Seduced again

An empire needs a lot of validation. In particular, it needs to make up stories about itself. If you are a powerful empire at the crossroads of the world, it might make sense to tell one like this: A vigorous young god grows tired of his mother's constant meddling, so he murders her and stretches out her corpse to form the cosmos. The many splatters of blood become stars, resulting in the pretty but violent world we all inhabit.

This is essentially the creation myth of ancient Babylon, but it lives on as what theologian Walter Wink has called "the myth of redemptive violence." According to this myth, a wrong can only be avenged through violence. At its most powerful, such violence is indeed a creative force, and the god, person or nation who exercises it performs an act of redemption.

The most stunning realization of the myth of redemptive violence I have ever seen is the movie Independence Day. After millions of people have been killed and an entire alien civilization destroyed by our nuclear weapons in retaliation, we are asked to leave the theater believing that we have seen a "happy ending." After all, "they" were not even human.

Before I go on to make the obvious parallel with current events, I would like to point out that there is another creation story with which we are ostensibly more familiar: one that grew up in the shadow of Babylon, and in opposition to it. In this story, God does not use violence to create the world. God stands outside of creation, yet cares deeply enough about it to find it good. We have also heard this story many times, but we may not realize how strongly it contrasts with the Babylonian creation myth - because it is the latter that still often guides our most important choices.

Things do not go smoothly in Genesis either, of course. Cain kills Abel, planting a seed of violence that grows and festers until it creates a cancer that seems impossible to eradicate. In many ways, our imaginations are still bound by the limitations of the creation myth of ancient Babylon.

We have been asked this week to accept that the death of Osama bin Laden is an act of justice. Perhaps it is. Let me be clear. I am not sorry that the man is dead. He was evil, and he brought what happened on himself many times over. We may well be safer because he is no longer alive.

Nevertheless, I have come to believe that a truly evil person can do no greater evil than to cause others to rejoice over his or her death. I refuse to grant bin Laden that final victory over my soul. I will not be happy that he is dead. He does not deserve it.

Selfishness wins

There's been a lot of talk lately about the new book by Rob Bell, Love Wins. If you live outside of the Bible belt and/or don't have friends who are evangelical Christians, you may not have noticed. If you're one of those who has heard of the book but simply hasn't read it, here's the lowdown: Rob Bell believes in hell, and his detractors are in it. If you want, you can skip the rest of his book and just read Chapter 7 for clarification. I'm sure Bell would be too gracious to say what I just said in so many words, but his interpretation of the story of the Prodigal Son speaks for itself.

The reason I bring this up is that the Rob Bell controversy shows just how judgmental some Christians can be. Many seem to hate Bell's book, whether they've read it or not, for the simple reason that they truly can't stand the idea that they might have to stop denouncing and excluding others. After all, if you're one of God's people, there's got to be somebody who's not, or what's the point, right?

As for me, I try very hard not to be judgmental. That's how you know that for me to write a post like this one, my back has to be really up against the wall. If I'm going to claim publicly that there are people around who seem determined to oppose, undermine and destroy everything the Christian religion stands for, I need some serious provocation, because I just don't say things like that. But then there's Paul Ryan, and I guess he brings out the worst in me.

Here is an article from Newsweek that makes it clear just where the inspiration for Ryan's budget is coming from. Ayn Rand.

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/10/war-on-the-weak.html

If you're not aware of this, Rand, whom Ryan reads "religiously," deliberately turned traditional ethics on its head. Instead of believing that all people receive their life from a common creator and hence have obligations to each other, she avowed that there is no God and hence nothing beyond self-interest to pursue. Instead of affirming that it is the duty of the strong to help the weak, she saw the strong as virtuous and the weak as lazy and ineffectual. The desire to help others - what is commonly known as altruism - was to her the original sin of human society. The strong and powerful owe nothing to anything beyond themselves, because they are natural heroes. The poor are evolutionary misfits, and encouraging them to believe that they are anything else is a disservice to society and will only lead to more suffering in the future. Better to let them starve and die now than continue to reproduce.

If you think you recognize the set of beliefs that Rand is contradicting, you've either read the Gospels and the Old Testament prophets or internalized much of their ethical content. The ideas that the strong should help the weak, that no-one is righteous in and of his or herself, and that we owe respect and love to others, including strangers, are the basis of the Judeo-Christian worldview. If you're a practicing Christian or an observant Jew, you're more or less supposed to practice those things. They're the foundation of our laws and our traditions of justice, which is why most modern people believe them regardless of their religious faith, or lack thereof. Many would even suggest that this positive ethical content is the only thing worth salvaging from the history of Western religion. That's what I was brought up to believe, and the only reason I started going to church was because I needed to get back to the source. Acknowledging how broadly accepted these ideas are is what has made me the broad-minded person that I aspire to be.

And then there's Congressman Ryan. What I hope the Newsweek article makes clear is that his worldview, which inspired his much-touted, supposedly "courageous" budget plan, is based on a conscious, deliberate rejection of everything I just described. He has a coherent worldview all right, but it is the polar opposite of Judeo-Christian ethics. That's why I can say with absolute conviction that Ryan is waging a war on everything the Christian religion stands for. There is no point of contact whatsoever. What Christianity affirms, Ryan rejects. What Christianity rejects, Ryan affirms.

What makes this whole business so frankly sad is that, as the Newsweek article makes clear, Ryan's ideas, which are Ayn Rand's, are also the ideas that have motivated the Tea Party and brought it to a position of power, and there is a broad intersection between the membership of the Tea Party and that of the so-called Christian right. I really want to take the charitable interpretation and assume that those who belong to both groups simply don't understand where this whole cluster of ideas is coming from. I want to do this because there are people I like and respect who belong to both groups. I do hope that some of them are reading this - because if you are, NOW YOU KNOW!!