GETTING ALONG

Faith Today - Moncton Times and Transcript - August 06th 2012

I saw a cartoon on Facebook today. It showed a picture of the God Zeus on his throne atop Mount Olympus. The caption read, “Stop the war on the Olympics! Put Zeus back in the Olympics!”

All of those silly “put Christ back in Christmas” slogans have come full circle.

I have written about this before; but having just written a funeral, which is a liturgy that uses a pretty practiced and traditional type of language and format. I am reminded of how some people get stuck on words and symbols.

It happens both ways. Those who see Christ-mas as needing to be controlled by the church believe that Jesus has to be the centre of everything. For many people the way they see things is controlled by the language they use, or at least influenced by it.

On the other hand are the people who want to change French fries to freedom fries because of some perceived slight during a Middle Eastern war. The same folk who insist that we have Holiday Trees and try to edit out every reference that causes them to have to think in a way that they don’t want to.

Both groups are fundamentalists, just one on the left and one on the right. Both groups find it hard to imagine what the other is thinking. Both believe that they and they alone, are right.

I am lucky, I have two careers. With one group of people I can say that I am a writer, and with another I can say that I am a minister. I call that lucky, but I suppose it is sad. There are people out there who are in one of the two camps I listed above, or somewhere in between; who either know in their hearts what a minister is and love it, or have ministers all figured out and hate them.

I went to the doctor once with a problem and he said to me, “well, we know it is not alcohol, you are a minister” which struck me as so odd because I cannot even name a clergy person who does not drink, at least the occasional glass of wine.

But it is about perceptions, right. There is another group who when I tell them I am a minister get all self-righteous about how terrible I am because I am using organized religion to brainwash people to believe in fairy tales and ruining the world.

You are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

But again, I am circling around my issue. So here it is: People use symbols, language, and words in a too narrowly defined way to imagine they understand where everyone is coming from. Because of that, they miss the nuances that say we are all more similar than we would like to think.

If I say, “My personal relationship with Jesus gives me strength” or if you say “My faith in God gives me hope” or if someone else says “my experience of the goodness of people restores my faith in humanity” We are all talking about the same thing.

We use different words and different references and ideas to paint a picture of the world around us. And I wish we could stop fighting over the made up differences between “atheist” “agnostic” “liberal” “fundamental” or any other imagined label.

Most everyone believes the exact same thing: There is a moral code. There is purpose to life. People are essentially good. Bad things happen despite that. There is more to life than first meets the eye. Freaky things sometimes happen.

It is simply that we define the words differently.

And yes, there are differences. Some people think abortion is wrong and some think it is right, for example. But we blow the differences out of the water without stopping to think that on both sides of the debate is someone saying the health and welfare of a human being is important.

To quote Rodney King after the LA Riots, “Can we all just get along?”