Bringing the Gospel to a Buddhist Near You

I’m flipping through the pages of this month’s Christianity Today (yes, I get the magazine, but only for the pictures), and I am caught by a lovely photograph of a Buddhist monk. I don’t fully realize it is a monk until I have flipped to the next page, and then the thought hits me, “What is that photo doing in this magazine?”

I flip back and gaze with respect at what appears to be a Southeast Asian Buddhist elder sitting on a rattan bench and holding a twisted black wooden walking stick. Then my eyes scan to the bottom of the narrow photo to read: “There are more than 6,000 people groups in the world still waiting to hear the Gospel. Our purpose is clear: Reach every last one of them. Want to join us?”

The ad is for Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. At first, given the photo, I thought the Southeastern in the school’s name referred to Asia, but the school is actually in Texas. Anyway, the question is compelling.

Do I want to bring the Gospel to these 6,000 people groups? Before I answer, let me be clear: I don’t really know what a “people group” is, which is a bit depressing since there seem to be 6000 of them, but putting that aside, I do admit that I would like to bring the Gospel to this Buddhist monk.

Why? Because he might give me fresh new insight into the Gospel that my more conventional Christian friends cannot offer.

I assume that great spiritual teachers like Jesus speak a universal and timeless truth, and do so in the cultural currency of their day. This means that while it is vital to our understanding of Jesus that we place him in the context of first-century Roman occupied Jewish Palestine, limiting Jesus’ message to first-century Roman occupied Jewish Palestine alone makes it impossible for us to hear his larger message for all humanity. [For those interested in hearing this message I suggest reading the following authors: Marcus Borg, John Spong, John Crossan, Andrew Harvey, Matthew Fox, and Cynthia Bourgeault.]

Chances are this Buddhist monk is not up on the latest historical Jesus scholarship, so that when we bring the Gospel to him he will respond to Jesus’ message from his Buddhist training and wisdom. I suspect that in doing so he will reveal layers of meaning and insight that might otherwise go undetected.

So I want to thank Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary for inviting me to bring the Gospel to this monk and the other members of his particular people group. I only hope that when we do, we will have the grace, wisdom, and humility to listen to what he thinks it means.

American Religious Landscape

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently released its “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. I was very excited about this and read what I could of it on line. Odd thing was it had nothing to with landscape. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are forest religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are desert religions. So I was surprised that a study of religious landscape told me lots about how many people belonged to these religions, but did not locate them in their appropriate landscapes. Jews in Miami, for example, makes no sense. There is no desert in Miami.

Geography aside, what the survey does show is that Americans change religions constantly, and that “unbelief” is on the rise. Unbelief is not a term I normally use; so let me explain that unbelievers are people who believe that what other people believe is simply unbelievable. That makes Jews unbelievers with regard to Catholics, for example; and Catholics unbelievers with regard to Hindus. No wonder it is a growing category. Everybody is an unbeliever when it comes to some one who believes other than they do. So I don’t know how much we can learn from that statistic. Here some others:

1. There are as many “secular unaffiliated” Americans as Methodist Americans. 2. There are more “religious yet unaffiliated” Americans than Lutheran Americans. 3. In Oregon there are almost as many people with no religion as there are Evangelicals.

What can we make of this? Is religion on its way out?

I don’t think religion is dying, but some major brands are tanking. For example 2 out of 3 people who say they grew up Jehovah’s Witness, have left that faith. The number of Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans are down. And there are almost as many atheists as Jews in the United States (but that may be because so many Jews are atheists).

So what does this say about the future of religion in America? Will we soon change our Pledge to “One Nation Under Whomever”? I doubt it. What the survey is saying is that as in other fields of marketing, brands die and brand loyalty is fickle, and that religious labels mean less and less to more and more Americans.

I think the survey is encouraging. It says that American’s are experimenting with different religions, and putting the freedom to think for themselves ahead of the obligation to believe what they are told. It says that we can judge faiths based on our personal needs rather than God’s commands. It says that we can change faiths the way we change toothpaste. And that can only lead to fresher breath and a whiter smile. It’s the American way.

Rabbinic Dozen Part Two

1. You didn’t go into the rabbinate to make money; you went into the rabbinate to serve your people. This is fine. Just don’t mistake serving others for being exploited by them.

2. Somewhere in the back of the mind of each congregant is an image of the ideal rabbi sewn together from mostly false and inflated memories of rabbis they have known in the past. This fictional rabbi is your real competition. You can’t win. Don’t try. Be yourself.

3. Lao Tzu taught that the emperor who governs best is the one who makes it appear that he governs not at all. This is fine if you are the emperor, especially one backed up by a large and well equipped army. But if you are an unarmed rabbi it behooves you to take credit where credit is due.

4. Keep track of your accomplishments. This will come in handy when your board begins to wonder aloud why they pay you so much for doing so little. It also comes in handy when you begin to wonder aloud whether or not you have achieved anything with your life.

5. Don’t assume that just because you were with so-and-so when she died that her family will be appreciative and supportive of you for long. After all, she died didn’t she?

6. You are your own worst enemy, and can sabotage yourself in lots of ways. Here are just some of them: First, you can dominate your community to the point where they are rendered impotent. Second, you can allow the community to dominate you to the point where you are rendered impotent. Third, you can believe your own BS. Fourth, you can believe the awful things some people say about you. Fifth, you can think yourself superior to your congregants. Sixth, you can think yourself inferior to your congregants.

7. Do not rely on your rabbinic salary to sustain you. Find another way to make money. It may be a hobby at first, but if the rabbinate doesn’t pan out, it can be turned into a business or marketable skill.

8. Synagogues are financial disasters. The only things that keep them going are the cash cows of Preschools and Bar/Bat Mitzvah training. This means that you have got to relate well to kids and their parents. The moment you seem too old and out of touch is the moment the board seeks to find a younger hipper rabbi who can keep the cash coming. If you don’t want to stay hip and cool, apply for a job at the Jewish nursing home.

9. You can’t stay hip forever. Keeping up with the latest tween fad is boring and demeaning. So eventually you will realize you are doomed. Quickly hire a young assistant rabbi; preferably someone who is still carded at bars. And keep your eyes on those nursing home jobs.

10. Don’t bother becoming balanced. No one is good at everything. Know what you are good at and do that. Outsource everything else. By the time you try to learn to do poorly what you really shouldn’t be doing at all, you will be facing an angry board and looking for a new job. Work your strengths, hire people to compensate for your weaknesses.

11. Don’t bother with contracts. If your congregation wants to fire you it will, regardless of your “life-time” contract. If you fight them there are at least half-a-dozen top-notch lawyers in your community who will gladly sue your ass for free. Why? Maybe you failed to visit them in the hospital. Maybe you failed to acknowledge them at a restaurant. Maybe they just hate rabbis. The point is you can’t afford to sue your synagogue. You will lose, and it looks bad on your resume. And don’t think your rabbinic union will protect you. Who do you think pays the salaries of your regional rabbis? Your contract isn’t worth the paper its printed on. Come to some simple agreement on salary and benefits, and hope to God your board doesn’t change its mind. Just remember: there is no security in this job.

12. Don’t take a sabbatical after age 55; your board may use the opportunity to fire you and hire someone younger. Similarly, don’t take a vacation after age 55; don’t skip a Shabbat after age 55; don’t sleep after age 55; don’t even take a nap! Whenever you are off synagogue property or unconscious you are vulnerable to a coup. Your board is worried that you will live long enough to become a very costly Rabbi Emeritus. They want you dead, or gone. It is illegal to fire you just because you are old, so they have to invent some scandal. There are plenty of people who are willing to bring you down. If your synagogue suddenly announces an Iron Man competition and your board insists that you to compete in it—look for a new job, fast.

Rabbinic Dozen: Part One

I have been a rabbi for more than a quarter century. In that time I have learned a few things about what makes a good rabbi; things that I believe could be of value to clergy people of all stripes. Unfortunately for you, I am keeping those for my memoir. Here are twelve ideas that won't make it into my book. Feel free to pass them on to your clergy friends and neighbors.

1. You are not an educator. There are people who go to graduate school for years to learn how to teach well. Maybe you took a course or two. Higher good teachers and let them teach.

2. You are not a therapist. There are people who go to graduate school for years to learn how to listen, diagnose, and guide people. Maybe you took a course or two. Find a few good psychologists and refer people to them.

3. You are not a CEO. There are people who go to graduate school for years to learn how to run an organization. Maybe you read 7 Habits for Highly Successful People. Hire a good executive director.

4. You are not a camp counselor. There are people in high school who do this for lots less money than you make. No matter how loudly you clap your hands during a song, you just can’t compete with the 17 year old from last summer. Don’t try.

5. You are not a social events coordinator. If the congregation wants to hold a bake sale, barn dance, or Jewish film festival, it is not your job to approve it, plan it, or run it. It is your job to bury a person who may die during it, but other than that, stay out of the way.

6. You are not a fund raiser or Israel Bonds salesperson. People spend years perfecting those skills. Hire a good fund raiser to raise money; you focus on how best to spend it.

7. You are a master of ceremonies. Unfortunately when it comes to most ceremonies, the caterer trumps you every time. That is why if the bride is running later and later, don’t bother telling the bride’s mother that you have somewhere else to be. Tell her that the caterer is worried that the chicken is going to over cook. She’ll have her daughter under the chuppah in ten minutes.

8. Religious services are theater; mostly bad theater. Take theater classes; especially improv. Learn how to think on your feet. Learn how to create meaning. Learn how to be a shaman.

9. Don’t relinquish the bima to the cantor. Don’t take on the role of High Priced Announcer of Pages. Only Vanna White gets paid big bucks for turning tiles, and it has nothing to do with her skill at tile turning. Find something meaningful to do during the service like teach.

10. Don’t kibbitz while the cantor sings. Don’t read while the cantor sings. Don't clean your finger nails while the cantor sings. Don’t do anything other than look like you are moved by the cantor singing. Everyone suspects prayer is silly, but if you prove it to them by ignoring the cantor you might consider applying for a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart— soon!

11. Make yourself indispensable on the bima by adding something people can’t get anywhere else: spiritual wisdom and life-meaning. Watch lots of evangelical television; especially Joel Osteen and Rick Warren. Say things that help people find meaning in the words they are reading and the life they are experiencing.

12. Most people don’t know why Jewish tradition matters. They just want to satisfy bubbe and zayde who were born in the old country. Today, of course, most bubbes and zaydes are called nana and papop and were born in New York or LA, and they too have no idea why Jewish tradition matters. You might think that this would be a great time for you to teach them about the importance of tradition, but it isn’t. They're all too worried about the caterer.

13. When it comes to weddings, more thought goes into picking the band than choosing the rabbi. Don’t compete. Accept your second-class status and do the best you can. Since most people expect the rabbi to be boring, it won’t take much to impress them. Carry business cards in case there are any rabbi-seekers in the audience. Given one to the caterer as well.

The Not So Mahatma Gandhi

First off, let me say that I am a fan of Mahatma Gandhi (Mahatma is a title meaning Great Soul). My favorite movie next to “The Day The Earth Stood Still” is “Gandhi.” I have a huge portrait of the Mahatma in my office. I have many of his books on my shelves, and intend to read them. I believe that he was one of the spiritual geniuses of our time. And I believe he just never understood us Jews.

His letter to German Jews urging them to practice Satyagraha against the Nazis falls a bit flat. But it is nothing compared to the outrageous statement made by his grandson, Arun Gandhi, former president of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence.

Mr. Gandhi posted an opinion on the Washington Post blog, On Faith, saying that Jews were “locked into the Holocaust experience,” and Jews and Israel are the “biggest players” in the “Culture of Violence that is eventually going to destroy humanity.”

Is he right? Yes and no. Yes, the Holocaust shapes the psyche of the modern Jew and does provide too many Jews with a pseudo-moral high ground from which to exploit others even as they claim to be exploited by them. And yes, there is a Culture of Violence that threatens to destroy humanity. But, no, Jews and Israel are not the biggest players, not by a long shot.

How about the United States in Iraq, China in Tibet, Russia in Chechnya, and the horrors of Darfur? All of these dwarf the violence done by Israel. I am not saying Israel and those Jews that support the culture of violence in Israel and elsewhere are innocent. They are not. But they are bit players compared to these others.

Is Arun Gandhi an anti-Semite? No. He is just a leftist, and leftists find everyone’s violence excusable except that of the Jews. For some reason Jews just loom on the leftist horizon in ways no other people does. This may be because so many leftists are Jews who feel so uncomfortable with Israel and Israeli military might that they have to exaggerate it in order to condemn it and thereby cleanse their souls from the taint of being associated with it.

For thousands of years Jews were the canary in the mine of human civilization. We were the victim par excellence, and we got used to that. We liked it. It made us feel innocent and morally superior. And then Israel turned that on its head. Suddenly we had guns and we were aiming them, and worse shooting them, at people with less power than us. Some people, Jews and Gentiles, cannot forgive Jews for abandoning their victim status. They hate us for no longer accepting being hated. They want us dead because we are no longer willing to lie down and die.

I wish Arun Gandhi could have freed himself of his Jewish blind spot. I wish he could have helped the Palestinians resist Israeli occupation the way his grandfather resisted British occupation. I wish we Jews could have engaged him in dialogue and helped him see us as human beings rather than symbols of oppression. I also wish somebody would pay me for writing this blog. I need to get over wishing for things.

Bible Smart

Quick: name the ingredients in a Big Mac….. OK, got it? Now, just as quickly, name the The Ten Commandments. Oh, oh.

If you succeeded at the first, and failed at the second, you are in good company. According to a recent survey 80% of Americans know there are two all beef patties along with special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on that sesame seed bun, while only 60% knew that “Thou shalt not kill” is one of the ingredients of God’s Big Ten. Only 34% knew that the Sabbath was on the list, and only 29% knew that God hates idols (along with homosexuals and shrimp, though these are not among the Big Ten).

Why are we so ignorant of the Bible? It isn’t because we don’t have access to it. The average American household owns four Bibles, and millions more are sold every year. The book is around, but people just don’t read it. If they did, millions of Americans would not have answered the question, “Who is Joan of Arc” with “The wife of Noah.” No kidding.

But I have a few suggestions for improving Bible literacy. First, someone should work with a big burger chain to produce a Bible-based kid’s meal. I wouldn’t be too strict about kosher beef, but no cheeseburgers in this box. And with the meal would come a Bible-themed toy: maybe a smoking Mount Sinai or an anatomically amended Adam and Eve.

I would also urge one of the big television networks to create a game show called Smarter Than a Fifth Grader in Sunday School in which players would test their Bible knowledge against fifth graders from various Bible-based religions. Or even better: How about a show called God Wants You To Be a Millionaire where contestants and a Prosperity Gospel pastor of their choice answer biblically themed questions such as “When Noah looked outside the floating ark, did he recognize any of the bloated corpses as his friends and neighbors?” Contestants and pastors would split the winnings, or they could pool their winnings and give it all to God in hopes of receiving even more money from God in the future. Just how they would get it to God would be worked out with the show’s sponsors.

Or maybe a Candid Camera-type show where people are tricked into violating a commandment and then get stoned by passers-by: “Hey, look! That guy just uncovered the nakedness of his father! Let’s get him!”

Or maybe a reality show called Carry That Cross where contestants are beaten almost senseless by once-famous television stars dressed up as Roman soldiers, and then challenged to see who can carry a cross up a fake Golgotha.

Or maybe American Idle where people compete to see who can do the least on a Sabbath.

My point is that if we want Americans to be more Bible-smart we have to get them where they live: on the couch in front of the tube eating a God is Happy with You Meal complete with a Pontius Pilate doll with hands that really wash.

Do You Yah Hu?

Here is the text of an actual email I received a few days ago:

Dear Rabbi Rami,

I believe God is real, and that He wants us to know Him, and that to help us know Him He places signs and wonders in the world. Recently I read that one of God’s names in Hebrew is Yah, and that the Hebrew word Hu means “he” or “him”. That got me thinking about the internet provider Yahoo. I am wondering if this is a sign. Actually, I am pretty sure it is a sign. Yahoo means Yah Hu, God is He. What do you think about this?

Now before you think this person is insane, let me say that I, too, noticed long ago that Yahoo was Hebrew for God is He. OK? Now you can think this person is insane. No wait, not yet. First type in “yahhu.com” in your search engine and notice that it takes you to Yahoo. Yahoo bought Yahhu. Coincidence? I think not. OK, now you can think this person is insane.

No, no, wait, not just yet. I can’t get over the fact that Yahoo bought “yahhu.” They knew that Yahoo was Yah Hu. They knew! Don’t forget that. Don’t ever forget that. OK, now you can… no, not yet. Do you get it? Yahoo knew! So ask yourself this: Where did the name Yahoo come from? Certainly it is an expletive one uses when riding a real or mechanical bull in a rodeo or a bar, but is this what the folks at Yahoo were thinking when they chose the name? After all they bought “yahhu.” They knew!

I thought about emailing Yahoo and asking them about this, but I figured that would take too much time, so let me say that I for one doubt the rodeo/bar theory and choose to believe that Yahoo is in fact a clever use of Yah Hu. But what I want to know now is whether Yahoo is mocking God or affirming God?

Again I could ask the company, but would I trust their answer even if they offered one? Probably not, so why bother asking? Instead, let’s speculate.

I choose to believe that Yahoo is affirming God, and that Yahoo is a sign from God. The company’s slogan, “Do you Yahoo?” becomes a very important question. If you do Yah Hu you affirm the presence of God on earth. If you don’t you ignore the presence of God on earth, which could cause you spend eternity unplugged in hell.

But if you do Yahoo/Yah Hu, you may also be affirming Jesus as God, for the Hu that is Him could be the Him that is Jesus. Should Jews and Muslims Yahoo if in fact Yahoo is Yah Hu and the Hu that is Yah is Jesus? Is Yahoo really a Christian front group? And if it is what is their theology? Are they Catholic? Orthodox? Calvinist? Dutch Reformed? Isn’t Yah also “yes” in German and Dutch? Couldn’t Yahoo be a Dutch Reformed triple play: Yah Hu, God is He and He is Jesus, and Yes, Jesus is God? Couldn’t it? Huh? Couldn’t it? So maybe my emailer was right and because you mocked him you are wrong and are now damned and going to hell for denying God by using Earthlink or some other devilish internet provider rather than the God chosen Yahoo which is a sign of God in our day. Amen! Selah! ….. Sorry, I got carried away. You can call him insane now.

One Nation, Over Weight

I knew I belonged in America when I recently read that we are now the Fattest Nation on Earth. That doesn’t mean that our girth on the old Rand McNally is changing, but that we Americans are, by and large (yes, pun intended, I am too clever by half) the fattest people on earth.

Now there are lots of studies like this that leave me cold. According to one report, for example, Americans eat seventeen tons of hot dogs per person per month. I may be off a bit on the actual number, but I’m certain it is close to that. I don’t eat meat at all, so someone is eating my tonnage, so this study really has no meaning for me. But the fact that “We the people” are now “We the fattest people” speaks directly to my heart. And maybe a few inches lower as well.

I’m fat. Obese even, if the new Body Mass Index numbers for calculating obesity released by the National American Body Mass Index Council for Calling People Obese are correct. Honestly that used to bother me, but now that I realize Americans as a whole are the fattest people on earth I feel a certain civic pride in my size.

After reading of our new status, I flipped on the television (OK, it was on), and sat down on the couch (OK, I was already sitting on the couch), and lifted the remote (OK, it is permanently strapped to my hand) and flipped (yes, flipped! I read that changing channels with your thumb 7000 times per day is the equivalent of walking to the fridge for a slice of cake, and exercise is good for you.) to find Dr. Sanjay Gupta or some other fit TV-MD aiming a camera at patriotic American bellies flopping mightily over their belts as they walk across an unidentified urban intersection.

This is supposed to shame me into hating my country and losing weight, and maybe it used to, but not any more. Look: America is slipping in our education standing, our economy is falling below that of Crudestan, and if it wasn’t for illegal aliens running across the border, no one would be running at all at all in this country, so we have to take pride in being Number One at something, even if it is being Number One in Fat.

So let’s celebrate! I’m thinking about designing and selling foam #1 fingers like those people wear at ball games. Mine would be a very pudgy orange foam hand holding a huge triple cheeseburger oozing with slightly lighter orange faux Russian dressing. I just have to decide where to put the #1 insignia, and I’m in business.

Words Clever and Clear

I spend a lot of my time praying. It is an occupational hazard, as I speak in churches and synagogues around the United States on a regular basis. And what I notice as I worship in these various settings is that they make me profoundly uncomfortable. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there are too many words in most prayer services. The second is that most of these words don't make sense.

I crave silence in my worship. I don't want to have to speed read through hundreds of pages of print as I am forced to do in most Jewish services, nor do I want to read prayers in iambic pentameter projected on a wall as I am forced to do in most Protestant services. I don't mind words, per se, but they should be few and far between. I want the words we do speak or chant in a worship service to arise out of and slip back into a greater silence that invites self-inquiry. Quaker services are good for me, especially when the Quakers themselves are silent. Buddhist meditation is good, also, though I now prefer theater seats with good back support to my well used zafu (meditation cushion). I can get talk anywhere. I want silence in my worship.

And there is the problem of meaning. If we are going to use words, let's at least use them carefully. When we fill a service with words we get addicted to the cleverness of our poems, and don’t bother to see if what we say makes sense or is even true. This drives me crazy. When the prayer asks God to bring us into the Light by sheltering us under the shadow of His Wings, I want to scream: "Which is it? Light or shadow? If you want the Light don't step into the shadow of His Wings, or if you want the shadow beware the Light."

My most recent example of vapid comes from page 157 of the new Reform Judaism siddur (prayer book). The text says that we worshippers are “eternally in Egypt.” What does that mean? Clearly, unless you are currently being held hostage in Cairo, the text is meant to be taken metaphorically. In Hebrew Egypt, Mitzrayim, means “from the narrow places,” so we can surmise that the authors of this prayer expect us to understand “Egypt” as places of bondage and entrapment. OK, I’m fine with that. But what does it mean to say that we are “eternally in Egypt”?

If we are eternally in Egypt we are doomed. There is no hope. No matter what we do, where we go with our lives, we are in Egypt. Egypt—slavery, bondage, addiction, etc.— is forever. Well, if that is so, why am I wasting time praying in the synagogue?

I have tried to make sense out of this three-word atrocity, but I can’t. If we replace “eternally” with “perpetually” or “continually” or “continuously” we are still left bereft of hope.

I doubt very much that this is what the authors of this prayer meant to say, but “eternally in Egypt” sounded so good, so moving, so clever that they just couldn’t question its meaning and implication.

My suggestion is that the next time you attend a worship service you should pay particular attention to what you are saying, and ask yourself if what you are reading makes sense, let alone if you personally believe it. If it does make sense, great. But if it doesn’t, take notes and send an email to the publisher and complain.

I want to be moved in a worship service, but I don’t want to be tricked. Clear words are preferable to clever ones. At least then I can decide if I believe what I am reading, rather than have to spend time trying to figure out what the prayer actually means.

But I Say Unto You: Rami's Proverbs

While waiting for a meeting to begin, I picked up a book from the office coffee table and started reading. The book is called "Life's Lessons: Words of Wisdom to Help You Lead a Better Life" by Howard Wight. It was a lovely collection of nauseating cliches. I took some notes and began an edited version of my own. Once I started I could not stop. I now opened another blog called "But I Say Unto You" that features by proverbial wisdom. Please feel free to add your proverbs to my own. Here is a sample of what you can find on the new blog:

1. "When you stop doing, you start dying." When you start dying you at last start living.

2. "There is no right way to do anything." There is only the way other people think is right.

3. "Success is about making a difference." So is failure. Everything makes a difference, so stop worrying.

4. "Doing less often means doing more," but only if you don’t know what doing less means.

5. "Time is money." Unless you try to cash your clock at the bank in which case it isn’t.

6. "If you are going to make a difference in the world, make it now," then you can loaf until you die.

7. "Repetition is the mother of learning." Also of madness. You’re call.

8. "Practice what you preach," unless what you preach is wrong.

9. "The best is yet to come." Of course that is what you said yesterday as well.

10. Expecting success only makes failure all the more painful. Expect reality instead.

Cui Bono/Who Benefits?

I’m always looking for some foolproof way to analyze theological issues. Most people focus on the dichotomy “True or False:”

The world was created in six days. True or False?
Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. True or False?
A dog has Buddha nature. True or False? (Or “Mu” for you Buddhists out there.)

Assessing theological claims in this way is useless. You either end up with the vapid and vacuous, “Well it may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me;” or with the equally unhelpful and silly, “All beliefs are equally valid.”

If truth is relative to the believer, and all beliefs are equally true because they are equally unverifiable, then truth is just opinion backed by passion and, maybe, bombs and bullets.

I would like something a bit more useful than this, and I may have found it in the Latin phrase “cui bono,” who benefits. Rather than asking if a claim is true or false, ask who benefits from promoting it and believing in it. For example:

The Jews are the Chosen People. Cui bono? The Jews.
Only Born Again Christians go to heaven. Cui bono? Born again Christians.
The Qur’an is the only uncorrupted revelation from God. Cui bono? Muslims.

But so what? Just because some one or some group benefits from a particular theological claim doesn’t make the claim false. Fair enough, but neither does it make it true. True and false are irrelevant if you take the CUI BONO approach to theology.

My thinking is this: Jews are never going to say that the Senegalese people are God’s Chosen; Evangelical Christians are never going to say that Muslims can get into heaven; and Muslims are never going to say the Gospels are the uncorrupted word of God. In other words, all theological claims are self-serving, and than makes them suspect.

If a theology serves the theologian, then it is nothing more than apologetics or propaganda. I am not impressed when a political candidate tells me her plan is the best plan; what else would she say? I am impressed when she can show me what is right and valuable in the other person’s plan, and how she can take those good ideas and build on them to create something even better. This doesn’t happen in politics, and it certainly doesn’t happen in religion. Why? Because religion and politics are winner-takes-all games. There is no room for real cooperation.

So if you ever hear a claim that benefits more than the claimant, (the teachings of Krishnamurti, for example, or Ramana Maharshi) then you may have heard something of value. Until then, stay skeptical, and keep asking, CUI BONO?

The Kids Are Alright

A new study on teen literacy released this week has the usual subjects up in arms about the dumbing down of America. But I wonder if we aren't making much ado about a tempest in a croc pot.

While I agree that to have a common culture one has to have shared knowledge of the touchstones of that culture, I wonder if these touchstones are not in perpetual flux. Are the touchstones of 17-year-old Americans the same as those of their parents and grandparents? I came up with two ways to test this out.

Way One: I could take a questionnaire on cultural touchstones written by my college students to see if I would turn up just as ill-informed as they appear on questionnaires written by people my age. Of course to find out I would actually have to leave my computer, get some students to create this thing, and then actually bother to answer their stupid questions. Since I have no intention of doing that, let’s just assume I would fail their dumb test, and move on to Way Two.

Way Two: Check on line for older questionnaires to see how I fare when taking them. This was much easier to do, especially when I couldn’t find any. So for the sake of balance, let’s assume I would pass these questionnaires with flying colors.

This of course leaves us at an impasse. But, for all I know, this may be the way sociological studies work, so I'm not going to get upset about this. On the contrary, I'm going to break the impasse by inventing Way Three: I will imagine what questions might be on ancient questionnaires and see if I can answer them. This is harder than it sounds, so I deserve some serious credit for this scientific research. Here are some of the questions I imagine would be on ancient questionnaires:

1. What did the Mogul hordes actually hoard?

2. Who designed the togas worn to the Crucifixion by Mary Magdelaine?

3. How many people were chained in Plato's cave, and how long did he keep them there?

4. What was the longest running pop song in pre-Israelite Canaan?

5. Which samurai warrior endorsed the best selling Japanese sword of 1246?

If you are like me (and you should be), you can’t answer any of these questions. Does that make you stupid? Should we worry that our civilization is going to hell because you didn’t know that the answer to Question Two is RobesPierre, and the answer to Question Four is “Stay Down Moses”? I don’t think so. These questions are irrelevant to our current culture. So let’s stop asking 17-year-olds about the Bible and classical literature, and focus more on questions that matter to them, like “How many days did Britney Speaks spend in rehab in 2007?”

[By the way, if you do know the answers to Questions 1, 3, and 5, post them here. I didn't know them, and expect sociologists from the ends of the flat earth will be checking this site to find out, and don't want to disappoint them. Thanks.]

Science and Religion, A Greater Unity

I read Philip Meyer’s essay on science and religion in USA TODAY (February 25, 2008) with a great deal of sadness. “Religion,” Mr. Meyer wrote, “is about the mystery. Science is about figuring out what works in the material world. There is no danger that science will ever deprive us of the mystery.”

Mr. Meyer’s uses the analogy of a circle to explain his position. Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Everything within the circle is the realm of science. Here we use the scientific method where we seek to validate or disprove various ideas and hypotheses. Everything outside the circle is the realm of religion. Assuming an infinitely large piece of paper, as the circle of science and reason grows, the outside mystery remains in tact.

The problem with his analogy and with his reasoning is that he limits religion to the realm of unreason, and, as the circle of science grows, it is saying that the realm of religion is actually the realm of ignorance or the not-yet-known. While Mr. Meyer’s analogy does allow religion to continue, it does so only in the area of that which cannot be known. Religion is reduced to pure fantasy and speculation, forever retreating against the advances of science.

This kind of thinking lumps religion with every pseudo-science and wacko theory people can think of. While some may find it comforting to place Christianity, for example, outside the circle of knowledge, others will be troubled that Christianity is forced to share its realm with astrology, Scientology, ghost hunters, and psychics. As bad as this sounds, it gets worse.

To make his point clear, Mr. Meyer shows how a young earth creationist who believes that the Bible shows the earth is only 6000 years old can get along with a geologist who can prove that some rocks are 3.8 billion years old. All the creationist has to say is that when God created the earth 6000 years ago He made the rocks 3.8 billion years old. Since the geologist cannot prove that God didn’t do as the creationist says He did, the science of geology is no more or less valid than the theology of creationism. This is insane.

If the only criterion for determining what is true is the inability of science to prove it false, then all untestable ideas from astrology to the Flying Spaghetti Monster are equally valid. And while this may salvage religion, the religion it saves is a joke and largely irrelevant to life.

Science and religion can work together. Science can help religion see what is; religion can help science see what it might mean. Meaning and wisdom are the focus of religion, and these need reason no less than science. Splitting religion and science into two camps does a disservice to both.

Pray or Prey: Take Your Pick

I was listening to NPR the other day and learned of a prayer movement called Light the Highway that runs prayer vigils along Interstate 35 from Texas to Minnesota. The group asks God to do away with systemic poverty, drug addiction, and hopelessness, along with other plagues like homosexuality and abortion. I have no idea how much poverty there is along I 35, nor do I know for a fact that it more ridden with drug addicts, gays, lesbians, and nihilists than any other road in America. As for how many people have abortions on the highway, that too is a number I cannot glean. Nevertheless I like the idea of bands of young people praying for bands of drivers traveling from Laredo to Duluth. Here are some reasons why.

First of all, I can’t imagine driving from Laredo to Duluth, so let us pray for those that do. Second, anyone desperate enough to have an abortion while riding in a car needs our prayers. Third, gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, and transgendered people fleeing from Laredo to Duluth in hopes of finding a safe haven from bigotry are sure to be disappointed, so they too need our prayers. But the best reason for supporting this effort is the one provided by Pastor Steve Hill of Heartland World Ministries in Irving, TX: “What would you rather have? A group of young people praying on I-35 or a group of young people dealing drugs on I-35? Take your pick."

You can’t argue with that. In fact the more I pondered the pastor’s logic the more convinced I became of its validity. So I am writing to encourage you to take Pastor Hill’s logic to heart, and use it to garner support of a host of civic-minded projects. Here are some possible programs and the rationale behind them:

1. To promote a program centralizing drug dealing in your city, offer this argument: Which would you rather have? A group of young people dealing drugs on the highway or a group of young people shooting passersby on the highway? Take your pick.

2. To limit the murder rate in your community, try this: Which would you rather have? A group of young people shooting passersby on the highway or a group of young people shooting students in our elementary schools? Take your pick.

3. To support the ghettoizing of homosexuals and homosexual activity, use this: Which would you rather have? A group of homosexual young people fornicating in one well run, well policed, and well-heeled neighborhood, or a group of homosexual young people fornicating in our churches and community centers? Take your pick.

And if all of this bothers you, think of it this way: Which would you rather have? A group of young people getting politically active and working to eliminate poverty or a group of young people standing on the sidelines praying that God do it for them? Take your pick. The logic is unassailable.

Cafe-au-Pray

According to THIS WEEK magazine (February 22, 2008), “Catholic authorities in Croatia have opened a coffee shop that lets customers pay for drinks with prayers.” The Zagreb café is called Jedro, and its prices range from four Our Fathers for a cappuccino to five Hail Mary’s for a Coke.

Now this is a religion that works. Everybody likes coffee, but fewer and fewer of us can afford the cash prices. So if we can pray instead of pay, who would drink anywhere else?
You gotta hand to those Catholics!

Now I know a good thing when I see one, and I want to bring this idea to America where I plan to expand it beyond thirsty Catholics to include all the world’s religions. So here is my plan. If you like it and want to go in on it with me, just send money. We’ll work out the details later.

Anyway, here is the plan. We will call the franchise Café-au-Pray, and I have already figured out a way to improve the process. Time is money, right?. And it takes time to say those Our Fathers and Hail Marys. By my own reckoning, it takes me ten seconds to say one complete Hail Mary. That means it would take fifty seconds for me to pray for a Coke. Not too long, but every second counts. If I could quicken the process without cutting the price, I could move people through the line even faster. How to do this? Enter the Tibetan Buddhists.

Tibetan Buddhists use a prayer wheel to pray rather than actually saying the words. You just spin the wheel and as the words go round you get credit for having recited the prayer. Cool, right? Yeah, it is.

So this is how it will work: You walk into your local Café-au-Pray and choose your preferred Prayer Wheel from the Wheels of Fortune display. Every major religion would be represented, as well as wheels with prayers from smaller religions if the demographic of the neighborhood warrants it. You choose your wheel, place your order, spin the prayer, and pick up your drink, returning the wheel to its place on the rack for the next person on your way out of the store. What could be easier?

You can actually spin a prayer wheel with the Hail Mary printed on it in two seconds, which means that you could pray for your Coke in ten seconds, a timesaving of 80%. That means we can handle far more customers in far less time than our wheel-less competition in Croatia. Of course people aren’t actually paying in cash dollars so more of nothing is still nothing, but if you send me enough start-up money I’ll see if I can find a way around that.

Final Exam

I was talking with an elderly Christian man the other day who told me, “When you die and go to heaven there is no Pearly Gate with Saint Peter sitting at a welcome desk. No, sir, when you die Jesus comes to you at the last minute and asks one question; he says, ‘Who do you say I am?’ If you answer right and without thinking about it, then you get into heaven. If you hesitate you are damned.”

Of course the conversation quickly turned to what I would answer Jesus. I explained that I thought Jesus was a God-intoxicated Jewish mystic whose teachings often contained the deepest truths when understood in their historical context—first century Roman occupied Palestine—and when you included not only the canonical Gospels but also the Gnostic texts with special emphasis on the Gospel of Thomas.

“Do you think that will satisfy him?” I asked the man.

“The correct answer is, ‘You are my Lord and Savior.’ I have no idea what you just said, and neither will Jesus. I’d pray on that, son.” So I did. And what I got in return was a very different scenario.

When you die Jesus does come to you, and as your last breath leaves your body he does ask questions: four to be exact. The questions are asked in quick succession leaving no time to think, and hardly enough time to respond. Jesus is in a hurry. You are not the only person dying at that moment, and he has to quiz them all. Here are the four questions that I think Jesus will ask:

QUESTION 1: Is the following shape convex or concave: ) ?
QUESTION 2: When you turn your steering wheel to the right with both hands are you pulling the steering wheel or pushing it?
QUESTION 3: When you toss a ball in the air is it going “up” or “out”?
QUESTION 4: When you say, “It is raining” to what does the “it” refer?

I’m not going to supply you with answers to these questions because that would be cheating. Even having the questions in advance may be against the rules, but since that other guy had his I figured it was OK to share. Anyway, I am pretty sure that if you can figure out not only the answers but the deeper meaning toward with the questions point you will be OK. If you can’t, fall back on Lord and Savior. Maybe that other guy was on to something.

Dressing as Jews

Lent can be a trying time for Catholics. So I understand why Catholics would invent a Carnival holiday featuring foods forbidden during Lent. In Vilnius, Lithuania where Carnival is called Uzgavenes, it also features a Halloween like atmosphere where people dressed up as and mock Jews and Gypsies.

Yes, the very people who participated in the Nazi extermination of Jews and Roma find mocking their victims a fun way to let off steam after Lent. People also dress up as devils, goats, and monsters, though, regardless of what costume you wear, wearing one at all is called “eiti zydukais,” which means “going as Jews.”

Reducing Jews and Roma to demons, monsters and animals is bad enough. Doing so in a city and a country that murdered most of its Jewish and Roma populations is frightening.
Lithuanians, however, find it fun.

Now, before I get on my high horse and condemn these fun loving Jew and Gypsy murdering folks for wanting a little joy in their lives, let me say that we Jews too have our version of Carnival. It’s called Purim. And we too dress up; most often as characters from the story of Queen Esther. The difference is that we don’t identify, stereotype, and demonize a people in the process. (We have the Bible for that.)

Imagine opening your door to Halloween candy seekers to find a gaggle of kids dressed up in costumes that reflected stereotypes of African Americans or Native Americans. You would be shocked and offended. Or at least I hope you would.

On the other hand, we Americans continue to use Native American names and stereotypes for our sports teams, and this is similar to what happens to Jews and Roma during Uzgavenes.

Europeans almost exterminated Native Americans the way Nazis and their collaborators almost exterminated Jews and Gypsies. Having reduced these peoples to a fraction of their numbers it is easy to promote and then appropriate for other uses a mythic, stereotypical image of them.

In the case of the Native Americans it is the myth of the Warrior that attracts sports teams to Native Americans. We call our teams Chiefs or Braves in the unconscious hope that we will magically appropriate the courage and nobility we assigned to the Amerindian after their slaughter. In the case of the Jews and Roma in Lithuania it is a magical attempt to ward off the feared Other who still haunts their dreams, nightmares, and political fantasies even after murdering millions of them.

What are the Jews of Lithuania doing about this practice? Nothing. They smile weakly and wait for Uzgavenes to pass. Why? Because they know first hand that it is a short step from mockery to murder, and they would rather put up with the former than provide a catalyst for the latter.

How about all of us giving up demonizing people for Lent? And then continue it for the rest of our lives as well? There’s a holiday I could get behind.

Don't Delete My Dalit

I wish I could find just one religion without its violent wackos. I’ve long given up on the Abrahamic faiths, and Japanese Buddhism during World War II rules them out. So how about Hinduism?

Sure it was a Hindu fanatic who killed Gandhi, and who knows how many Muslims have died at the hands of Hindu extremists, but that was then. How about now? Doesn’t Hinduism value ahimsa, nonviolence? So how about it people? Peace anyone?

‘Fraid not. During this past Christmas season Hindu fanatics burned down 55 churches and 600 houses owned by Christians. But, as Ramesh Modi, a leader in the World Hindu Council, which promotes Hindutva or Hinduness, these Christians, really brought the violence on themselves.

Their crime? Illegally converting Hindus to Christianity. Forced conversion is illegal in much of India, but there is no evidence that Hindus are being forced to abandon Kali for Christ. On the contrary, millions of Hindu “Untouchables” doomed to a life of misery by the officially illegal yet culturally unstoppable caste system are freely choosing the Cross of Christ to the cross of caste.

This is not to say the evangelical passions of Christian missionaries do not lead them to vitriolic attacks on Hinduism and Hindu Deities, but this is still not conversion at the point of a sword. Whether dalits (“untouchables”) are becoming Christian because of a genuine love of Christ or because they see it as a way out of an unjust and oppressive caste system is beside the point. People should be free to choose their own religion.

As usual it is hard to separate politics from theology. Like politicians everywhere, using a minority to whip the majority into a mindless frenzy, is often good for business. Just as the political success of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat is attributed in part to its involvement in anti-Muslim violence, so other Hindu groups hope to win votes on the heals of anti-Christian persecution as well.

Defenders of religion will tell me that this is the manipulation of faith at the hands of politicians. They aren’t wrong. But if the faith wasn’t ripe for such manipulation it couldn’t be done. Religion is not innocent in these matters, even if it is not the instigator of them. Even as seemingly inclusive a religion as Hinduism still suffers from the us versus them mentality that poisons all religions.

People are naturally oppositional. But religion should challenge that tendency rather than feed it. Where is a real religion of peace, justice, compassion, human rights, women’s emancipation, and environmental sanity? Unitarian Universalism, anyone?

Apocalypse Soon

We are coming into a time of apocalypse. Gaia is about to shake us to the core, and demand that we get about the work for which she grew us. A scarcity of water and other natural resources is going to plunge our world into war after war. Famine will expand, and plagues will ravage us. This isn’t punishment, but karma. We are about to reap what we have sown. It will be a horrible time, but also a promising one. We are going to be brought face to face with the evil we have created that we might own it and end it. Or, if we don’t, to have it end us.

The word apocalypse comes from the Greek apocalypsis, meaning to unveil. The coming apocalypse will be a great unveiling of our greed, ignorance and fear, and the havoc these wreck on the earth. The apocalypse is a wake-up call, a last chance to realize our true gifts and genius. It is coming to confront us with horror of our own madness that we might, as the Bible says, “turn from evil and do good.”

I believe the universe is intelligent. I believe that evolution is in the service of consciousness. I believe the universe wants to become aware of itself, to love itself, in all its complexity and diversity. And I believe that on this planet we are, among other things, the way our world feels (and causes) injustice and suffering; and because we feel it, we are also the way our world seeks to correct it. The apocalypse may be our last chance to achieve our true potential for it will bring us to the brink of destruction that we might step back and do differently.

The apocalypse grows in proportion to our denial of it. It will widen and deepen until we can no longer escape the world’s pain and our responsibility for it and to it. And if at last we feel the world’s pain as our pain, and if there is time, we will do something to alleviate it. And if there isn’t time? We will do what we can to comfort one another as the planet mourns our destruction and seeks another way to the heart.

Will we face the truth in time? I doubt it. If current events are any guide, rather than cultivate cries of compassion, we will shout ourselves hoarse with cries of war. Rather than open our hands to lift one another out of poverty and injustice, we will tighten them into fists to pound those who are already down, a little further down. Rather than drop the insanity of competing tribes, nations, and religions we will circle the wagons of tribe, nationality, and faith, arm ourselves to the teeth, and make war in the name of our gods and our greed, our ignorance and our fear.

We need to weep, to grieve over our lost potential, and then to see together what we might yet become. But that cannot happen before the apocalypse does, because it will take the apocalypse to wake us up. We cannot avoid our karma, we can only embrace it with fearless love.

What Is Interspirituality?

[Here are my latest musings on the nature of the work I do in Interspiritual dialogue.]

What Carl Jung is to dream, and Joseph Campbell is to myth, Interspirituality is to religion. Just as Jung uncovered and revealed the deep archetypal structures of human dreaming, and Campbell uncovered and revealed the deep psycho-spiritual structures of human mythology, so Interspirituality should seek to uncover and reveal the deep structures of human religion and religiosity.

This is very different from interfaith for which Interspirituality is inevitably mistaken.
Interfaith is a conversation, sometimes benign, sometimes helpful, sometimes necessarily and sometimes unnecessarily confrontational, between people fully ensconced in their respective faiths. The goal is to help one another understand each other’s position, but not to change it or take it to a new level or depth of wisdom. Interfaith “dialogue” is in actuality a series of separate uni-faith monologues, and there is nothing really “inter” about it.

Interspiritual conversations are something else entirely. While articulating and clarifying faith traditions may be the starting point, the goal is to move beyond our respective camps into a place of not-knowing where we explore together what may be true, regardless of what our respective religions say is true. This can only happen among people rooted in their respective traditions who are also dedicated to going deeper; dedicated to the proposition that there is something deeper, and that by sharing with one another we can probe into that deeper unknown to shed light not only on our separate faiths but on the very nature of faith.

This is far more than an exercise in “compare and contrast.” This is something radically different than a series of monologues, “We Hindus believe… We Jews believe…” Interspiritual dialogue has to be done in the spirit of fearless, compassionate, and respectful inquiry. Each participant has to be ready to say— in light of what may come up in conversation— “My tradition may be wrong about this;” “My religion may have to rethink and change this;” or even “My religion knows nothing of this and should adapt what your religion sees that we might see more clearly ourselves.”

There can be no defensiveness, no boundaries, no settling for “we agree to disagree.” Where we cannot see any further we have to humbly wait for the Spirit to show us the next step. That is why Interspiritual conversations must be rooted in silence, not-knowing, humility, and contemplative practice and inquiry, unlike conventional interfaith dialogues with are too often rooted in official dogma and approved chatter.

In Interspiritual conversation participants must be radically open to the other. Not that we find a generic faith that trumps individual faiths, but that we continually point to the fact that religions are like the proverbial blind men describing the elephant. Each has a piece of the picture, but even the sum of the parts does not yield the whole.

I am more than willing, in fact I am compelled, to say that my own tradition, Judaism, is, to borrow the Buddhist phrase, a finger pointing to the moon and not the moon itself. Interfaith dialogue focuses on the fingers; Interspirituality should focus on the moon.

To do this participants in Interspiritual conversations need to learn the core teachings of the various faiths represented in a larger context. Without a larger container for our conversations all we end up with is a potpourri of spiritual platitudes and a pseudo-universalism rooted in the false notion that all religions are saying the same things. All religions, just as all dreams and all myths, draw from the same pool of human needs and nature, but what they do with these is shaped by their unique histories and cultures. Interspirituality needs to direct our attention to that shared pool, identify the needs that are driving things, and then try to articulate the greater truth seeking to speak through the diverse voices of the world’s religions.

This does not negate the notion that there is something divine involved here. But the image is not of God revealing religion to humanity, but of humanity seeking to reveal God through religion. If we assume that our respective faiths are given by God, and are therefore True, Complete, and Perfect in and of themselves, there is no need for Interspirituality at all; interfaith will do just fine. Interspirituality, as I see it, is not rooted in God, Tao, Dharmakaya, Reality but in humanity’s search for This. As such all religions are human in origin and limited by human nature. I realize this goes against the grain of revealed faiths, but unless we can make this Copernican revolution in religious thinking we have nothing to offer but a refinement of interfaith tongue wagging and head butting.

Relics "R" Me

Did you know you can buy Christian relics on eBay? No kidding. You can buy strands of hair from Saint Therese of Lisieux, and bone fragments of Saint Philomena, the 13-year old who was martyred for refusing to marry the Roman Emperor Diocletian. You can even bid on slivers from the Cross and thorns from the Crown.

I admit I was tempted to bid on the latter, but then it hit me that the real money isn’t in buying relics, but selling them. After all the bidding on a saints hair starts at just under fifty bucks, so there really isn’t that much return on one’s investment even if you plucked the hair from Saint Therese yourself. So I’m going to buy one of those books on how to make a million on eBay and start my own relic business.

First off I’m selling chips from the Urim and Thummim, the oracle jewels worn by Aaron the High Priest. Then I’ve got slivers of the original Ten Commandments, the one’s Moses broke in his anger over the people and their worship of the Golden Calf. The big pieces Moses picked up himself, but the little ones he left in the desert for us collectors. And speaking of the Golden Calf I’ve got gold flakes from that as well. And salt that was once the body of Lot’s wife. Salt from different body parts of Mrs. Lot will sell for different prices. I’ve got lots of salt. It’s kosher salt, too: what a miracle!

Most of my relics will sell for well under $50, but I intend to make up in volume what I lose in price. But I will have a few rare items as well. I actually have the actual tunic that Potiphor’s wife ripped off the actual body of Joseph the Hebrew stud muffin (her words, not mine) that worked for her husband. And if hair is your thing, I have almost the entire head of Samson’s hair, both the strands cut off by Delilah and the ones God grew back. I’m not claiming that these strands will give you Samson’s strength, because I can’t afford the FDA screening process, but you never know.

And then there are the few flakes of skin from Miriam’s arm after God gave her leprosy as punishment for dissing her little brother Moses. These I will sell encased in Plexiglas so as to avoid any contamination.

But I think my most treasured relic is the foreskin of Moses’ son Gershom that his wife Zipporah cut off when God was about to kill Moses for neglecting the rite of circumcision. The bidding for this will start quite high I’m sure.

Of course there are skeptics who claim I am manufacturing these relics myself, but that is foolish. How do you manufacture a foreskin? And how to do manufacture shards from the original Tablets? Or salt body parts of Lot’s wife? God made these, so there is no way to fake them.

And anyway, the power of the relic is in the faith of the believer. Which is why the motto for my eBay store will be, “If you’ve got the faith, I’ve got the relic.”

Millennial Spirituality

In the February 4th issue of USA TODAY Stephen Prothero, whose book “Religious Literacy” deserves a wide readership, writes about the religion of the millennial generation, Americans born between the late 1970s through the 1990s. His somewhat patronizing look at millennial spirituality is at odds with my own experience.

I have been teaching this population for the past few years, and find that millennials are looking for a dogma-free faith that honors diversity and life in this world, something they don’t find in conventional churches and synagogues. As one of my students put it, “I can’t reconcile the narrowness of my birth-religion with what I am learning about other religions. It seems that my religion is afraid of the world, but I’m not afraid at all.”

While it would be easy to dismiss millennial struggles as the vague ramblings and rebellion of youth, I think that would be doing them and religion a grave disservice. My students are serious about religion, even if some of them reject religion. What they desire is Wisdom and a Way to experience it for themselves.

What they are finding in their churches and synagogues is hollow harangues about hellfire and tribal loyalty that just don’t speak to them. What they are offered is a worship service that mistakes emotion for spirituality, vapid poetry for meaningful discourse, and a temporary high for a more transformative mystical experience.

Millennials are not lazy, but they do lack direction and guidance. If priests, pastors, and rabbis could speak to the genuine millennial search for universal wisdom rather than denominational dogma, and transformative contemplative practices rather than cheap thrills or nostalgic musings, many millennials would listen with open minds and hearts.

When asked my students will share mystical experiences they have while painting, or writing poetry, or walking in the woods. They will speak about the shrinking of the “I,” the ending of time, and the sense of connectedness with, and love for and from all things. They may or may not use the word “God,” but the sense of the divine is present in their words and their experience.

Millennials are seekers just like the rest of us used to be (and maybe still are). They find Wisdom in literature, art, myth, poetry, and nature. They understand love at least well enough not to pollute it with violence and eternal damnation. They don’t accept the reduction of myth to fact, of parable to history, of metaphor to science that seems to be the way of conventional religion. They know that Wisdom is universal even as the ways we express it are particular. They know that love leaves no room for hate, and salvation is not limited to some self-proclaimed elect. They see through the lies, if yet the Truth.

The fact that conventional clergy can’t get these people into the pews is a sign of hope not horror. If it were up to me I’d put a warning label on every religious institution saying, “Warning: This institution contains ideas that can lead to insensitivity, violence, fear, and trauma. Use with caution if at all.”

Roamin' Catholics

I often give talks highlighting the differences between Judaism and Christianity. One of the points I usually make is that Jews are not called to convert Gentiles to Judaism, whereas Christians are commanded to convert nonChristians to Christianity.

As soon as I make this point someone in the audience usually raises a hand to interrupt saying, “While that may be true of many Protestants, it isn’t true of us Catholics. Our missions around the world are humanitarian and do not focus on proselytizing.”

I’m not a Catholic, and I find it politick to acquiesce to people who know more about their religion than I do, but now I will have to challenge my Roman Catholic dissenters. On December 14th, Pope Benedict XVI (16) [Why do Catholics insist on using Roman numerals; it makes the pope sound like a Mazda?] said that Catholics should aim to convert people and not limit themselves to good works. So as Roman Catholics are roaming around the planet they should try harder to save souls, and not just feed bodies.

This really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Eight (VIII) years ago the Pope said that Catholics alone have “the fullness of the means of salvation,” so it is only natural that they would want to share that fullness with the rest of us. As Father Agostino di Noia said on Vatican Radio (which, I suspect, only plays music sold by Virgin Records), “The fundamental problem is a pluralistic theology of religion, which essentially states that all religions are equally valid in leading a person to salvation.”

He’s right. If any old religion can get you to salvation, why join one that is still using Roman numerals?

While I can’t prove this, and in fact have no evidence what so ever to back it up, I think the reason that Protestant churches are making so many converts in formally Catholic dominated countries is that they use Arabic numerals. Of course I also think that it is because America is a predominantly Protestant country using Arabic numerals that so many Arabs hate us. If we hadn’t stolen their numbers they might have made it into the 21st (XXIst) century without us have to bomb them into the 12th (XIIth) century first.

One good note to this story is that the new Catholic conversions will be nicer than the old ones. According to the Vatican, today’s Catholics must “safeguard the freedom and dignity of the human person” they are trying to convert. In the old days they gave us Jews two choices: refuse to convert and die now, or convert and die later. Today we have the option of converting now or burning in hell for all eternity. Oh well, VI of I, half dozen of another.

White Penis

If you take the pundits seriously, I, as a white male Democrat, am adrift politically. It seems, now that white male candidate John Edwards has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, that we white males have no one for whom to vote.

Women vote for Hillary. African Americans vote for Barack. But we poor white males have no one who looks like us to vote for. Neither do Hispanics, of course, or Asians, or Native Americans, but no one seems to care about them. Or maybe the pundits assume that these other groups have the intelligence to vote their values rather than their race or gender.

White men are a different breed. We vote for ourselves or….. Or what? Come to think of it we never had this problem before. We have always voted for people that looked like us: white males. So, it’s true, I feel betrayed by my party.

[By the way, it never was my party before. I have been an independent all my life, but in order to vote in the Tennessee primary I had to declare allegiance to one marketing team or another, and I chose Democrat. I wanted to vote against the nasty way Billary Clinton has been running their campaign. It smelled of racism to me. But it wasn’t an easy choice. I really like elephants and feel nothing at all for donkeys, so the logo issue was very real for me, especially if I picked up one of the canvas bag from the party’s headquarters. Walking around with an ass on my bag seems really uncool. Elephants are cool. Sure I could cross over to the Reds and vote for McCain, and, as the saying goes, “better Red then dead,” but I can’t stand the thought of four more years of an anti-science, pro-war, homophobic, and misogynist agenda which is what I fear a Republican win will bring with it regardless of the personal feelings of the winner. So that is why the Democrats are, for this election at least, my party.]

But what really irks me is the notion that I can’t vote for a person of color or a woman. How stupid we white men must be. I imagine my fellow wmv (white male voters) walking into the voting booth murmuring to themselves, “Where is the white penis? Where is the white penis? How can I vote if no candidate has a white penis?”

Well I want to go on record that white or black, penis or vagina I’m voting Democrat. Unless, of course, Bloomberg runs. Then there would be a white penis in the race. And not just a white penis but also a Jewishly circumcised white penis. Now that is my kind of candidate!

Dead Folk Don't Work

Sometimes you just don’t feel like going to work. But how often can you call in with the flu or a dead relative? So, if you are like me, you are always on the lookout for a new medical excuse. This morning I came across a beautiful one. It is called Cotard’s syndrome, after Dr. Jules Cotard (1840-1889) who first described the syndrome during a Paris lecture in 1880.

People with Cotard’s syndrome think they are dead.

Imagine this: You wake up in the morning and just can’t drag your butt out of bed. So you convince yourself that you are dead. There are several things that dead people do not do. They don’t talk, tell tales, or wear plaid. And they don’t go to work.

So you call your office and tell them there has been a death in your family. Now save this one for a special occasion when you realize that you have already called in about the deaths of everyone else in your family. You can only claim your own demise once. Anyway, you call in and say there has been a death in the family. When asked who it is who died, you simply say, “I did.”

Don’t hang up. The person on the other end might think you are about to commit suicide and call 911, which would ruin your day. So stay on the line and explain that you are already dead and just making this call out of courtesy. Then hang up.

Now the day is your own, but you have to stay dead. After all what if your boss sees you walking around? Not that you have to stay inside. You are dead, you can do whatever you please, just remember that you are dead. People can’t see you or hear you. So if you do run into your boss, don’t acknowledge her. Not even a nod.

If you make a mistake and do nod or wave, don’t panic. You are dead; start waving a lot and making oooooooooo sounds, and “float” around your boss. Don’t scare her, say nice things about how you admired her when you were alive—just incase you get resurrected or reincarnated, and have to go back and ask her for a job.

The more I think about this syndrome the more I like it. If I were dead and yet could still walk around and do stuff it would be the best of both worlds. Of course if I really had the disease I would eventually starve to death under the illusion that dead men don’t need food. So I plan to write myself a manual for the dead that will tell me that the dead need to eat three meals a day, exercise, and cross the street only when the green man is illuminated.

Whenever I talk about diseases I always get mail from people who actually suffer from the disease. So if you have Cotard’s syndrome and find my remarks offensive, please remember that while the dead do read blogs they never ever comment on them.

Farting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

My philosophy of human nature is simple: people are tubes. Stuff goes in at one end and comes out at the other. We can be cruel tubes, altruistic tubes, creative tubes, even spiritual tubes, but tubes are what we are. Even the great Sufi poet Rumi said this, though he used the more poetic term “reeds” rather than my more prosaic “tubes,” but the idea is the same.

I have been saying this for so long that I considered suing You-Tube for misrepresenting my idea. But hubris is replaced with humility when one’s tubeness is understood, and I decided not to make a stink. And that is what I want to talk about for a moment.

The older one gets the more obvious one tubity becomes. The secret to being a humble tube is acceptance of tubessence, more commonly known as farting.

You know you are an old tube when you bend over to tie your shoes and fart. You know you are an old tube when you fart as you laugh. You know you are an old tube when you fear you may die from burping and farting at the same time.

My mother’s mother was such an old tube that the mere act of walking set off a stream of farts that, in the cold New England winter months, made one suspect she was driven by a gas combustion engine with a single exhaust. I myself am a HEMI.

Now some people are embarrassed by their tubeness, and the body’s involuntary expression of it. These are usually adolescent tubes who wish to deny their tube-like nature. The youngest tubes find the wonders of farting to be sidesplittingly amusing, and not only when it is an older tube that is doing the emitting. As in so many things, we would be wise to let the little children lead us. Farting is funny. Regardless of who does it, farting is funny. It is liberating, it is honest, it is what tubes do.

It is also poignant. The older you get the more you fart. The more you fart the closer you are to death. No, I have no scientific evidence of this, it just makes sense to me. So farting reminds us of our mortality, and that reminder requires more than laughter.

My suggestion is that we find religious response to hearing, smelling, or producing a fart, just like many people do when they hear about a death. When Jews fart, I suggest they say, “Baruch Dayan haEmet, blessed is the True Judge.” When Christians fart, I suggest they make a large sign of the cross with an open hand to both honor the meaning and disperse the message. I’ll leave other traditions to your own imagination.

Farting reminds us that we are going to die. Farting reminds us that both farter and fartee share the same fate. Farting is a gift from the Almighty Tube in whose image we are created. I truly believe that if we were more humble with our farting we would be less violent with our living. So please, celebrate farting as one of life’s little pleasures; and remember the dead do not fart. Baruch Dayan haEmet.

Reincarnation American Style

Newsweek ran an article on reincarnation this week that begs comment. The impetus for the piece was the suggestion, denied by the Church of Scientology, that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s daughter Suri was the reincarnation of sci-fi author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Having hooked the reader with the reference to Tom, Katie, and Suri, the article goes on to tell us that 40% of Americans between the age of 25 and 29 believe they will return to earth in a different body after they die.

To explain this finding (though not the odd demographic) the article’s author, Lisa Miller, turns to Stephen Prothero, professor of religion at Boston University, and author of a great book called Religious Literacy. According to Prothero, as life in America gets better the idea of having only one crack at it seems unfair. So we want to come back for more as if life were an all-you-eat buffet.

I understand this theory. Whenever I go to a restaurant with an all-you-eat buffet I tend to go back and back and back for more and more and more. I want to make sure I have tasted everything I want to taste, and gotten my money’s worth.

Taking my metaphor further, we can see why mainstream western religions have to offer a fabulous heaven for the true believer. They are saying, “Look why go back for more of the same old fare, when you can die and pig out at God’s Bar and Grill in Heaven?”

Prothero is quoted as saying, “Americans are becoming more Hindu.” I don’t buy this idea at all. While it is true that Hindus believe in reincarnation, it is also true that pray for the day when they die and don’t come back. The whole idea of reincarnation in Hinduism is to work your way up to a point where you achieve moksha, liberation, from the wheel of birth, death, and rebirth. When a Hindu reincarnates they say, “Damn!” When an American reincarnates they say, “Let’s get busy!”

Reincarnation in America is an extension of the ego’s desire for more: more food, for stuff, more sex, more adventure, more money. We are so selfish that we cannot imagine making room for a new soul to come to the US to taste the goodies we so highly prize and worship: “No way! Let those newbies start out in Calcutta. I worked hard over many lifetimes to get a Platinum American Express card and I’m not going to limit my shopping spree to one lifetime.”

The religion of America is Consumerism. The god we trust is the Almighty Dollar who so loves us Americans that he sent his army of preachers, politicians, and soldiers to secure our place as the glutens of the globe. Of course we want to come back; there just isn’t enough time to get it all in one life. This is so sad.

Personally, I don’t want to come back. I’ve done enough damage as it is, thank you very much. I prefer to become mulch.

A Godly Constitution

If elected President of the United States Governor Mike Huckabee plans to bring the U.S. Constitution into alignment with God:

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

I couldn’t agree more. My only problem is that he doesn’t go far enough. Why stop with amendments ending abortion and limiting marriage to one man and one woman? There is so much more to be done. If the Governor becomes President let’s do this right. Here are just a few suggestions:

The First Amendment allows for freedom of religion and speech, but the Bible doesn’t. God revealed the one true religion (Judaism) and secular and priestly establishments to enforce it. We need to make Judaism the official religion of the United States, and tear down the churches, mosques, temples of anyone who insists on worshipping otherwise. And as far as peaceable assembly goes, God slaughtered Korach and tens of thousands of Israelites who challenged the anti-democratic leadership of Moses and his brother Aaron (Numbers 16). Clearly “Don’t Mess With Moe” was God’s motto and the First Amendment has got to go.

The Sixth and Seventh Amendments guarantee you the right to trial by jury, but that isn’t biblical, either, so let’s get rid of these. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery, but God specifically sanctions it in Leviticus 25:44; and the Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote, where God isn’t in favor of voting at all. So we must repeal all of these amendments right away. And this is just the beginning if we are to bring this country and our Constitution in line with God and God’s Word.

Governor Mike is right: it is easier to change the Constitution than it is to change the Word of God (unless of course you’re Jesus and then all you have to say is, “But I say unto you.”). And let’s be clear, when Governor Huckabee talks about the Word of God he means the Torah. Jesus doesn’t say anything about abortion or gay marriage.

I am planning to vote for Mike Huckabee, and if he wins I am glad to say it will be the last vote any of us will ever have to make again. God bless America.

Nobody's Perfect

Governor Mike Huckabee put aside politics for the pulpit the other Sunday, and preached a sermon on what it takes to get into heaven. As we all know the Governor is a Baptist minister and it would be silly of me to complain that he limits access to heaven to those nonMormons who believe in Jesus as the Son of God. Besides, I don’t believe in heaven in the first place, so for me, worrying about who gets in to heaven is like worrying about who gets to ride a unicorn. Of course if you deny heaven and believe in unicorns this analogy doesn’t work, but I trust you get my point.

According to the Governor it isn’t enough to believe in Jesus to get into heaven, you also have to be perfect as well. Wow, now that is saying something. I’m not a Christian theologian but I often drive behind people who are, and I read their bumper sticker testaments. According to what I read, Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.

I always admired this about Christianity. If God is love as Christians say he is, then how could he not forgive? If God is love, and Jesus died for my sins, aren’t I perfect enough? Or is less-than-perfect the same as imperfect?

And what does it mean to be perfect, anyway? I mean a behaviorally oriented religion such as Judaism at least gives you hard and fast rules against which to measure your perfection or lack thereof. You either light your Shabbat candles in time or you don’t. You either wait the prescribed hours between eating milk and meat or you don’t. You can keep score and know exactly how close to perfect you are at any given moment.

Of course perfection is impossible, but Jews don’t care about this because perfection is not a prerequisite for getting into heaven (assuming you believe in heaven). According to Judaism all a person needs to get into heaven is to have one’s good deeds outweigh one’s bad deeds. Notice you are allowed bad deeds, just not too many. So perfection is irrelevant.

Christianity, at least Governor Huckabee’s understanding of it, however, is about faith rather than works. What does it mean to be perfect in faith? Does it mean being without doubt? Is that possible? What if something horrible happens to you or someone you love suffers some aweful fate, and just for a moment your faith falters—are you doomed? Are you damned?

And then there is the notion of would-be President Huckabee. Do I want a president who believes that most Americans are going to hell? Do I trust a president who rejects science? Do I feel good about a president who prefers Bronze Age morality to rational, ethical inquiry? Oh, wait; we already have one of those.

Maybe I am being too judgmental. After all, nobody’s perfect.

Face-Based Religion

“God is in His Heaven, and the hypocrites are in His church.” Now before you send me hate mail about being anti-Christian, I am only paraphrasing the results of a LifeWay Research survey on church affiliation. LifeWay is part of the Southern Baptist Convention headquartered in Nashville, TN.

LifeWay surveyed the 20% of Americans who identify themselves as unchurched. Unchurched means that they have not gone to church, synagogue, or mosque in the last six-months. Seventy-two percent of the unchurched believe in God or a Higher Power, and the same number complains that religious institutions are full of hypocrites. Hence my opening line.

The number of unchurched Americans is growing. In 2004 only 17% of Americans claimed to be unchurched, a three percent rise in three years is significant. What is happening?

I suggest that there is a general outgrowing of organized religion by more and more Americans. For example, over half of those surveyed said, “Christianity is more about organized religion than about loving God and loving people.” We want to love God and one another, but religion no longer seems to be the place where we learn how.

And while 52% of the unchurched believe that Jesus “died and came back to life,” 61% believe that there is no real difference among the various gods worshipped by the peoples of the world. While it used to be true that when people used the word “God” they meant the God of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, today “God” is generic. In other words, just because Jesus came back from dead doesn’t mean I have to stop chanting Hari Krishna. The difference between Yahweh, Jesus, and the elephant-headed Ganesha is about as significant to people as the difference between Coke and Pepsi.

This has got to be a huge problem for clergy whose success is measured by butts in the pews. Fewer and fewer people are drawn to conventional religious settings. The survey doesn’t break the unchurched down by prior affiliation so we can’t say which religion is suffering from the unchurched phenomenon the most, but I think it is safe to say that Jews are among the most “unchurched” and Muslims are among the least.

The usual response to this is to figure out some way to get people back into the pews, but I prefer to imagine alternatives to pews altogether. I suspect retreats, conversation cafes, and other venues for face-to-face dialogue and contemplative practice are going to thrive as the numbers of unchurched grow. People may be outgrowing organized religion but we will always need a place to sit and talk. Church no longer provides this for many people. And the more faceless every life becomes the more we will need face-based encounters. I have nothing to suggest just yet, but I am working on it. If you have a suggestion, please share it with us.

Fear Is God's Only Weapon

Imagine you walk into a room and are offered ten $1 coins. You can take as many coins as you wish, just know that after you leave the room another person will come in and get the rest. How many coins would you take?

If you are like most people you will take most if not all of the coins, leaving little or nothing for the next person. This is true whether or not you say you are religious. Religions talk a good game: “Do unto others what you want others to do unto you,” but in real life the rule reads more like “Do unto others before others do unto you.” At least this is the finding published in a recent issue of Psychological Science by two researchers, Ara Norensayan and Azim Shariff of the University of British Columbia. My God, if Canadians act this way, just imagine what we Americans would do!

Norensayan and Shariff wanted to see if belief in God had any impact on morality. In the control group it did not. Believers and nonbelievers alike were more than happy to take most of the coins, the next player be damned. But results changed when players were asked to unscramble sentences containing words such as “God,” “divine,” and “sacred” before deciding how many coins to take.

Without the “God prime” only 12% of players split the money evenly. With the God prime, 52% did so. Similar results were achieved with a secular prime: unscrambling sentences containing the words “civic,” “contract,” and “police.” In fact, the results were more evenly dispersed across religious and nonreligious lines with the secular prime than with the God prime.

What does all this mean? To me the message is clear: for most people guilt and fear are the primary motivators behind religion and ethics. The word “God” and the word “police” work to change people’s behavior from the selfish to the more generous because they remind people of the best they are capable of and what might happen to them if they fail to live up to it.

Norensayan and Shariff’s findings don’t surprise me, but they do depress me. Sure, when I walk into a bank I always check to see where the bank guards are before making the decision whether or not to rob the bank, but I thought that was just me. I had hoped that other people were motivated by altruism, honesty, and love. Now I know differently.

But there is a bright side. I worry about being mugged. While some people avoid walking by males of certain racial or ethnic groups. I avoid walking by nearly anyone over the age of ten regardless of gender, race, religion, or ethnicity. But now I have a way of protecting myself.

I am making a special popgun. When you pull the trigger a flag with the words “God,” “divine,” “love,” and “civic” printed on it drops down from the barrel. I am hoping that the sight of this long barreled pistol will cause the would-be mugger to pause just long enough to read the words on the flag and come under their spell. Then I will ask them for five $1 coins and go on my way a little richer for the transformation. I am not patenting this gun; so if you want to make one of your own, go ahead.

Better Red Than Damned

I watched the Iowa Caucuses with great anticipation last night, and I was so proud of my country when I saw the winner—God.

Not long ago Mike Huckabee told a reporter that there could be only one reason he was doing so well in Iowa, and it had nothing to do with him or the voters. God was on his side. At the time, I thought this was typical Evangelical hyperbole, always crediting every unexpected happenstance to God as long as it benefited the person doing the crediting. But now that Governor Huckabee has won the Republican race in Iowa, I am convinced that he (or He) is onto something.

Huckabee isn’t the first person to have been put into office by God; the Bible is full of such people. But he is the first one to have done so with a divinely rigged election.

Now before you get all huffy and start yelling at me for being anti-American or some such thing, the idea that the Iowa race was fixed isn’t mine. It belongs to a guy sitting diagonally across from me talking with a friend at Joe’s Café where I hang out to use their free wireless. I have no idea who this fellow is, but I can say the same for most of the political pundits I watch on TV, so why dismiss this one?

Anyway, what I heard him say was this, “If God is behind Huckabee’s campaign like he said, then the people in Iowa who voted for him had no choice. God put the idea in their head. God made them do it. He is trying to tell America something, and we damn well better listen.” [Interesting phrase, “damn well.” Can you damn poorly?]

What about the Democratic race, you might ask? Did God put in a good Word for Obama? Of course not. God is a Republican, and has been ever since Roe vs. Wade. By the way, did you ever notice that Roe vs. Wade sounds like Row vs. Wade and both of these words (row and wade) refer to water, and water is the stuff of baptism? Is that a coincidence? Not according to the guy who pointed it out to me a couple of years ago. He insisted that God used people with these names because he wanted other people to remember that abortion makes baptism impossible and thus damns the soul of the unborn to Hell. True story. Bad theology.

Anyway, I worry about Mike Huckabee. The problem with claiming God is on your side is having to explain why God is no longer on your side if you lose. Chances of Governor Huckabee winning in New Hampshire are slim, and if he loses what is God saying then? Of course if he wins…

When It Comes To Religion, Select Smart

I took the SelectSmart religion questionnaire a few days ago. I wanted to start out the new year in fine spiritual form. The results would not make my family proud.

On a scale of 1 to 100, I scored 100% Unitarian Universalist. Liberal Quaker came in second with 94%. Reform Judaism, the faith in which I am ordained, tied with Jainism for seventh place at 72%, just behind Hinduism (77%) and just ahead of Secular Humanism (71%). Orthodox Judaism, the religion of my birth, came in at 19th place with 46%, five slots behind Scientology at 64%. Can it be that I prefer Hubbard to Hillel?

You might find fault with SelectSmart’s questionnaire. I don’t know enough math to investigate the accuracy of its algorithms , but I wasn’t surprised by the results. As I travel the country speaking in synagogues (a job that will, with the posting of this blog, no doubt cease to exist), I find myself more and more alienated from the official party line and liturgy. I am not the only one who feels this way. I meet lots of Unitarians and Liberal Quakers masquerading as Jews in America.

I am proud to be a Jew, but I can’t get excited about making a fetish of it. It seems to me that contemporary Judaism is all about being Jewish. To me, Judaism, indeed all religion, is a means not an end; it is about healing person and planet through justice and compassion, and not about keeping Jews Jewish. All the time, money, and creative energies put into making Judaism more interesting to Jews is a waste. What is more interesting than spiritual and social transformation? I think that if the Jewish establishment focused more on the mission of Judaism and less on the membership statistics of Jews themselves they might find more people taking Judaism seriously. But what do I know? I’m a Unitarian.

So what should I do? Retake the questionnaire and fudge my answers so I turn out more Jewish? No, I can’t pretend to believe what I don’t believe, and I don’t believe in Chosen Peoples, Holy Lands, Creator Gods, or Revealed Texts.

I suppose I could join a Unitarian Fellowship or Quaker Meeting. I have attended both many times and find the experience far less aggravating that a typical synagogue service where I have to argue with almost every word that is printed in the siddur (prayer book). Unitarians have no formal liturgy, and it is hard to argue with what is being said at a Quaker Meeting when literally nothing is being said. But I’m too guilt ridden to play for another team.

So the only thing I can do is berate myself for having started the year with the SelectSmart questionnaire. So much for 2008 being a new year. It’s already just another one.

Live Free and Unite Civilly

Today New Hampshire becomes the fourth state of the US to offer civil unions, which is newspeak for Gay Marriage. I couldn’t be happier. No, wait, that isn’t true. I could be happier. I could be happier if the other forty-six states offered civil unions as well.

Civil Union is a good thing. I know there are people who say gay marriage is a better thing, but I am not one of them. I don’t want gay and lesbian couples to imitate the heterosexual obsession with marriage. I want the heterosexuals to share in the gay and lesbian community’s hard won civil unions.

The government has no business in the marriage business. The government deals with contracts, and to the extent a marriage is a contractual relationship couples wishing to marry should be required to enter into civil unions. To the extent marriage is something more, that something more belongs to religion.

If we separated the civil from the religious (a scandalous idea, Mister Jefferson!), we could put an end to this skirmish in the culture war. Those people of faith who believe God only sanctions the union of Tabs and Slots (highly technical jargon for males and females) should not have to defend their position, and certainly not have to fear the government forcing them to accept any other configuration. I have no problem with people who feel gay marriage is unholy; I just don’t want them using their religious beliefs to limit secular freedom.

Couples of any configuration who wish to marry should be required to meet the legal standards of their state, and these should have nothing to do with race, color, creed, religion, or sexual preference. Then, if a civilly united couple desires a religious wedding in addition to the civil ceremony required by the state, they should be free to shop around to find a clergy person willing to meet their needs. When I was a congregational rabbi I performed gay and lesbian Commitment Ceremonies, and would be happy to do so today. (No, not literally today, I have other things planned, but you know what I mean.)

The situation with gay marriage in the US parallels the situation of interfaith marriages in Israel. In Israel the Orthodox Establishment (OE) rules the private lives of Jewish Israelis. And they don’t allow Jews to marry Gentiles. Those who wish to marry someone who does not meet the criteria of the OE must marry outside the country. Lots of Israelis fly over to Cyprus, get married, and come home. The state welcomes them as married; the synagogue does not.

I would like to see Israel and the US truly separate the civil and religious.

This year in Concord. Next year in Jerusalem!

New Year's Day Pondering

Here is something worth pondering this New Year’s Day: When asked if it is true that the earth orbits the sun, and that a complete orbit takes about 365 days, over fifty-one percent of Americans said… wait for it… “No.”

I don’t know about you, but I love living in a country populated largely by idiots. Why? It makes me appear smarter, and I like being smarter, especially if all I have to is graduate the fifth grade.

Yet I understand why most people don’t believe in the Orbiting Earth Theory (OET). First, it is a theory, and as everyone knows theories are only guesses. Second, if the earth orbits the sun then the Bible is wrong when it says Joshua stopped the sun from orbiting the earth so he could finish slaughtering the Amorites (Joshua 10:13), and if the Bible is wrong about this maybe it is wrong about homosexuality, and that would be the ruin of everything. And third, if the Orbiting Earth Theory is true life is meaningless.

Why do I say that the Orbiting Earth Theory leads to meaninglessness? It’s simple: if the earth just goes around and around the sun it never gets anywhere. There is no point to it. And if that is true of the earth, how much more true it must be of those of us who live on the earth. Rapture me up, Scotty! This planet is a dead end.

Think about it: Today is January 1st. Last January 1st the earth was just about in the same place it is today relative to the sun. So what was the point of the orbit? Why travel millions and millions of miles just to end up in the same place? It’s like people who race around a track; what is the point? They never get anywhere. The winner is the person who gets nowhere fastest. What kind of competition is that? Why not just sit down at the Start/Finish line and wait for all the others to come back to you?

I would rather live on a planet that was going somewhere. Then again I would rather live a life that was going somewhere also. Sure things are different today than they were last January 1st, but not in any significant way. I mean I change my underwear every day, but my butt is always the same. Since last January I have changed underwear 365 times (and plan to do so 366 times this year since it is a leap year) but I am fairly certain that my ass hasn’t and isn’t going to get any smaller, tighter, or more attractive. So what is the point?

There isn’t any. With apologies to Rich Warren, life has no purpose. It isn’t going anywhere. There isn’t anywhere to go. So you might as well make the most of it. While you’re speeding through space just to end up back here again in 366 days, why not laugh a little more, read a little more, dance a little more, make someone else smile, lend a hand to someone in need, and stop measuring yourself against some artificial idea of purpose. And you could learn a little science this year, that wouldn’t hurt either. Oh, and don’t forget to change you underwear.