Religion and Politics

OK, you can just say, "I hate Steve," now and get it over with. I have friends who have the good sense to say, "Never discuss religion or politics," and this is good advice, too. So, I'm not going to follow that good advice.

It all started when the Pope resigned and they named a replacement Pope. I'm not Catholic, so I don't have a dog in this fight. But I am a Christian, so am not completely disinterested. Whenever anything like that happens I hear stupid things said about Catholicism.

To hear some people talk about Catholics the only things Catholics do is cover-up pedophile priests, discriminate against women, and oppose birth control. Funny how a major world religion should be built upon such narrow interests.

The stupid things I hear said about Catholicism are usually in the form of questions, "Will the new Pope allow female priests (priestesses)? Will the new Pope come out in favor of gay marriage? Will the new Pope declare Zeus the king of the gods? Will the new Pope tell everyone to worship Caesar?"

I knew these were stupid things, but a caller on a radio show said something that crystallized my thinking on the subject: Politics and Religion are opposites.

The laws of a country should follow from the desires and values of that country's citizens. The will of the people can change and that changing will engages politics to change a nation's laws. Is it illegal to marry your same-sex lover? That law is a reflection of the political consensus of a nation at the point of that law being enacted. Should the political consensus change, then the law can be changed to reflect the changing consensus.

For instance, amphetamines were dispensed over-the-counter at the time that Have Spacesuit Will Travel was written. But the consensus of their legality changed by the time Breaking Bad was written. Apparently, the consensus is moving the other way with marijuana legalization.

People should be free to choose their legislators who'll enact laws that reflect the people's will. This is politics.

Religion is the opposite. Religion is what humans do about God. Jews, Christians, and Moslems teach that God dispenses moral laws. These laws reflect each religion's God-concept.

I can speak best for Christianity. Christianity teaches that God does not change. Human understanding of God may change, but the essential deity disclosed by General and Special Revelation does not change. And the essential moral character of deity does not change. What must change is me. I must accommodate my internal moral compass to what has been disclosed to me by Christianity.

There's an old joke about Moses coming down from the Mount saying, "The good news is that I got him down to Ten Commandments, but the bad news is Seven is still in there." The joke works because we all have times when we wish some part or another of the moral law weren't there. But we must accommodate ourselves to it. It does not go the other way. I cannot accommodate the moral law to my preferences.

And you cannot impose your preferences upon any religion's moral law.

I happen to think it abhorrent that people expect to be rewarded for murder with virgins in Paradise. Therefore, I don't belong to any religion that thinks so.

You may have similar notions about one thing or another that the Pope or Catholics believe. If so, you shouldn't belong to a Catholic church.

It's OK to find another church whose beliefs are not abhorrent to you, but it is not OK to try to change that church to make it after your own image. That's how people make Golden Calves.

The Christmas Chair

It was 1980 and I was working for the government and my bride of less than six months, Mary, was working for WRBS doing the morning drive-time on-air shift. We had just moved from West Michigan to Laurel, Maryland.

All family was several hours away and we were on our own. It was a good time as we found our own solutions to the nuts and bolts of living and we established new rituals for the holidays with neither parents nor kids to distract us. It was a good time.

I had discovered just a little while earlier that I was a Puritan and thus I felt a need to reinterpret and reexamine all the things that I had taken for granted—for instance, Christmas. That first Christmas far from home, making a home, was the time and place to reinterpret the holiday.

Let’s recap. Christmas occurs on the 25th day of December and we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on this day. Thus you might reasonable expect Jesus to have a birthday of 12/25/00 or some such, but this is not the case. Contemporary Christian scholarship now says Jesus was born a few years earlier. Moreover, we also think Jesus was born in a different season than winter. (Else the shepherds would not be out in their fields watching their flocks by night.)

So where did this December 25th business come from? It came from Pope Julius I. In 350AD he declared Christ’s birth should be celebrated on this day. Why this day? Lots of European Pagans celebrated on December 25th, which is close to the Winter Solstice. I figured Pope Julius I intended to glom onto the pagans’ holiday and make it his own--typical Roman syncretism, baptizing a pagan holiday and declaring it to be Christian. A quick review of the Pagan religions operating in Europe during this period will turn up a fair number of coincidences between Rome’s rituals and pagan ones. As a good Calvinist I wasn’t going to participate in any of that Roman Catholic—Pagan syncretism.

This extended to the Pagan practice of bringing an evergreen tree into one’s house. Animism believes that spirits inhabit things. And the spirit of the tree is strong enough to overcome the spirit of winter, as evidenced by the tree’s ability to remain green through the winter. This notion of spirits in trees is why one knocks on wood. It is to invoke the spirit of the tree to ward off misfortune.

That is just Animist thinking, and I was no Animist then and I am not one now.

Thus I decided there would be no Christmas tree in my house. You can keep your Roman syncretism and Pagan Animism. I would have nothing to do with it.

And thus the trap was laid.

The weeks leading up to Christmas came and I did not buy any Christmas tree or decorations. I would see trees on sale at the shopping center, and I’d summon my will to walk past.

Mary and I planned to fly back to Michigan the day after Christmas to see our families. I had the week between Christmas and New Years off, but Mary had to work at the radio station on Christmas morning. This meant that she got up at oh-dark-thirty and left for work hours before I rolled out of bed.

Christmas morning dawned and I awoke alone in the apartment. Padding around in bare feet, I looked around. There was no Christmas tree.

Someone had stolen Christmas, and that someone was ME.

Something snapped and I had to do something. I scrounged around the apartment looking for materials. We were just married so we didn’t have a lot of extras. I found a broom, a sheet, a kitchen chair and a table lamp. The kitchen chair had a cheesy green Naugahyde upholstery seat and the sheet was a pastel green color. I set the chair in the corner with the table lamp sitting on it. Then I fed the broom handle through the back of the chair and placed the sheet over it. It looked like a chair covered with a sheet. Then I took some books (I’ve always had plenty of those.) and put them around the perimeter of the sheet, pulling it out to give the assembly a sort of lumpy conical shape. The lamp beneath gave off a sick pastel light.

It was the best I could do and it sucked.

Eventually Mary came home from work. I don’t know what she thought of the Christmas Chair, but we sat on the couch that Christmas evening in its muted glow. It was good to be together.

The next day, we flew back to Grand Rapids and enjoyed our families with their real Christmas trees for a few days.

The first thing after we got back, Mary and I went to the Big-T Lumberland and found the biggest artificial Christmas tree they sold. It was 60% off.

We still use it decades later. It has gotten threadbare in places. I've patched broken parts and Mary suggested getting a new one last year.

I wouldn't think of it.