Today is the day on which believing Christians remember and celebrate the execution by crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The word “celebrate” may sound strange applied to a story of betrayal, torture and painful death, all of which Jesus endured on this day.  The celebration is inspired by the belief that through his suffering Jesus redeemed the human race from the punishments God had inflicted on us for our sins. The believers are not celebrating suffering but redemption – though the unavoidable fact is you can’t have one without the other.
 
     Redemption involves suffering. It also involves hard work and, in most cases, some serious personal changes. Whether it’s scraping together the cash to get your late mother’s wedding ring back from the Pawn Shop or regaining the respect of a person or group you had needlessly offended, redemption means that you looked yourself in the face, didn’t like what you saw and did something about it.
 
     The sin Jesus was redeeming us from was the human race’s first disobedience, eating the forbidden fruit, which got us thrown out of paradise and made us subject to the human condition – things like pain, work, illness and death. God offering his own son to atone for this sin opened the door to us to escape from these mortal problems in a glorified afterlife. The condition (there’s always a condition) is that if we are to participate in Jesus’ redemption, we must take that hard look at ourselves and follow his teachings and example.
 
     While it’s up to each one of us to decide if this story is the core and foundation of our religious faith or a piece of religious mythology, we need to pay attention, especially today. Mythology should never be underestimated. Myths that last for centuries last because they’re telling us something important, something true. The truth is that that human race is just as much in need of redemption as it’s always been. To get specific and personal, the United States of America is as much in need of redemption today as the Children of Israel were under the heel of the Roman Empire. We’re living under an oppressive rule, and Jesus is nowhere in sight.
 
     So it looks like we’ve all got to be our own Jesus. We’re not looking to get into Paradise, just back to the American Democracy we made the mistake of taking too much for granted.  We’re going to have to lug a lot of crosses up a lot of hills to do it. Our starting point might well be a statement from the man who went to the cross for us – “The truth will set you free”.  That would be sticking to the actual, real verifiable unspun truth in all matters great and small and also, just as important, to the mythological truth of America, the land of the free. It’s the truth underlying that American mythology that’s at stake here.
 
     We need both more than ever on this not so good Friday. And a few real Christian values like kindness, mercy and treating all people as neighbors not enemies wouldn’t hurt either. Resurrection is going to take more than three days but we’ll get there.
 

​Last week I noticed an interesting event in the news. The Government of China loaned Buddha’s Tooth, a sacred relic, to the government of Thailand in honor of the Thai King’s 72nd birthday and to celebrate 50 years of diplomatic relations between their two countries. The tooth, one of many believed to have been preserved after Siddhartha Gautama, the original Buddha, passed away and was cremated somewhere between 400-500 B.C., is kept in a Peking shrine. The tooth, enclosed in a golden container, was welcomed to Bangkok with a procession through the streets. It will be housed in a local temple for the next several weeks.
 
        What’s interesting, of course, is that China is an officially atheist country. Using a religious symbol in their diplomacy would seem at first glance to be a contradiction. When you look closer, however, the historical link between religion and politics stands out loud and clear. Religion, like politics, is all about identity. While China recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism/Confucianism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam, this recognition is given only as long as the believers of these faiths do nothing to question their political identity as members of the People’s Republic of China. For the most part, the believers, who make up 70% of the Chinese population, appear to be able to live with this arrangement, making China the world’s largest example of the separation of church and state.
 
 The notorious exception was a 2014 separatist movement by a Muslim sect in Xinjiang in northwestern China. This movement was answered with a harsh military response, the destruction of mosques and the creation of “reeducation camps” in which Muslims were imprisoned and thousands died. The message was obviously not lost on the rest of the population, who have continued to keep the peace.
 
        While Thailand has no State Religion, almost 95% of the country’s population identify as Buddhist. In fact, Thailand has the second largest Buddhist population in the world, after China, which has the largest. By sharing the Buddha’s Tooth, China is not only firming up their relationship with Thailand but also keeping their millions of Buddhists happy – a win/win for the People’s Republic.
 
        It is worth noting that Buddhism is non-theistic. Buddhists do not acknowledge a supreme being. Buddha is revered as a teacher, not a God. However, his tooth was given the same reverence that the crown of thorns believed to have been worn by Jesus on the cross was given during the same week on its return to the restored Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. While France. A historically Catholic country, also has no official religion, Notre Dame is a central symbol of French identity and millions of dollars were spent to restore it.
 
        Whether the tooth actually came from the Buddha’s mouth or the crown of thorns from Jesus’ head is almost beside the point. It’s all about belief. Symbol trumps information, faith trumps fact (an odd verbal coincidence given current political realities). It’s about human identity and our ongoing need to see ourselves as more than the sum of our biological parts. Dying for your country or for being martyred for your faith is better than dying for nothing (that would be heart attack, a traffic accident, or, worse of all, natural causes). Nobody honors the grave of the unknown smallpox victim. The truth behind the myth, be it political or religious, is outweighed by the need to believe. Evidence-based science has shaken things up as the cost for providing us with light bulbs, air travel and medicine but the need to believe goes on. Political leaders who are able to tap into that human need have been using it to their advantage since the stone age and continue to do so in the age of the internet, which is where I learned about both Buddha’s tooth, the reopening of Notre Dame and, of course, the recent American election.
 
And why am I raising all this? Because the game’s gotten critical. It’s always been dangerous and is responsible for most of the war and oppression in our race’s checkered history. And in an age where decisions by one country can affect the world, the level of risk has risen substantially. Even the Buddha would have a hard time making peace with it.
 
We have a lot of work to do. More to come.

        As I see it, there are basically four different kinds of belief. To be clear, what I mean by “belief” in this context is “opinions about a higher power”. I distinguish between this notion of belief and that of “faith”. The two words are often used interchangeably but the difference is important.
 
Every human born needs faith to get through their lives – a sense of expectation that things will work out well, sometimes despite the evidence. Call it the spiritual side of confidence. An atheist needs faith as much as the Pope does if only to get out of bed in the morning. The Pope also needs belief, as do many human beings for whom faith is not enough.
 
Belief #1: An all-powerful God created the universe and everything in it. He has requirements for human beings and will reward or punish us in the afterlife depending on how well we follow those requirements. These requirements have been revealed to my particular organization. Those who do not follow God’s requirements as taught and practiced by my organization are infidels at worst or in the least simply mistaken.
 
Belief #2: “God” can be considered the life force behind what we perceive as reality. We humans are not capable of fully understanding God but can reach out to him/her/? with our minds and hearts. All religions are attempting as best they can to reach out to and understand God and their beliefs should be respected unless these beliefs inflict harm. Humans can achieve some level of communication with God through private meditation and, if it feels right to the person, through group rituals within formally recognized religions or informal groups of like-minded individuals.
 
Belief #3: There is no such things as God. The universe evolved from pure energy according to scientifically measurable laws and there is no conscious mind directing it. Those who continue to believe in God are simply subscribing to old myths in order to deny their mortality or, in many cases, to maintain control over their fellow believers.
 
Belief #4: I don’t know if there is a God or not. Since this has little or no effect on my day-to-day life, I don’t really give it much thought.
 
*
 
        “Belief #1” would cover most of what we call organized religions. Organized religions base their beliefs on what they consider revelations from God to chosen individuals. At its origins, this form of belief was closely tied to and identified with specific tribes, groups or nations and their God’s rules were the foundation for the group’s laws. Originally, there were thought to be multiple Gods, with “our God” being considered superior to the gods of other groups. The early parts of the Bible’s Old Testament reflect this view – the God of the Jews, for instance, was portrayed in the Exodus story as superior to the gods of the Egyptians - and His first commandment forbade the worship of other gods. As monotheism developed, this view evolved into the idea that “There is one God but He favors our group”. In the modern era, most organized religions have adopted the tolerance typical of “Belief #2” towards other religions and see cooperating with each other and sometimes praying together as a positive thing. However, there has been a recent resurgence of strict “Belief #1” in the Muslim world and, ironically, in the United States, whose founders virtually created the idea of religious tolerance.
 
“Belief #2” is what used to be called “agnostic” but with a definite leaning toward believing in “something out there” without being bound by the doctrines of a specific creed. Unitarianism, New Age activities and non-deistic faiths like Buddhism or Taoism would fall into this category. A general tolerance of the beliefs of others as “fellow seekers” is the general practice in this group. They tend to view an attitude of benevolence and compassion toward all human beings as the correct way to live but are for the most part ready and willing to defend themselves if attacked or treated unfairly. Their countries are seen as governmental entities established to maintain order for the group, with no divine sanction one way or the other.
 
“Belief #3” is what is usually referred to as atheism. It rejects the idea of God as a foolish and outdated notion. Large political movements like Russian and Chinese Communism adhere to this belief and see religion as a device that was used to keep the oppressive ruling classes in power in earlier times – though they have for the most part replaced the idea of an all-powerful God with the idea of an all-powerful State. These States for the most part do not forbid religious activities as long as it does not interfere with the government. Individual atheists are for the most part tolerant of their believing neighbors – no atheist has ever burned a believer at the stake.
 
“Belief #4” is a growing faction in the modern world – people who haven’t given the idea of God much thought and don’t much care about it one way or the other. Many of the younger generations in developed Western countries would fall into this group and, along with members of “Belief #2”, are largely responsible for the growing decline in church attendance that has become alarming to the adherents of “Belief #1”.  They have not made the “commitment to unbelief” that atheists have. They see no reason to make a commitment one way or the other and take the general attitude “I’m going to die anyway and if there’s something ‘out there’ I’ll find out then – in the meantime what’s for lunch?”.
 
Any reader who has stuck with me this far will likely have two questions.
 
1. “This is an interesting intellectual exercise, but why are you bothering with it?”
 
2. “Where do you stand, Mr. Author? Which of these belief groups do YOU belong to?” In other words, put up or shut up.
 
*
Question #1:
 
        I am bothering with this examination of belief because the issues underlying it are tearing the world apart. Humans need faith. Reality is not enough. When circumstances begin to erode the mythologies that have sustained us, we either become depressed or fight back. When our faith is intermixed with and supported by our beliefs, we will fight all the harder when we see that they are being threatened.
 
The first dramatic example of this in modern times was 9/11, when Muslim Fundamentalists sacrificed themselves to slam aircraft into buildings they considered symbols of the West’s encroachment on their world. This was as much a religious act as a political act if not more so. Since then, after a series of wars in which Western counties unsuccessfully attempted to help more modern thinking Muslims gain control of their countries, conservative groups like the Taliban have pushed these countries back to Sharia Law with requirements, especially for women, consistent with the practices of long gone centuries.
 
In a surprisingly related trend, the recent American election was heavily influenced by religious groups who saw the decline in church attendance and widespread tolerance for sexual and gender choices as a threat to their version of “The American Way of Life” and “God’s law”.
 
In a throwback to the book of Exodus, the conflict between Israel and its Muslim neighbors that is causing death and destruction in Gaza is partly one of religious differences, since both sides are members of the semitic race. The notion “My God is stronger than your God” is alive and as dangerous as ever in the 21st century.
 
Since I began writing this piece, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has paid out over $800 million to settle claims of child sexual abuse to over 1,300 surviving victims. The Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned due to fallout from a sex scandal as well. Speaking of England, less than half the residents of Great Britain actually belong to the official “Church of England”, with regular church attendance down to less than 3% of the population.
 
Overall, the sense of an all-powerful God overseeing our activities is fading into the past. Secular reality and our political leaders are doing a damn sad job of replacing it. We are overwhelmed with information and offered few ways to make any sense out of it all or to influence events that effect our lives.
 
We are badly in need of FAITH - we meaning all of us. In many ways, our faith is our identity. Without it, our sense of who we are and who we stand with can get very blurry. At this moment, half the United States dislikes and is afraid of the other half and the feeling goes both ways. And “God help us!” is a call without a phone number.
 
So now what?
 
Question #2 (Put up or shut up):
 
        For the first 21 years of my life, I was a fully committed member of the “Belief #1” group. I was a devout Catholic and had planned to spend my life as a missionary priest, bringing the Gospel to people in far off countries who had not yet heard the good news.  During the many years since, I have moved back and forth between the other Belief options outlined at the start of this piece. At this point, I find myself in the only camp that seems to hold out some hope of talking our species out of destroying itself in the near future. That would be “Belief #2”, with a few variations. My reasons:
 
        #1 “Our God is Better than Your God” has caused a great deal of war and oppression throughout history and has fueled the tribal conflicts that still divide us. God doesn’t really take sides.
 
#3 “Atheism” has little to contribute except that they disagree with what the churches are preaching – but thinking we can get out of this mess all by ourselves is not supported by the evidence.
 
And #4 “Not caring one way or the other” isn’t a sensible option when you’re drowning.
 
Which leaves us with #2 – the sense that there’s more going on here than meets the eye and that we’re part of something bigger than us that can go either well or badly depending how we interact with it.
 
A while back, I wrote a piece on “The obvious will of God” which noted that all things in the universe, including the universe itself, are in a constant process of coming into being, growing and thriving for a time, then fading away, passing on their energy and whatever’s left of their matter to fuel the next go-round. Making peace with that reality (as opposed to trying to cheat your way out of it) is one of the strong points of Belief#2. There is a consciousness bigger than us in which we can share and participate once we drop our real and symbolic swords and start working with it. Simply put, there’s a world of difference between “prayer to” and “prayer with”. 
 
There are no guarantees in this approach, no firm rules or favored groups. Just us, all of us. And whatever it is that put us here. Getting in touch with it means getting in touch with US. The vast majority of species that have inhabited our little piece of rock are long extinct. How soon we’ll join them is pretty much in our own hands, barring a really big meteor.
 
The good news is that the same faith that held up our beliefs is still with us, with or without them. We’re not going it alone. We’ve got something brimming under the surface that’s got a GPS with no satellites needed.  Reading it’s the trick. It requires what they used to call it a “Leap of Faith”.  A few years back I found another name for it, or you might say it found me, a name that suggested that the only way to win this gamble is to cheat our way to the truth – the Holy Bluff.
 
More to come.

 Religious Faith is Having a Strange Week.
 

1. Over 1,000 pilgrims have died of the heat while attempting to visit the sacred shrine in Mecca.

 

1. An International Rights Organization is asking for help to stop the execution in Pakistan of a young Christian man charged with blasphemy for comments he allegedly made in a private conversation when he was 16.

 
3. The State of Louisiana is ordering that a version of the Ten Commandments (in English, obviously) be posted in all public classrooms.
 
The relationship between number two and three hits you in the face. “Blasphemy” would be the commandment “Thou Shalt not Take the Name of God in Vain” taken to its extremes, which it has been, many times through history. What Blasphemy really means is “Thou Shalt Not Disagree with Our Official Version of Things”. God has nothing to do with it. William Tyndale, the man who first translated the Bible into English, was burned at the stake for it and, not to forget the big one, blasphemy was one of the charges that led to the conviction and execution of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s a power game and always has been.
 
The fact that such things are still being done by organized governments in a world that has the internet reporting on them pushes the boundaries of belief to say the least. The fact that a posting of a specific version of the commandments is being required in a country built upon the separation of church and state is almost incomprehensible - and this particular State Law was in part enacted with the intent of inspiring legal challenges that will place the very foundations of the First Amendment in front of a conservative Supreme Court. Louisiana isn’t yet threatening to execute anyone who tears the commandments off a classroom wall, but they’re opening a door to the same kind of thinking that would. This brings us to number one.
 
All Muslims must make the Hajj pilgrimage at some point in their lives. Several million do each year. Arabia is a hot country, but when the practice of the pilgrimage began, modern industry, fueled in part by fossil fuels taken from the ground beneath that country’s sand, had not pushed the temperature to a point of human fatality. The fact that the pilgrims come anyway, despite the temperature, speaks to the force that’s driving all three of these events: the human NEED TO BELIEVE.
 
Simply put, our biology isn’t enough for us and never has been – not since the first artist drew a picture of a deer on a cave wall in the hopes it would help his tribe in the hunt. Just being alive isn’t enough. We need to feel a connection to a higher power, and to share in that power. “With God on Our Side” isn’t just a song. It’s what’s driving Pakistanis to kill a teenager, Louisiana politicians to declare their beliefs as “The American Way of Life” and Muslims to put their mortal lives at the mercy of the elements.
 
 That force is responsible for much of the damage humans have done to one another through history – wars, persecutions, dictatorship, slavery. It is also responsible for most of the good - acts of kindness and mercy, art, music and oddly enough, science – human ingenuity twisting nature into doing things our way, from agriculture to light bulbs to space ships. It all comes from the same place – religion, science, everything that makes us human.
 
We can’t live without faith. None of us can, or do. Harnessing that human need to believe is the challenge of our times. We need to harness the negative side, the drive to force others to believe as we do, before it takes us into a new Dark Ages - and the positive side, before our scientific ingenuity makes our entire planet as unlivable as Mecca was for so many pilgrims.
 
We have a lot of work to do.

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

       The cross is perhaps the most recognizable symbol on earth.  Whether it’s a plain cross (sometimes called an empty cross) or a crucifix bearing the image of crucified Jesus, it immediately identifies the person wearing it or displaying it as a member of one of the Christian faiths. The cross atop the village church is, in many places, the first thing you see as you approach the town borders.  Despite the fact that the cross was an instrument of grisly torture and execution, it is universally taken as a symbol of redemption and divine forgiveness. The feast of Good Friday celebrates this.
 
        In the raw history of it, Jesus of Nazareth was arrested and executed because he challenged the church/state collaboration that was oppressing his people. Crucifixion was reserved for special criminals, those who were seen as a threat to the social order, which at the time was completely top heavy – the masters were in charge, everybody else served them and God was definitely on their side – the poor were poor because they were meant to be poor. Aside from the intense pain inflicted on a criminal by being nailed to a piece of wood by the wrists and strung up so the victim’s own weight would put pressure on the nails and keep the pain going, there was the message: “this is what will happen to you if you step out of line”. The cross wasn’t on top of a hill by accident - the rulers wanted everybody to see the consequences of crossing the masters.
 
          The way the cross of Jesus completely flipped the symbolism has to do with two things.
 
        The first is the Christian belief that Jesus was divine, sent by his heavenly father to take on human form and suffer death as a way of freeing the human race from the burden of our sins. Our sins were a barrier between us and God – God tore away the barrier in the most dramatic way possible. The resurrection of Jeus confirmed this and opened the way to redemption to all believers who would accept the message.
 
        The second is a bit less obvious. In the vast majority of instances, Jesus on the cross is depicted with the nails through his palms and his hands wide open despite the fact that the nails of crucifixion went through the wrists. Nails through the palms would have torn through the hands and dropped the criminal on his face as soon as the cross was raised.  In this case, however, the message is more important than the facts (it frequently is). The choice of depicting Jesus on the cross with his hands and arms open wide changes the message from one of suffering to one of acceptance and welcome. Jesus triumphs over death by accepting and welcoming it – making good on the promise of Gethsemane: “Not my will but thine be done, Oh Lord!”.
 
        With Jesus, we transcend the human condition by embracing it, not by denying it. The fact of the matter is that only energy is eternal. All matter, living or dead, from the tiniest bacteria to a distant sun a hundred times the size of our own, is in a constant process of coming in and going out of existence. Attempting to deny this and seek symbolic reinforcements for a false sense of immortality (those rulers who crucified Jesus, for instance) is the root of human evil. Accepting our temporary condition as the will of creation and making peace with its limits is the source of all that is good in humanity. The Good Friday image of a god accepting his own death is an image that goes to the heart of human consciousness.
 
        Have a good Friday.

   As far as the externals go, this Christmas is different than any other in our shared lifetimes. Services in church, gatherings with family members. opening presents together, the big dinner at the home of whoever has the biggest table – all of these holiday traditions have become downright dangerous.

   On a deeper level, celebrating the birth of the Savior in the middle of a worldwide plague - with the latest surges and death counts hitting us in the face with every day’s headlines - raises the inevitable question: who’s going to save us from this? 

   On paper, we’re counting on science – vaccines, mainly. But science isn’t enough. The fact is, science created the problem. Increasing human population sizes plus the widespread availability of international travel made it possible for a virus that got its start in a Chinese market to fill a mass grave just outside New York City. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll be the first one on line when the vaccine becomes available in my neighborhood. But it’s going to take more than that to get us through this. Under it all, it’s a question of faith.

   I’ve heard it from any number of believers: “God’s trying to get our attention”. That’s hard to argue with. I’m not going to bother. Someone or something is trying to get our attention and we’d better damn sure pay attention. And what has Christmas got to do with it? Everything.

   To get down to basics, what is the Savior supposed to be saving us from? The answer is simple – ourselves. At the time Jesus was born, illness, misfortune and death were all held to be the result of human behavior having angered an all-powerful deity (or several competing deities depending on your group’s position). Anything resembling modern medicine was over a thousand years away, the earth was a fairly flat place on which we lived, and the sun, moon and stars were there to provide us with varying degrees of light. I’m bringing that up because, despite having received scientific information to the contrary, that us-centric view is still our actual life experience. The sun rises, the sun sets. The stars twinkle. The number of humans who have gone high enough into space to observe the earth revolving around the sun with their own eyes wouldn’t fill a small town church.

   In the gospel accounts, Jesus the Savior healed the sick with the words “Your sins are forgiven”, not, “Take two of these at bedtime”. And the key to earning Divine forgiveness, and, with it, our release from the crueler side of biology, was in learning how to forgive each other. It‘s a message that’s hard to miss – that “Love one another as I have loved you” thing. It has nothing to do with St. Peter’s Cathedral or the latest televangelist to cash in on the human need to believe. It’s all about how we treat each other and has everything to do with us a species getting though this latest trial.

   The most admirable human beings in this struggle have been those who made the benefits of medical science possible for the sick by risking their own lives to provide them – those we call “front-liners”.  Medicine is useless without someone with the guts to administer it. And if we’re really going to get through this, we’re all going to have to be front liners. If our country is fortunate enough to have a working vaccine, but there are places in the world who don’t, the virus will be free to keep mutating until it turns into something our vaccines can’t stop.  This may sound like getting ahead of ourselves, but we could have saved a lot of lives by getting ahead of ourselves the minute this thing started.

   The Savior’s message – that we have to love EVERYBODY is the best shot we’ve got - locally, nationally and globally. While we’re spending millions to celebrate the birth of a child who was born in an animal pen, poorest of the poor, we can’t forget what he stood for. Whether Jesus was the Son of God or a human being like the rest of us who got it, we need to get the message.