular work. Anyone who proposes their own path before listening to us is not a teacher we can trust. Helpful teachers listen first. They are not trying to convert or enlighten us but to bring us to our own center. They may help us remember what has “watered our seed” in the past. They may help us explore what has made our horizon larger and our world richer, but a loving teacher will never tell us what to do or think. Instead, they will play the caddy to our Tiger Woods.

Then, as we settle into who we really are, we become aware that we are expressions of something larger and deeper. We do not exist by and for ourselves alone. The Christian theologian Frederick Buechner had a helpful phrase. He said our life’s vocation is found at the place where “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

We must not seek some kinds of truth generically. There is a sense in which our common life can only be explored through the lens of our personal lives. We are continually opening to the universal, but a part can never know the whole without dissolving into something bigger than itself.

The third insight is to turn our life into a gift. We are all going to die and return to the ground out of which we have emanated. Our only choice is whether to die of something or for something.

It can be helpful to consider how to joyfully and lovingly give ourselves back to the common life. The impermanence of life means that faith is not holding onto belief or even to life itself. Faith is letting go of EVERYTHING and trusting that the wave can only go back to the ocean that has given it birth.

Hunter S. Thompson said it well I think:

“LIfe’s Journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting “Holy S***, what a ride!”

So in summary:

If we are feeling lost, any path we chose should bring us to our own center. It should allow us to look out through your own eyes and feel through our own skin.

Then, we should travel our path in a way that enlarges our horizons and helps us experience other people, animals and plants as our one larger life.

And then, we might let our experience of that larger life transform our personal journey into a gift so joyfully and loving given that even our death becomes a fireworks celebration of life.

Back in 2021, Jane Goodall won the Templeton Prize which was described as “Celebrating Scientific and Spiritual Curiousity.”

Goodall’s combination of science and spirituality may sound strange in a culture where science and religion are often seen as mortal enemies. The Templeton website further explains they were celebrating those, “harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.”

Jane Goodall is the granddaughter of an open minded and inclusive Congregationalist minister. She is something of a blend of scientist and nature mystic. She wrote, “For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected.”

To me, a mystic is not a magical person. To me, a mystic is anyone who can be teleported by reverence to an experience of the common life. When Einstein praised the mystical sense he was not speaking of anything opposed to science and reason. By “mystical” I believe Einstein was speaking of something beautiful that could be experienced as a RESULT of good science and mathematical reason.

Science had already weighed, measured and dissected primates. What was missing was someone who could pair that knowledge with a respectful sense of our kindred bond as primates. Goodall’s work would require the best of science AND a very deep reverence.

Jane Goodall knew humanity had a lot to learn from animals. She said she had a wonderful teacher about animal behavior in her dog Rusty. “He taught me that animals have personalities, minds, and feelings. She also noted that while humans are the most clever species ever to have lived, we also seem to be destroying the only planet we have. “Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutan have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forests, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.”

Like Schweitzer, Goodall became something of an evangelist for the animals. She said,” To me, cruelty is the worst of human sins. Once we accept that a living creature has feelings and suffers pain, then by knowingly and deliberately inflicting suffering on that creature, we are guilty, whether it be human or animal.”

Like a prophet of old Goodall declares that our survival is intertwined with the survival of other animals, “Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”

May the scientist and mystic both say, “Amen.”

From time to time I am informed on Facebook that I am a bad Christian. That is just fine with me. I believe Jesus wasn’t trying to make us good Christians but good human beings.

The Christianity I fell in love with as a child was not that of Augustine, Luther or Calvin, but the message of universal love I found in Albert Schweitzer and Leo Tolstoy. A religion of love can embrace other religions, science, and even join common cause with Atheists who want to protect humanity from religious intolerance and superstition.

Jesus said, if you are offering your gift at the alter and remember you have wronged someone, leave your gift at the altar and go restore the relationship. (Mt. 5:23-2) To me, that verse implies Jesus was more concerned about reconciliation and social justice than religion and personal righteousness.

If we start with the actual teachings of Jesus, it would be very hard for us to end up as religious fundamentalists. Jesus taught in parables, not dogmas. Parables are a call to deeper understanding, not to unblinking belief. If we are called bad Christians because we question honestly, then so be it. It is the truth that sets us free, not Christian dogma.

Jesus taught a forgiveness that leads to reconciliation not a moralism that leads to ostracism. Jesus said if we forgive others we will be forgiven, period. There is nothing in the teachings of Jesus that calls us to social inquisitions or crusades. Jesus even seemed to prefer the company of his society’s scapegoats over the “righteous” ones doing the finger pointing.

To be healthy, religion must have a strong element of deconstruction about it. An early Christian mystic was asked why he didn’t carry a bible with him. The old Monk responded that the Bible teaches us to sell everything we have and give the money to the poor, so he sold his Bible and gave the money to the poor.

For Jesus, religion seems to have been a vessel to learn and teach love. Religion can be a communal husk to grow the seeds of love, but we must never forget the difference between the husk and the seed. If being good human beings makes us bad Christians, then so be it. When forced to choose between the kind of love Jesus taught and the Christian religion, we should choose love every time.

I want to express heartfelt thanks to the handful of Republicans who have strongly condemned the lies of the MAGA movement against Haitians.

I realize Republicans who commit the crime of human decency pay a price in the MAGA juggernaut which has kidnapped their party. I am sincerely grateful to those who refuse to sacrifice their principles for power.

I am also grateful to the minority of Christian conservatives who have found the courage to renounce the heresy of Christian nationalism. The Bible condemns bearing false witness against one’s neighbor, but, unfortunately, MAGA Christians are just fine with bearing false witness so long as it is done in the name of Donald Trump and now, JD Vance. Forget the First Commandment, MAGA Christians put America first.

Republicans are not hateful by nature. Individually most Republicans are exemplary citizens and human beings but, so long as Trump is their candidate, traditional Republicans are having to blend in with rapacious billionaires, Confederate wannabes, racists, patriarchs and the daily lies of Donald Trump himself. Honest fact checking has become a heresy in the MAGA movement.

Of course, there was no proof for the claim that Haitians were eating peoples pets. And even JD Vance implied he doesn’t care whether his words are true, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” So Vance’s hope seems to be that he can lie his way to the truth.

Haitians should not have to pay the price for the plutocratic policies that have cannibalized American workers. The sad state of the American middle class must be pinned on Wall Street not on Port-au-Prince.

Haiti is actually one of the bravest little islands in the world. They were a capitalist haven in the 1700’s until enslaved workers rose up and threw off their French exploiters.

In 1804, little Haiti became the only Black republic in the world by expelling its French colonizers. But, just as in Vietnam, the United States was only too willing to help the French restore a misbehaving colony to its “rightful” owner. As much as the various imperial nations might hate each other, their ultimate nightmare was that the rest of the world’s people might actually get free and share this world fairly.

Liberty is a wonderful slogan, but nations with colonies always restrict freedom to their own citizens. The rest of the world looks like one big sweatshop to the imperialist mind.

As in so many other nations seeking self determination, the U.S. sent in troops to occupy Haiti and propped up dictators friendly to U.S. interests. Like Napoleon before them, the U.S. did everything it could to crush the spirit of these Black revolutionaries but they could not bring proud Haitians to their knees. I don’t believe they ever will. To this day white supremacists and colonizers have not been able to extinguish the fierce Haitian desire for liberty. Haitians have been linked with diseases, black magic (think about that term) and now with devouring our pets. Every decent person in the world must rise to protect Haitians from MAGA lies.

The MAGA movement would not have to be so dishonest if their obsolete beliefs actually worked in the real world. They would not have to be so vicious if their dreams did not exclude so many real members of our one human family. MAGA Republicans would not have to beat their breast at every turn were they not so empty and so terrified of the fact that the rest of the world is throwing off ancient chains and rising up to claim their full birthright as human beings.

I was one of those kids who captured insects and took them outside rather than kill them. My dad had no idea when we went fishing that I wasn’t really putting a worm on my hook.

For some reason, when I was back in school, I found dissecting frogs in biology class to be particularly offensive. I felt I could look at charts of the inside of a frog there was no reason an animal had to be killed for me to learn what I needed for a 101 biology class.

It seemed to me, when we dissect a frog down to its parts, the one thing we don’t get to know is the frog. When I got to be a certain age I simply refused to participate in dissecting animals. Fortunately for me my teachers were kind enough to let me off the hook. They could have flunked me but they gave me alternative assignments.

This deep impulse to protect life made sense when I read Albert Schweitzer’s essays. He was trying to find a new foundation for ethics. He called his foundation “reverence for life.” I felt my own heart had been mapped out for me to see.

One would think someone so finicky about killing would not have grown up to be pro-choice, but meeting survivors of rape and assault help me realized that life is not so simple. Life feeds on life, which is why my early attempts at complete nonviolence were doomed to failure. There is no pristine sideline to be found in nature where one can remain harmless and innocent. In the real world life struggles with life. In the real world if we force the lion to lay down with the lamb one of them is in serious trouble.

Those who claim to be protecting the innocent unborn by passing anti-abortion laws are not necessarily being non-violent. Such laws can mean coercion for the person who is pregnant. Sometimes those coercive laws can cause injury to those who are pregnant. “Right to Life” laws can even lead to increased maternal mortality rates.

I still believe Schweitzer was right in his assumption that life is the gold standard of value for ethics, and so doing as little harm as possible to others is important. And, Gandhi is still the architect of my activism. But, I believe both of my life heroes (both men) were a bit naive and simplistic. “Life” is not found discretely packaged in individual forms. “Life” is one ecological whole that sometimes demands hard decisions.

Pregnancy has risks that I as a male did not understand. I now realize laws that risk the lives of fully developed human beings to protect the un-gestated is not really non-violent at all. For men to impose their simplistic views upon women in complicated and dangerous situations is its own form of violence.

To truly resist fascism it is not enough to hate the fascism of other countries or of demagogic leaders here at home. Before we can be truly anti-fascist we must first purge our own fascistic tendencies.

To truly resist fascism:

We must learn to love compassion more than we love power.

We must learn to love the web of life more than we love our own private property.

We must learn to love human solidarity more than we love any one nation or interest group.

We must desire the uplift of our human family over our own personal success.

And we must learn to love the the truth of our common experience over our most beloved creed be it religious, political or economic..

Only if we purge the lust for power from our own hearts are we capable of resisting the fascism of someone else without replacing it with our own.

To say “religion is good” or “religion is bad” are equally meaningless statements until we agree on what we each mean by the word “religion.”

To define the word “religion” only in terms of the good it has done, or only in terms of the evil, are equally dishonest approaches. If we treat religion as a topic area like philosophy or politics then we can have a more helpful conversation about what kinds of religion are helpful and what kinds are hurtful.

To some people the word “religion” refers primarily to the worst and most fundamentalist forms of the three Abrahamic faiths. As such, religion is defined as patriarchal, dogmatic and domineering. That is an understandable position, but it reflects an ignorance of those outside our own culture, and those within our culture who have transcended the popular definitions. If we consider all the religions of the world there are also non-patriarchal, non-hierarchal and non-domineering religions.

Do not some people use the word “religion” to refer to the rituals of life, such as when friends gather at a grave to ritualize their love for a parted friend? Are there not people who use the word “religion” to speak of their gratitude and wonderment before the mysteries of life and the cosmos?

If we consider all the people of earth who consider themselves religious, there are religions of domination AND religions of liberation. There are patriarchal religions AND religions that celebrate the entire spectrum of gender. There are religions that dwell on the supernatural AND religions that find the sacred in nature.

We must be very humble when we use the word “religion” lest we arrogantly and ignorantly speak of all the people of the world as if they were all one homogenous blob. What a shame it would be to throw away Rumi, Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King just because they have been filed under the same category as televangelists and inquisitors

To have a meaningful conversation about religion we have to LISTEN to other people and find out what they personally mean when they use that word. To assume everyone who identifies as religious should be using YOUR definition is a strange kind of open mindedness.