Brilliant!

I just discovered a Robert Kennedy quote that I think everyone needs to read--and to think about, especially as it pertains to their own attitudes:

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not in what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."

This crystallizes my dislike of extremism of every stripe, be it religious, political, economic, social, whatever. I confess to being intolerant myself--but what I don't tolerate is intolerance itself. Don't coerce me, and I'll tolerate you, and I'll work to find ways to live in peace with you--but the second you say "It's my way or the highway," I'm hitting the road--to speak out against your intolerance.

Once again, we see the genius of the American system. Compromise is the essence of public life. The government must stand neutral on matters of personal belief, so that everyone's voice can be heard. Call it a "free market economy of ideas." Let the people see and consider all stripes of belief, and decide for themselves what they accept. So long as they give other people room to accept different beliefs, and most importantly, so long as the government, the official power of the state, does not raise one belief set above any other, our system works.

And that's why I so detest the Radical Religious Right. Its members are trying to hijack the government to support their beliefs at the expense of the rest of us. They may have fine goals, such as the saving of all our souls, but just because they think they are correct, they do not have the right to use the power of government to make the rest of us agree with them, even if we do so only "on paper." Too many in the Radical Right think that disagreeing with them means they are being attacked. Far from it. Disagreeing with them may well mean disagreeing with EVERYONE. Disagreeing with them may be the only way to preserve the neutrality of the system for all of us, including them.

Too many of them just don't get the difference between saying "the public schools won't teach your kids about Jesus" and "the public schools can't teach your kids about Jesus." In our system, "can't" is the operative expression. The government must stand neutral, for the sake of its citizens who do not believe in Jesus. Doesn't mean YOU cannot proselytize your neighbors to your heart's content . . . unless, of course, you are becoming a public nuisance or a stalker or the like. It just means you cannot use the government to do your proselytizing for you.

But then again, asking the intolerant to tolerate may be just too much to ask. And so the noble American experiment will collapse into failure, because some of us just can't get out of our own way. And that's incredibly sad.

Please Don't Give Me That Old Time Religion

I'm with Leonard Pitts, Jr.: literalism has no place in interpreting the Bible. In an op-ed column recently published in the Omaha World-Herald, Pitts recounted an email exchange he had with a reader named Al, who informed him that criticizing the death penalty was criticizing God. Al went on to note that this was not a good thing.

Pitts responded by noting that the Bible also condemns to death people who curse their parents and people who commit adultery. Al's response to that was that those people should be put to death too, "if one wishes to accomplish God's will in the matter."

Pitts dryly added that people like Al scared him. Me, too. [Well, I have my reasons for thinking that condemning adulterers to death might not be a bad thing, but I am willing to take a larger view in light of the greater social good. Financial thumbscrews are punishment enough for adulterous swine.--Ed.] [That last was said half in jest, to all you literalists out there who do not get my sense of humor.--Ed.]

Pitts' main objection to interpreting the Bible literally is that the people who insist on it so that they can, for example, condemn homosexuals, will not even admit it applies when quoted passages from Scripture exhorting us to "love our enemies," "turn the other cheek," and not "store up treasures on Earth."

In other words, he rightly points out that too many literalists/fundamentalists miss the forest for the trees. The larger message of redemption as carried in the New Testament comes by "sacrifice, redemption, and love," in Pitts' own eloquent expression.

He even broke the news (to me, at least) that the venerable Billy Graham has of late rejected the extremes of both left and right, and has chosen instead to accept God as "a loving mystery." He quoted Graham as saying that people of faith can absolutely differ on the details of theology: "I'm not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle is from the Lord. This is a little difference in my thinking over the years."

Amen! I have maintained for a long, long time that on the one hand there is God, and on the other there are the churches and the Bible and other works of man, and there is no inherent contradiction in accepting The One while at the same time rejecting the other.

Pitts concluded by noting that Exodus (35:2) condemned those who work on the Sabbath to death. He said he'd like to ask people like his email correspondent, Al, where his church's leaders stood on that one, but he was afraid to--implying he feared the answer.

I don't blame him.