| An Open Letter to Christians, and the ‘Charter for Compassion’. |
[Nov. 24th, 2008|02:21 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | assholes, books, doomed, hopeless idealist, myth, philosophy, politics, quotes, rant, religion, so doomed., starting a fight, woe, wuv twue wuv | ] |
So, once again some hopeless idealists are trying to point out where organised religion went wrong.
Karen Armstrong wrote an article on CiF a few days ago about A Charter for Compassion, which is a multi-faith project to remind people that all of the major faiths should be very firm on the principle of Not Being An Asshole. (Okay, I’m paraphrasing there.) I have no problem with this idea, and I actually agree with it – nearly every major religion has a line which says “But above all, don’t be a Dick”. (Sorry for the toilet language, but I can’t promise it’ll stop before this post is done). Armstrong called this The Golden Rule.
She said about the Charter: “During the next few days, millions of Jews, Christians and Muslims worldwide will be invited to comment, stage by stage, on a draft Charter on a multilingual website. Later, a council of inspirational thinkers representing the different faiths will examine their findings and write the final version.”
The Golden Rule is actually clearly stated in many faiths (some of the quotes next are from her article). Confucius said "Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you". He said that idea ran through all his teaching and should be practised "all day and every day". It’s easy to see in Buddhism, too, but is also there in the monotheisms: St Paul says that the strongest faith is worthless without charity, Rabbi Hillel said that the Golden Rule was ‘the essence of Torah’ and everything else was "only commentary". And of course you have Jesus saying that if you only do two things, worship God and love your neighbour as yourself, as well as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
Instead, as Armstrong also says, “religion is associated with violence, intolerance and seems more preoccupied by dogmatic or sexual orthodoxy (than compassion).”
All of which is true. It’s just that… well… she’s wrong.
See, this SHOULD be the guiding principle of those religions which choose it. It’s had a place in all of them – Christian monks performing good works with the poor and ill, Buddhists going out into the world to practice a perfect compassionate way of living, many people keeping to their religious laws because they believe that sin or breaking them results in harming others.
You’d think “thou shalt not kill” would be easy to understand, after all.
But historically, the big organisations which saw religion as a good way to political power (even if they genuinely thought they were saving us from ourselves) have ballsed it up quite spectacularly.
Of course a charter won’t make a difference. Of course those who feel justified in killing and discriminating in the name of their religion will continue doing it. And that’s fair, because the order to continue acting that way is written right on the page.
Which is why I think we need to go further than writing a Charter for Compassion. What we need to do is TEAR PAGES OUT OF THE HOLY BOOKS. Let me explain:
Steve’s Project to Rip Up The Bible.
I’m not going to involve Islam or Judaism here. I don’t know enough about either of them to comment properly, and it’s none of my business to tell others how to do their thing, so I won’t. But I put the years in for Christianity, and I know the texts. The contradictions between the Old and New Testaments are clearer, the case for compassion above other laws is more famously stated, and I feel I know the ground enough to be as truly offensive about it as I will need to.
If you decide you do have a right to challenge people to put compassion at the front of their religion, there is a step you can take which would actually do it. Christianity would become entirely separate to violence and bigotry, and the spirit of the words attributed to Jesus could be followed without contradiction.
You just need to Rip Bits Out Of The Bible. It’s a punchy phrase, which I’m sure will catch on. Here’s what you do:
You decide that Jesus (despite overturning the tables of the money-lenders in the Temple and claiming he came with a sword, and would divide families and all the rest) primarily wants non-violence and love for all people. There’s plenty to back this up in the books. You decide that when it says he brought a New Way which was different from the religious rules of the Old Testament, he meant to supercede those older rules if they led to violence and hatred. And you decide that the taboos against eating shellfish and wearing clothes of more than one type of cloth are historical relics which can be discarded without falling to sin. Basically, you put love, compassion and good intent at the front of everything, and refuse to allow anything which causes harm or generates hatred for other cultures into your practice.
Then you rip up the Bible. Specifically, you tear out every single passage which says it’s okay to kill people with sticks, stones, swords or anything else. You take out the parts where children who disobey their parents should be killed. Where people should exclude other cultures instead of acting like the Good Samaritan.
And you do this not because some ex-Christian hippy liberal like me is suggesting it, but because by keeping a book filled with this intolerance and hatred on your altar, you are blaspheming against your own God. You are claiming that the Bible is a Holy object, which by definition must contain a special truth, and that therefore Jesus must be fine with you doing all the worst things in it. You’re worshipping a God of perfect love with a book which says it’s okay to do everything he sent someone to tell you to stop.
If Christianity (and anyone else who wants to take up this challenge) is truly for Compassion instead of intolerance, Peace instead of violence, Love instead of hate, then it loses nothing by having these passages moved to a new Appendix which I think we should call:
“Historical bits we’re keeping for nostalgia value.”
I understand if you respect the Bible too much to permanently drop parts of it. They don’t have to go. They just need to be in a section marked “You can’t quote this to justify anything”.
If you think Jesus wanted love and non-violence, and you’re sick of bigots pointing to the page where it says beheading children and spitting down their neck is just fine if they sneezed on a Tuesday, then don’t start up a Charter for Compassion and try to remind priests to preach niceness – just TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR BOOK. Mark it “no longer applicable”. Make it absolutely clear that if you do any of these things, you are sinning and will go to hell. Or, if you don’t believe in that, that you are at least being a BAD follower of your religion.
Lots of Christians already understand this. People reading this comment will think “Yes, but we know that already”. If that’s true, then you lose absolutely nothing by Ripping Up The Bible. I know that plenty of Christians ignore passages which they feel go against the central message, and make Goodness the overriding aim in their lives. “Unchristian behaviour” is used to mean uncharitable, or unforgiving. But it’s also used to describe overly sexual, homosexual or any number of behaviours perceived as sinful.
So if we’re in a world where a Charter for Compassion is needed to remind us to concentrate on the nice side of what’s written in a book, let’s go one step further instead. Let’s decide that Love is the overriding priority, and a wide and contradictory collection of texts written by people who never knew the main character and collated by politicians 300 years later is not as important as the entire fucking point of the religion.
Or don’t. Come out and say that you absolutely believe the intolerance and sanctioned violence to be a part of your faith. Then we’ll know, and we can go home and leave you to it. Any credibility you had will be gone, and we can stop pretending that religions have this inherent claim to define compassion and moral behaviour more than atheists can.
The choice is simple. Rip Up The Bible, or else admit that your religion is murderous, bigoted and cares about details more than compassion. Any other choice is hypocritical, offensive to your God, and prevents you from being taken seriously in public debate.
But don't do it for me, do it because the Book on your altar deserves to reflect your Deity. And if you feel it currently doesn’t, which one of those two things should change? |
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