This blog was written in November, 2014.
I
have a friend named Chase and he’s Muslim. He takes his faith seriously, makes
his prayers five times each day, avoids profanity, pornography, and gambling.
During Ramadan he was undergoing chemo. The med staff here failed in their diagnosis.
His jaw swelled about a year ago. Medical said, “You have an infection.” For
nine months they ran Chase around with antibiotics and “suck on tart candies”
to “stimulate your salivary glands.” Turns out they were wrong. The swelling
got worse, started choking off his airway. A quick trip to MCV and the real
diagnosis came in: cancer of the salvia gland, stage “3.” Tough to hear
anytime, let alone less than a year before you go home after eighteen years.
Chase, he took it all in stride. “It’s in the hands of Allah,” he said and he
began the treatments. And Ramadan? In his weakened state, he couldn’t
participate in the month long fast. That too was ok. He was alive and survived,
he said, by the will of his God.
Chase is a nice guy, one of the
nicest men I’ve met either inside – or outside of prison. He may not have
always done the “right” thing and like all of us he made mistakes. He was in
here for the last 18 years for crimes he committed. But, he is a kind, decent
man who strives to live to the tenets of his faith.
Religion is a tough topic. My 81-year-old
father – a Korean War veteran – tried to tell me at visitation the other day
that we need to get those “barbarians” in ISIL. And, he distinguished ISIL by
their religion. I asked him what Jesus would do? Jesus, I said, would forgive,
and freely allow them to behead Him because it isn’t this body that’s
important; it’s your soul. My dad just said Jesus wouldn’t make it in today’s
world. I thought to myself, maybe that’s the problem.
“Religion is the opiate of the
masses.” That was Karl Marx, a near penniless writer trying to feed a family in
the industrial Darwinism that was London in the 19th century. Marx
was angry at his circumstances, angry at the vast disparity between the haves
and have-nots. Religion, he concluded, kept the disadvantaged from rising up
and slaughtering those who held them in check. As I said, religion is a tough
topic. And, it’s easy to draw anecdotal conclusions and apply them to every
circumstance. The world isn’t black and white it is hued in a sorts of grays
and religion is right in there.
There are very good Muslims. There
are very bad self-professed Christians. There are agnostics and atheists who
better represent Jesus than I could ever hope to. Gandhi understood more about
the Sermon on the Mount and our call to action as followers of the Prince of
Peace than most Christians I’ve met. There is a self-described “man of faith”
in here who claims to love his Catholic Church yet he is one of the meanest,
most hateful men I have ever met. He is continually angry. He is a racist and a
homophobe. Another man watches Joel Osteen multiple times each week yet runs
most of the scams in the building and lies about everything from his “wife” to
his upbringing. Christian – by affirmation – say both men.
Chase occasionally will work himself
into a frenzy – as do most Muslims and Christians here – when the subject of
gay marriage comes up. Life becomes black and white. Homosexuality is a sin,
they all agree. I find it ironic that the same ones who profess eternal
damnation for that sin overlook their own murders, adultery, or a dozen other
“serious” sins. So, I asked Chase if you’re sexual orientation is biologically
predetermined (i.e. it’s in your genes) and God is the ultimate constructor of
everything, from the simplest single cell to the sun doesn’t that mean God
created those genes? “You have a point,” he told me. Islam – like Christianity
– professes to judge not the sinner. All are God’s children.
Free choice. It isn’t God who warps
our minds and distorts and alienates. Over and over the New Testament tells
Christians “God is love.” We are called to “turn the other cheek,” “forgive as
God has forgiven you,” “care for the widow and orphan … visit the sick and
those in prison, … clothes to the naked, feed the hungry … give and it will be
given to you.” No, religion doesn’t make people hurl insults at Latino children
who come here to escape the murderous rage of gang warfare in Columbia,
Honduras, or El Salvador. Religion doesn’t cause “church members” to hold signs
at a funeral saying “God hates fags,” or shooting doctors sitting in church
because they happen to provide abortions. That’s man’s evil side, his – or her
“free choice” packaged as God’s will.
Beheading, torturing a kidnapped
journalist in the name of God is evil and sinful. But, so is labeling all
Muslims bad; so is calling on your nation to bomb your enemies into oblivion.
That isn’t Godly nor is it confined to one nation, one race, one creed.
A little background on me. In my
college days, my mother always told me to consider the ministry. I could talk!
Was it because I was so theologically astute that my mom wanted me to pursue a
seminary education? No. She just wanted to be the mother of a preacher. But, we
were a “churched” family. I was a deacon at 16, read Calvin and a host of other
protestant “reformed: theologians. Intellectually, I got “it.” I always
wondered, however, when the minister would take a position not in keeping with
his congregation’s voting habits how the members would discount the words as
not realistic in “the real world.” God and mammon co-existed quite easily in
most churches that I’ve attended. Uncle Sam, it seems, sits on the left side of
God. My adult life – married, father, ordained elder, Sunday school teacher, I
lived quite comfortably with that cognitive dissonance. That all changed in
August 2008.
I understand more now about the
infinite power and mystery of God than I ever did. And, everyday I’m reminded
how far I must go. Too often guys in here use “religion” as a means of
separation, segregation, and self-delusion. They miss the “real” message. Funny
but the same is true out there. You ever read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians
about love? Every wedding – it seems – uses Paul’s words. I can tell you – 28
years with a woman I still love and pray for everyday in spite of the divorce –
we didn’t meet Paul’s test. We failed; almost everyone does.
Don’t blame God for the evil that’s
done in His name. Blame those of us who profess belief and then distort His
desires and ways for our own selfish, evil, and petty hopes. And maybe, just
maybe, we can all start practicing a little more what we profess.
