Not Guilty?

I just learned that George Zimmerman is not guilty in the slaying of Trayvon Martin. I can’t say I was surprised, but I am deeply troubled by this verdict. How could Mr. Zimmerman be anything but guilty? He got out of his car when the police told him to stay in his car. He went after the boy when the police told him not to do so. He provoked the situation and then used it to defend his shooting of Mr. Martin. Had he done what police told him to do—stay in his car—none of this would have happened. Does he bear no responsibility?

The problem may be that the prosecution didn’t allow the jury to consider a lesser charge like aggravated assault that they might have gone with. Or it may be that the thought of a black teenager in a hoodie was scary enough to the jury to acquit Mr. Zimmerman regardless of the charge.

This is why I don’t trust the jury system. The notion that a jury trial is a trial by one’s peers is absurd. The knock-knock joke at the beginning of the defense’s opening argument was telling: you are on the jury because you are ignorant of the entire case. What qualifies you for jury duty is not your intelligence but your ignorance. This is why jury trials are more theater than a search for truth, with lawyers on both sides playing to the jury’s emotions rather than their reason. And why they make for compelling TV on Cable News.

I suggest we create a new legal profession: licensed jurors. Licensed jurors would have to earn a Masters Degree in “Jury Duty” that would include the study of police procedures, forensics, crime scene investigation, and the law. They would be taught how to identify and stay immune to courtroom theatrics and emotional manipulation. Pools of licensed jurors would be maintained, with jurors be assigned cased by rotation. Having intelligent, trained, people on the jury who could weigh the evidence and assess the quality of the cases would force attorneys on both sides to leave aside the theatrics and focus on finding the truth.

But truth is never the point of a jury trial. Winning is. That’s why so much coverage of the case is presented like a sporting event. Mr. Zimmerman is free not because he is innocent, but because his team played the better game. It is time we changed the game.

Brahmin Class

I’m flying from Nashville to Washington DC on my way to teach at one of the most loving retreat centers in the world: Wisdom House in Litchfield, CT.

I’m flying coach on US Airways, and cannot help but reflect on the American Caste System. Six rows ahead of me are the Brahmins of the sky. These first class passengers have seats with cushions, while my butt sits on a rock-hard steal and plastic frame. My part of the plane is being buffeted by choppy air, and I fear I will once again face my breakfast. First class folks aren’t bobbing at all. I think their thick leather chairs are taking most of the impact, and they are oblivious to the fact that we would have a smoother ride if we were driving a Jeep Wrangler over a highway built of railroad ties.

Knowing that turbulence might send a bunch of passengers to the rest room, the flight attendant gets on the intercom to make it very clear to us that Second Class folks can have no access to the First Class toilet. It was the second time we were told this. I don’t know why they worry, the two Classes are separated by a curtain. It might as well be the Berlin Wall.

The stewardess just came by to pick up empty drink cups, and the lady sitting next to me complains, “My water was the worst water I have ever tasted.” The stewardess suggested it wasn’t the water but the ice that was at fault. Somehow that seemed to placate the woman. In Brahmin Class they are drinking Perrier.

I have never flown Brahmin Class. I don’t know if I would even if I could. I mean how difficult it must be to get on the plane first, sit in plush leather seats eating warm cashews and drinking Diet Coke, and have Second Class folks walk by you on their way to airplane Hell. I would feel too guilty. I’d keep offering to switch seats with these folks. I’d…. Who am I kidding?

By the time I downed the second warm cashew and licked the salt off my fingers I’d wouldn’t give the second class a second thought. But as I settled into a pampered flight to wherever, I would pledge allegiance to my fellow Brahmins and pledge my life in defense of my First Class toilet.

I can dream, can’t I?

“Jewish Whistle Blowers” or “Up Against the Wall”

Today is Rosh Chodesh Av, the beginning of the Hebrew month of Av. In Israel Rabbi Dr. Ilana Rosansky went to the Kotel, the western retaining wall of the Temple in Jerusalem to pray for the healing of a friend undergoing surgery today. She never got there. The police saw to that at the behest of the Chareidi Jews (God fearers) who find Rabbi Rosansky and her efforts to allow women separate but equal access to the Wall an abomination. To make sure that no praying is done in the women’s section of the Wall, Chareidi women blew whistles whose shrill and piercing sound made prayer concentration impossible. Good for them! Why should we Jews be the only religion without our fanatics?

The promise of Israel as a light unto the nations is not one that the Chareidi Jews can fulfill. The early Zionists who built the State of Israel didn’t envision a theocracy run by Jewish Taliban. They thought Orthodoxy was on the way out, and that a new secular democratic socialist Jew would build Israel and help to achieve the promise of the Jewish people. Today I suspect it is secular democratic socialist Zionists who are on the endangered species list in Israel.

If Chareidi Jews ever get complete control of Israel, would you bother to visit? Would you send money to Jewish Federation only to see it flow into Chareidi coffers? Would you want the American government to send billions of your tax dollars, money much needed here at home, to support them? Would you send your sons and daughters to protect them against their equally fanatical Muslim counterparts?

I wouldn’t.

But please don’t imagine the Chareidi to be less Jewish than the rest. Their Judaism is authentic, and their hatred no less so. The god they worship isn’t a loving, merciful or welcoming god. The god they worship is a jealous, angry, hate-filled god who raises up worshippers in his image—but only after they have raised him up in theirs. We get the gods we deserve, because we create our gods in our own image. If you want to know the heart of a religious person, look to the character of the god they worship.

The Judaism I love is a Judaism I create in my own image. The Chareidi do no less. The god I follow is a god I create in my own image. The Chareidi do no less. The fact that we both speak the same language and draw from the same stories and customs should in no way blur the fact that we are of two different faiths: one of love, the other of fear.

I am sorry that fear and hate won out in Jerusalem today. I will pray for Rabbi Rosansky’s friend, for the rabbi herself, and for Israel as well.

A Better Monument to Human Wisdom

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. This is the new motto of the American Atheists association that, after failing to get the leaders of Bradford County, FL to remove a six-ton statue of the Ten Commandments, decided to put up there own monument promoting the separation of church and state. And while they have a donor who is willing to fund erecting this monument across the country, the goal of the atheist group isn't to build more monuments but to open the field to every religion having its own monument which will force politicians to outlaw all such monuments.

I am not happy with this goal. While I don't think it is right or constitutional for groups to erect Ten Commandments monuments on public property, I would like to see a giant Ganesha statue next to one. In fact I would like to see every sect of every religion cram a monument onto the public square. A huge statue of L. Ron Hubbard next to equally large statues of Krishna, Buddha, Satan, Mohammed (sans face), Guru Nanak, and the Giant Spaghetti Monster would be great. Sure we Jews would be left out given that graven images aren't our thing, but still I'd vote for it.

But a war of statues, while fun, doesn't promote harmony. So, in the interest of harmony, I would like to design and find funders for a Golden Rule monument featuring the Rule in its many articulations. I'm serious about this idea. This would be a monument that could unite a community and spark conversation that might lead to collaboration rather than competition, and dialogue rather than demonization.

All we need do is design it, and then find people in cities and towns across the US who might promote it in their neighborhoods, raising the funds to take the design and turn it into a real monument.

Suggestions?

Holy Rascals Conversation

[This is an edited conversation I had with a friend who prefers to remain anonymous. For more on Holy Rascals, please visit our website: holyrascals.com/.]

How should I refer to you? As His Holy Rascalness Rabbi Rami?

No need. I use the title only when invited to state dinners.

And how often has that happened?

It hasn’t happened yet, but it never hurts to be prepared. I was lecturing in New Delhi with His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama, and I was tempted to have myself introduced in a similar fashion, but then I considered all the bad karma that might accrue and went with Rabbi Rami instead.

Do you believe in karma?

No, but I could be wrong. That’s why I am ready to join every religion just on the off chance that one of them might be true. I doubt they are, but just in case.

Where is the integrity in that?

Integrity? I just want to be on the winning team when the final score is announced. I don’t want to be burning in Hell and have the guy next to me say, “Well at least you have your integrity.” He can have integrity. I want the brass ring.

And the brass ring is?

Heaven, Nirvana, the Pure Land, salvation, reincarnation as a rich guy, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all the marketing promises religions make to entice me to join and convince me to pay.

But there are so many competing rings, how do you know which ones to pursue?

I pursue the ones that agree with me.

So you are the final arbiter of truth?

Of course; who else could there be? If you believe in “this” and not “that” it is because, for whatever reason “this” makes more sense to you than “that.” There is no way to know you are right, you just follow your gut or conditioning, and then deny you are doing so in order to pretend you are not the final arbiter of truth. But you are. There is no escaping it.

So is there no such think as “truth” with a capitol “T”?

I think there is, but I don’t think it can be put into words and marketed to us as a “this” or “that.” You come to Truth when you free yourself from “this” and “that.” And once you’re free from “this” and “that” you’re free to play with “this” and “that” for the sheer joy of playing.

This interview is already veering into rascality. Where did the term Holy Rascal come from?

The phrase came from Sister Jose Hobday, a Native American healer and Catholic nun. After listening to a talk I gave at the Aspen Chapel in Aspen, CO, Sister Jose called out, “He’s a holy rascal!” It stuck.

Do you know what she meant by it?

I suspect she meant that Holy Rascals use the language of the holy—religious language, spiritual language—to unmask the absurdities of religion and spirituality. Holy Rascals aren’t against religion, we only want people to see religion for what it is: a cultural construct that can be a powerful vehicle for meaning making and consciousness expansion, rather than as what religions claim to be: absolute truths.

What does it mean that religions are cultural constructs?

All religions are human narratives carrying the memes and metaphors we use to create meaning for ourselves. We are meaning making animals: we are the way nature makes meaning just as bees are the way nature pollinates flowers. Religion is a primary vehicle for creating, preserving, and perpetuating meaning.

Is nature fundamentally meaningless?

Nature evolves, and because it evolves, nature isn’t fundamentally anything. Nature isn’t a thing but a process that, over time, surprises itself with innovations and mutations, some good some bad. Just as nature becomes conscious by evolving conscious beings, so nature becomes meaningful by evolving meaning–making beings.

Can we create new meanings by creating new stories, new religions? Who would allow us to do that?

No one allows us to do this; it is just what we do.

Why would we do it?

When old stories no longer carry meaning, the need for new meanings arises, and with it come Holy Rascals who meet that need by telling new stories with new characters, or telling new stories about old characters.

So Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha are all fictitious characters?

Fictitious? Not necessarily. Fictional? Almost certainly. For example, I have no doubt that Jesus was an historical figure, but the Jesus that matters is the Jesus we know from Saint Paul and the authors of Gospels both canonical and gnostic, and that Jesus is the creation of these writers. The historical Jesus is not nearly as important as the narrative Jesus. The books that convey the stories and teachings of great spiritual saints and sages are not history books, but storybooks. Does it really matter whether or not the Buddha preached the sutras attributed to him? Not at all: it is the teachings that matter, not their historicity.

As creators of stories, Holy Rascals are also the exposers of stories?

Holy Rascals are spiritual culture jammers who use humor, play, creativity, and critical thinking to reveal the human origins of religions and how religions mask their true origins behind the conceit of divine origins. Our “patron saints” are Mullah Nasrudin, the 13^th century Sufi teacher who used humor to free people from irrational thinking, and Dorothy’s dog Toto who pulled the curtain back on the Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz to reveal a small man with a large megaphone.

In freeing people from irrational thinking you…

Free them for reality.

In pulling back the curtain, you…

Reveal religious authorities for what they are: men and women with megaphones. Again, religion is a human construct for the creation, preservation, and perpetuation of meaning and meaning making that is all too often corrupted into a fear–based system of control promoting enmity between people, and the economic and political elevation of a privileged religious class.

I think a Holy Rascal is someone who reveals that the Emperor has no clothes.

Without clothes, the Emperor is no longer an emperor. The clothes are the stories the Emperor tells in order to justify being Emperor. This only works if the Emperor can convince us that these stories are really histories. Holy Rascals delight in proving the opposite. A Holy Rascal teaches us how to examine our narratives, how to see the constructed nature of the holy and the sacred, and how to use reason, intuition, imagination, and contemplation to free ourselves from narratives that no longer serve our quest for universal justice, compassion, and meaning, and to shape new stories that will.

Once you reveal religion as story, doesn’t religion disappear?

Not at all. Religions are like any other product. They make claims that promote their brand over and against competing brands. The cool thing about the Jewish brand is that the Jews are God’s Chosen People. The cool thing about the Southern Baptist brand is that it has a monopoly on salvation. If you want to be Chosen, buy Jewish. If you want to be saved, buy Baptist. Every clergy person is marketing her preferred brand. This is why a Methodist can no more discover Krishna is Christ than the marketers of Coke can discover that Pepsi is “the real thing.”

For the record, and just in case a Coca-Cola executive is reading this and wants to send me a case of Diet Coke, I prefer Coke to Pepsi, though I can’t exactly tell you why. Knowing that Coke spins a story to get me to drink Coke doesn’t make me like it any less. But is does keep me from committing jihad against Pepsi drinkers, or damning them to hell for all eternity.

Clergy as “Mad Men.” Do we really need them?

Sure. Clergy are like Dungeon Masters in the Dungeon and Dragons role playing game. If you want to play the game you need a Dungeon Master to weave the story. If you want to play Catholic Mass, for example, your need Catholic priests to turn wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ. No one else can do that. So Catholic priests are essential to the Catholic game. The same is true of other clergy in the context of their respective games.

Calling religion a game seems demeaning.

I don’t think so. All life is a game or a complex of games. The issue isn’t game or no game, but what kind of game you are playing.

There are two kinds of games: finite zero–sum games and infinite nonzero games. The goal of finite zero–sum games is to win at the expense of the other. Tennis, for example, is a zero–sum finite game. The goal is to end the game with you or your team as the winner and your competition as the looser.

The goal of infinite nonzero games is to keep the game going. Playing rather than winning is the point. And nobody can win unless everybody wins. Friendship is an example of a infinite game. The goal of frienship is to keep the friendship going not to end the friendship with one friend winning at the expense of the other.

Religion can be played as a finite or infinite game. When played as a finite game, religion is all about winning and losing, retributive justice, and the in–group triumphing over the out–group if not in this life than at least in the after–life. When played as an infinite game, religion is all about compassion, distributive justice, and seeing to the thriving of all as key to the thriving of any. We humans cannot help but play games. The question is what kinds of games will we play? Holy rascals promote infinite nonzero games.

Of course millions of believers like to play finite, hate–filled games.

No, I don’t believe that. Millions of believers participate in hate–filled, fear–driven, finite zero–sum games, but they don’t know they are playing a game. They’ve been convinced that their story is history, that Coke is true and Pepsi is false—and worse the beverage of the Devil. Once they are helped to see that this is all a game, and a hurtful one at that, they will stop playing. People don’t want to hate, they are simply coerced into believing in a god who wants them to hate.

Do you ever envision the end of religion?

No. People are inherently religious, and religion won’t disappear. Holy Rascals aren’t working to end religion; we are working to shift religion from zero–sum to nonzero, from the finite to the infinite game, from fear to love, and injustice to justice.

What do you envision?

I can’t predict the future, but what I see happening in the present is the emergence of a new seeker class: spiritually independent people willing to cross the boundaries of religious brands in search of narratives that give their lives meaning, and practices that bring those narratives and their meanings alive in their lives.

And where are Holy Rascals among these spiritually independent seekers?

We are behind them pushing; we are ahead of them pulling; we are on the sidelines cheering, and we are among them struggling.

Here We Go Again

Islam is in the middle of a war between Sunni and Shia Muslims; its own version of the Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants in Europe (1618-1648). Only this war will be far longer than thirty years. There was no United States in the 17th century, so we don't know for certain whether or not the US would side with the Protestants, though I imagine we would. But when it comes to the Islamic version of this war, we can proudly say that we are not taking sides, and in fact support both sides.

When we went to war in Iraq we took out the Sunnis and supported the Shia. Now as we start a short march to war in Syria we will take out the Shia in support of the Sunnis. In other words we helped Iran in Iraq and nowAl Qaeda in Syria.

The US aligning with Al Qaeda? You can't make up this stuff.

I know the president says we are only arming rebels we like, but if you think the weapons we are about to send to Syrian rebels will only fall into the hands of New Republic subscribers, you have another think coming.

We are going to war with Hezbollah backed by Iran and Russia. Which means we are siding with Al Qaeda and other Sunni fanatics and the Muslim Brotherhood. More accurately, we are entering into a proxy war with Iran and Russia. This is huge. We are moving into Armageddon country.

This is what End Times believers have warned us about for decades. John Hagee told us the day is coming when Iran and Russia will descend on Israel and seek her complete annihilation. Well, that time is almost upon us. This war in Syria is a not a war but a front in a war that will engulf the entire Arab world. Egypt is already ramping up its rhetoric against Syria which is just another way of saying the Muslim Brotherhood is ramping up for war with Hezbollah which is another way of saying that the war between Sunnis and Shia is escalating wildly.

And who is going to reap the unintended consequences of all of this? Israel.

I don't have a foreign policy suggestion for the President regarding Syria. But I would suggest the following points to the President, to Jews (both American and Israeli), and to the American people as a whole:

To the President I suggest that 1) For every dollar we spend on arming both sides of the Muslim civil war (and we are doing that), he would urge the President to get Congress to spend 100 times that on helping Israel prepare for the jihad that is coming regardless who wins in Syria, and 2) I would ask that the President to push to reinstitute a universal draft as soon as possible: The only thing that will stop the US from going to war in Syria (against Iran, Russia, and Shia Islam) is to make sure that the children of the 1% are as vulnerable to dying there as the children of the 99%.

To Jews I would suggest 1) that we use our lobby efforts to support the two proposals just mentioned, and our communication skills to begin an all out propaganda campaign to convince Americans that having their sons and daughters die defending Israel is a worthy cause, and that all out war with Russia and Iran to save the Jews is somehow in America's best interest. I worry that for all our talk of loving Israel, few Americans are willing to die for her. And 2) that we send our children to train in the Israeli defense force so that they are ready to fight and die for the country we endlessly claim in our homeland.

3. To the American people I suggest that, give the failure to implement my previous suggestions, we all become Southern Baptists and pray that the Rapture will take us into heaven before Iran, Syria, and Russia erase Israel and then America from the face of the earth.

Religion This Week

I’m sitting in LAX reading the NYTimes. On page A8 there is a snap shot of religion at its worst:

Item A: Salvador Court Denies Abortion to Ailing Woman. A woman with lupus is pregnant and her doctor tells her that carrying the baby to term may well kill her. The court denied her an abortion saying that the life of the mother cannot trump the life of the unborn baby. But wait, there’s more. The mother has another young child to care for at home, so her death will impact not only her unborn baby who will born without a living mother and her already born child who will be left motherless. But wait, there’s more. The unborn baby is missing most of its brain and will not survive once born. So the mother’s life is forfeit for a baby whose life is also forfeit. Is this really a moral dilemma? Is a grown woman equal to a brain dead fetus? Somebody’s God thinks so.

Item B: Israel is moving ahead with plan to draft Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews. The fact that Haredi Jews feel they have no obligation to defend their country while their country is obligated to take care of them, and their non-Haredi cousins are obligated to die to protect them is mindless. Read your Torah, people: God is always ordering the faithful into battle, and while there are exemptions, being religious isn’t one of them.

Item C: The Parliament of Papua New Guinea has just repealed that country’s Sorcery Act that made killing witches ubiquitous and legal. The new law will make the killing of witches a capital offense punishable by death. Will this law stop the murder of witches? Of course not. Why not, because witches are convenient. When we want to eliminate someone all we have to do is claim she is a witch and kill her. It isn’t that people will believe in anything, but that people will believe in anything that allows them to do what they want to do. But at least the government is trying to free itself from its religious fanatics.

Add to these items the never ending slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims, and we have to wonder if religion has anything of value to offer. Sure not all religions do evil today, but this is only because they don’t have the power to do so.

If we wait for people to grow beyond religion, nothing will change. If we work to strip religion of power, we have taken a big step toward positive change.