Playing God and the Fundamental Problem of Fundamentalism

Let's have a bit of a thought experiment, shall we?

If you espouse at all to Judeo-Christian mythology (because that is the correct term to use in this case, so don't go getting your undies all twisted in a knot and stuck in your bunghole) and, actually, to Islam, since it has the same roots, then there is a basic premise you have to acknowledge. Actually, it is the basic premise, the one without which there is no Judeo-Christian mythology, no Judaism, no Islam. That premise? Free will.

Yes, the basis of Christianity is the idea that God gave us choice. This is the fundamental concept of Christianity: God made man so that man could choose to love Him. Or not. Love has no meaning without the power to choose not to love.

Or to obey.

[I'm not offering this point as up for debate. This is my given, and I'm not going to enter a discussion in order to prove it. For one thing, that would be a whole other post. Also, it's been an accepted idea for... I don't know how long, so plenty of other people have already argued the point. If you don't agree with me, go find some of those arguments. Or offer your own counter argument, though I probably won't engage in some long, drawn out discussion over it. Not that I might not want to, but I just don't have time for that these days.]

The truth is that, on the whole, people are bad at "choice." We don't want to have them -- or, at least, not too many of them -- and we don't want other people to have them, especially if they are choices we feel like we don't get to make (because, you know, then that's not fair). We so much don't want to have them that we -- again, if you follow Judeo-Christian mythology -- demanded to God that He give us some rules to follow and, thus, we have the Law.

Conservatives love rules. I'm not being snarky. Conservatives tend to be rigid thinkers, and they like clearly defined boundaries and parameters. Rules. If you have a rule, you don't have to stop and figure out what choice you should make: It's clearly laid out for you. And, more importantly, it tells you what other people ought to be (or not to be) doing.

Also, if you are good at following the rules, that makes you better than everyone else.

Sound familiar Republicans?
(Now I am being snarky.)

Fundamentalists are the BEST at following the rules and doing what they're told. So good, in fact, that they come to believe it is their job to enforce the Rules, as they see them, on everyone else. In effect, they choose to play god.

How is this playing god, you might ask. What's wrong with making sure that people are doing the things they're "supposed to do"? What's wrong with enforcing "the rules," the Law?

[I'm going to use Christianity as my example religion here, but this behavior is by no means restricted to Christianity. Christians, however, seem to believe that they do NOT engage in these behaviors, so I think it's important, especially in the United States, to deal with this from the "Christian" perspective.]

Problem One:
You are choosing to enforce your version of "the rules," and those rules are not necessarily correct or moral. "But! The Bible!" Sure, I believe you believe your rules are in the Bible or are "Biblical," but, cherry-picking is an all too common occurrence with Christians, so it's quite likely that your rules are not going to match the rules of the denomination next door.

Now, I bet you think I'm going to get into that whole thing about who's rules are the correct ones and all of that, don't you? Well, I'm not. Because, you know what? No one is correct, because it doesn't really matter if anyone is correct. As soon as you try to enforce your version on someone else, even if it's 100% correct, you are in the wrong and it completely invalidates what you're doing. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

Look, God gave us free will, gave us choice. Who are you to come along and take that away by trying to make me follow your version of the rules? We'll even go with the assumption that you are correct, but big deal. If God Himself as left it up to me, who the fuck do you think you are to come in here and tell me that it's not? God? Of course you do.

Problem Two:
Jesus.
Yes, really.
Jesus came along and said the Law didn't matter anymore. See, prior to Jesus, you proved you were "good" by following the Law, but Jesus said that wasn't going to work anymore. Well, it never worked to begin with because people followed the letter of the Law and tried to enforce it on each other without paying much attention to what it was all really about: being good to each other. So, Jesus (God) said, "No more Law." And, of course, what did everyone do? They double-downed on the Law.

What that means is that when anyone starts "Bibling" at you, they are saying that what they are saying is more valid than what Jesus (GOD) said.

Problem Three:
Paul.
And Paul is a problem. Paul is the reason so many "Christians" are still clinging to the Law.

See, people are pretty savvy, and people realized that since the Law was no longer valid (everything was grace) that there was no more sin. Paul's response? Well, Paul said, "You know what, you're right; there is no more sin. Follow the Law anyway."

Paul, with a full understanding of what Jesus said about having done away with the Law, said that people should do it anyway, then he went around exhorting everyone to keep following the Law.

And "Christians" for the last 2000 years have done all they could to follow Paul's example and make people do as their told. Because, you know, they know better than God what ought to be going on. Forget "love your neighbor" and shit like that; just do as you're told. So say the Republicans.

Stand Your Ground (but not with a gun)

Back when I was in middle school, I had to take a law class. Seriously, it was a requirement because of the program I was in. It was titled something like "Introduction to Law" and was meant as a government-type course with an emphasis on the legal system and how it works. Toward the end of the course, one of the things we had to do was re-enact court cases, the idea being that if we had learned what we were being taught, we would come away from those re-enactments with the same decisions as the courts did.

Here's the summation of the case I want to talk about:
Two men go into a convenience store to rob it. Man #1 has a gun; Man #2 doesn't know Man #1 has the gun. The robbery doesn't quite go as planned, and Man #1 pulls out his gun and shoots the clerk. The clerk dies. Generally speaking, this is first degree murder because the man willfully took the gun into the store; basically, he planned to use it if necessary. The question was whether Man #2 was guilty of the same crime. Remember, he didn't know about the gun.

I'll pause for a moment to give you a chance to consider. Pretend the Jeopardy music is playing. Or something. In fact, here you go:


So... Once we had re-enacted the case, which resulted in a "not guilty" verdict, we were asked to give our own opinions on what the outcome should have been. All of the class said the outcome should have been "not guilty." All of the class but me, that is. First, all of my classmates started giving me a hard time; I was the only one who said the man was guilty so I must be wrong. How could I be the only one with the correct answer, as it were? Then, my teacher started pressuring me: "Are you sure you don't want to change your mind?" And here was the hard part; she had everyone that believed "guilty" stand on one side of the room (that would be me) and everyone that believed "not guilty" go stand on the other (that would be the 35 or so other students in the class). I'm not sure I can adequately relate what it's like to be in that circumstance. To be the only one standing up for something against a wall of your peers telling you that you're wrong.

But here's the thing:
Their decision was based on what they felt was fair. Basically, it wouldn't be fair for the man to be found "guilty" since he hadn't known about the gun. They were having an emotional response to the situation.
My decision was based on this law that said, in short, that the man was guilty of the same crime as Man #1, whether he knew about the gun or not, because he had participated in the crime.

As it turned out, Man #2 had been found guilty just as Man #1 had been because of the law. I was the only one in the room that had looked at the facts and made an objective decision based on those facts. And, as it turned out, my teacher had pressured me because, as she said, that's sometimes what happens on juries, especially if deliberations have been going on a long time and the jurors just want everything to be over. Basically, she wanted to see if I would cave under the pressure (and she allowed it to be a lot of pressure, almost two full class periods).

But I stood my ground, because I had actual facts sitting in front of me, so to speak. And that's not the only time I've been in that position in my life. By a lot. But that is one of the best examples of having to stand on your own against everyone else that I have ever experienced or seen. Man, I hated middle school.

So what am I saying here? That you should always just demand that you are right no matter how many people stand up against you and tell you that you're wrong? Well, no. But I am saying that you shouldn't back down just because everyone else is saying that you're wrong. Mostly, I'm saying to look at the facts, the data, all of the information. Make a decision based on those facts, not with your emotions. If you've made the best decision you can based on the information at hand (not how you feel about that information), you shouldn't change your mind just because everyone else says you should. Especially if they are appealing to you on an emotional level (and let me tell you, appealing on the basis of what is "fair" is about as emotional as you can get: "fairness" is rarely objective). Now, if someone comes to you with actual fact, data, whatever, you should certainly look at it, evaluate it, and, maybe, revise your thinking. But just remember: Being the only one on a side, does not make you wrong.

Having said all of that, for you writers out there, this is the same way you need to approach your manuscripts. The hardest part of that is to remove as much of your own emotion as you can so that you can evaluate your work as objectively as possible, then put your emotion back in and ask yourself the question, "Do I like this? Is it something I would want to read if someone else wrote it?" If you can say yes to those questions, it doesn't really matter what anyone else says about your work. And, if you can say yes to those questions, it can give you the strength to stand alone through the rejections and the pressure to change.

The Freedom Line

To borrow a line from Spider-Man:
With great freedom comes great responsibility.

But what do you do when some people show that they can not or will not be responsible with the freedom given to them?

That's a tough question and not one I see an easy answer for.

Where do you draw the line between freedom and security? Because, see, I'm all for freedom. Seriously. I believe in it. And I want my own freedom, although you might not be able to tell considering I have three kids. And that's kind of the point, kids bring a responsibility that contain an inherent restriction to Freedom. It's part of the package, and, if you're not ready to give up Freedom for Responsibility, you have no business having kids.

And some of you might be saying, "Yes, but I don't have kids, so why can't I have complete Freedom?" And that is a good question. Honestly, as long as your expression of Freedom doesn't interfere with someone else's expression of Freedom, theoretically, there should be no reason you shouldn't have complete Freedom.

But let's look at that for a moment...

Your expression of Freedom shouldn't and cannot interfere with the Freedom of others. That means your Freedom cannot harm other people. And you might be thinking, "Well, that's just not fair." But is it fair when your Freedom of driving as fast as you want to drive causes an accident that kills someone else? Is it fair when your Freedom to take whatever you want causes someone else not to be able to eat or not to be able to feed his kids? Is it fair when your Freedom to smoke cigarettes results in health issues for other people? Sorry, it's not fair, and these are examples of why we have laws that govern freedom. To help us know where the exercising of our Freedom can cause harm to other people.

And, so, some of you may be thinking "what does this have to do with my Freedom (and Right) to own guns?" And that, also, would be a good question.

I'm gonna sort of change the subject for just a moment but not really. It will only look like it. I just want to start at a different place and bring us back to the same spot. The same question, so to speak.

Jesus came to set us free. I know this because He said it. Most people think this means He came to set us free from sin, that he came so that we could more perfectly follow the Law, but that's not what He said. I'm not going to break down all of the scriptural passages at this point, because it would take too long, so to sum it up, Jesus replaced the Law with Grace. He gave us Freedom, the same kind of Freedom that existed in the Garden before Adam ate of the fruit and introduced the Law (by gaining the knowledge of Good and Evil). [Yeah, I know this is a bit deep and metaphysical, but hang with me for a few minutes.] Basically, what Jesus was saying was, "Look, you can't really do all of this stuff. It's crazy to think that you can, and the Pharisees are crazy for thinking they can. What you really need to do is love God and love people, and, if you do those things, you'll be okay." Basically, forget the Law.

Okay, so we're in a state of complete Freedom at that point. We can (kind of) do whatever we want. Some of the early Christians really went with this, too. There was a movement that Right and Wrong no longer existed and anyone could do whatever s/he wanted to do. The problem was, evidently, these people didn't care whom they hurt in the process. Freedom was their Right and by God they were going to exercise that Freedom.

Paul came along and clarified some things at that point and said, basically, "Sure, in theory, you guys are correct, you can do whatever you want to do, but you shouldn't. You still need to respect other people, because, if you don't respect other people, you aren't showing them love, and Jesus said to love them just like you love yourselves." Even Peter had a problem with all of this stuff, because he realized (with God's help) that he didn't have to follow all of the Jewish dietary restrictions; he could eat just like the gentiles. And, boy, did he go hog wild (pun intended) with it. The problem was that he started bragging about it, and some of the Jews that didn't believe the way he did started having issues with the whole thing.

Paul had to step in there, too, and slap some sense into Peter: "Look, Dude, you know it's okay to eat pig, and I know it's okay to eat pig, but all these other guys... they don't know that, yet. What you're doing is messing them up and making them do things they believe are wrong. You're hurting them." Essentially, what Paul was saying is that eating pig for these other guys was wrong because they believed it was wrong.

And this... this is a really sticky issue, the difference between what is right and what is wrong, and it's why there is such a huge divide in the USA, right now. Some people, a lot of people, still believe that eating the metaphoric pig is WRONG. But that's actually beside the point.

Because the real point is this, and this is where we go back to those other questions I was asking up above:
Paul said that the way to deal with this issue of how to behave when you believe that something is okay but someone else does not is not to do it. If what you want to do, even if you believe it's completely okay and right to do, is going to hurt someone else because they believe it's wrong, you should give up your Freedom to do that thing by taking up the Responsibility to act in a loving manner to that other person so that other person will not be tempted to do something s/he believes is wrong.

In the pig example, a lot of the Christian Jews started eating piggies because they saw Peter doing it, but they all believed it was wrong, that it was a sin, so they were wracked with guilt over it. The point is that, for them, it was wrong to do because they believed it was wrong to do (and I'm gonna stay away from anymore of the relativity of good and evil in this post). Peter needed to stop eating pork (at least when he was with other Hebrews) and quit bragging about it so that he wouldn't cause his fellow Jews to stumble over their own beliefs. We're not all at the same spot in the journey.

Do I think you should have the Freedom to own a gun? Sure. Do I think you should have the Freedom to own any kind of gun you want to own? Sure. I believe those things as long as you are going to be responsible in your Freedom to not hurt other people. To not take away their Freedom with your Freedom (because none of us have that Freedom, especially the freedom to end a life).

The problem here is that too many people in our society currently cannot use their freedom to own a gun responsibly. Too many people are being caused to stumble and do wrong because they have the freedom to own a gun. Too many people are taking away other people's freedom by doing them harm. Clearly, these people are just like the Jews that saw Peter eating pork and ate it too even though they believed it was wrong. To keep these people from doing the wrong thing, according to Paul, we should willingly lay aside our freedom so that they will not do what is wrong. We should choose Responsibility over Freedom.

And that's kind of where I come down on this whole gun thing at this point. I look at my kids and I wonder which is the higher Freedom: your freedom to own a gun or my kids' freedom to live. I look at all the kids and wonder that. What was the higher Freedom, the lives of 20 kids (and half a dozen adults) or the Right (Freedom) of one person to own some assault weapons? I ask that question all the time. What is my Freedom worth?

I have to tell you, I have laid aside an awful lot of Freedom for the sake of my children. I have laid aside an awful lot of Freedom for the sake of other people's children. I don't have a problem with this. I get that some of you do, but I have to wonder if you're looking at the issue from the correct standpoint. If my Freedom is going to cause someone else to screw up, I need to go to the higher place of Love and abandon my Freedom. Why? Love God and love people. If I'm willing to sacrifice other people so that I can get to do whatever it is I want to do that certainly isn't Love. If I'm willing to sacrifice your children or, even, my own children, so that I can live the way I want to live, that certainly isn't Love.

And, you know what, that extends to owning firearms. If other people cannot act responsibly within their Freedom to own a gun, then we all should be willing to lay aside that freedom so that those other people will not screw up. Just like we have to sacrifice the freedom of driving as fast as we want to drive to prevent accidents and just like we have to sacrifice the freedom of taking whatever we want because it harms someone else and just like... well, I could go on and on.

Is your freedom to own a gun worth the life of someone else? Just one life? Is it? Really? I see some of you out there right now saying, "Yes, it is." Well, whose life is it going to be? My kid's? Your kid's? Your brother's or your mother's? Is it worth it now? If you're out there and you're willing to sacrifice the life of someone dear to you just so that you can own a gun, let me know. Because it may not actually be someone dear to you, but it's going to be someone dear to someone else, and, tell me, is that fair? Is it?