Thou Shalt Not Question Thy Underlying Assumptions...

I had a pretty good Christmas this year. My body did not. Too much alcohol and salty-fatty meats and dairy. So you could say that drunken or hungover constipation was my stocking stuffer. But despite my artery clogging gastronomy, my heart suffered worse from something that has nothing do with blood cholesterol.

Now, as a matter of background, I am descended from a short but thick line of what are today known as Evangelical Christians. My father and both my grandfathers were Baptist ministers and I myself was a devout evangelical Christian until I got to college--Wheaton College actually--and gradually began to question, doubt and disect my beliefs until there was almost nothing left. I was a zealous atheist for many years, completely unwilling to concede even to reason that there could be anything sacred or divine about humankind, creation, consciousness, knowledge or emotion.

I have dabbled with the idea of organized religion since that time, mainly as an emotional response to my working in close proximity to impovereished indigenous and mestizo people in Central and South America. Many of these folks had literally nothing but their families and thier faith, and needless to say it inspired me. But ultimately it has been my unwillingness to part with Occam' s Razor that has prevented me from believing in any traditional organized religion. And I have made my peace with that, and with my family and friends who are very religious.

I was wearing a T-shirt that a friend had bought me, and my fahter asked me what he was up to. He had been in Gaza during the original (so-called) ceasefire, and now works out of the AP bureau in Ramallah in the West Bank. The issue of the Palestinian Question came up, as well asthe issue of terrorism and national defense. My brother, wife and myself on the one side argued that the current situation was rooted in the modern history of the middle east, where the French and British (and Ottoman) colonists had partitioned regions according to their interests, and not necessarily with the interests or input of the inhabitants. My father argued that the State of Israel was originally a theocracy established by God himself, and that if the Israelites (not to be confused with the "Israelis," though evangelicals tend to use them interchangeably) had obeyed God's commandment to kill (I mean smite) all the non-Jews in the lands of Canaan and Palestine back in the Old Testament, then none of this would be happening now.

So, then, was my father retroactively advocating genocide? Surely Israeli blockades, raids and incursions on Palestinian soil were going to breed more terrorists. We argued that the troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bloody Sunday, were huge mistakes by the Brits and extended the assymetric war there by driving young Irish men into the arms of the IRA.

Surely the solution to the violence in Gaza, both by Israeli forces and Hamas, was to come to a two state solution. The problem was due in part to the original partitioning of Modern Palestine and the subsequent wars fought by Arabs and Israelis over territory.

No, my dad said, the boundaries for the state of Israel are derived from God's commandment to the Jews the Old Testament. It would be against God's will to have it any other way.

I tried to give strong suggestions to him, escape clauses really, that we should really confine discussion to the modern history of the middle east, post-World War I, rather than try to explain modern territorial conflicts by means of one man' s (closed) interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. My father cannot concede to reason that any other interpretation beyond his own is a sufficiently Christ-centered explanation of phenomena. What about all the different sects of Judaism, some so strict that they deny the Modern State of Israel as the true covenant, because it was not founded by the returning Messiah? What about all the different protestant denominations, some of whom disagree on very minor (but important to them) passages in the scriptures? What about the Brethren sect in Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon Days, who split bitterly over women wearing pants and promised to pray for each other' s mortal souls.

Anything, please, just concede that you might not have your facts straight, that you might have a unique interpretation of the situation or scriptures that could be informed or altered in the presence of new information?? No...

1.) The biblical promised land (exactly as it appears in my study bible) IS STILL the promised land, and part and parcel of the covenant between God and his chosen people and must never be compromised.

2.) The Jews disobeyed God by not smiting the Philistines and Canaanites to the 10th Generation, so the current bombing of Gaza, regardless of human or social consequences (including "collateral damage" to civilians and increased terrorism) is justified as fulfilling that commandment.

3.) To say otherwise is a slap in the face to God; we're all going to hell anyway (implied not spoken, but understood) as are the Arabs Muslims who are caught in this conflict, since they are on the wrong side of God.

The argument ended with my wife (who is Jewish)angrily breaking a family taboo by breeching the fact that, according to my Dad's beliefs, we're all going to hell including my son, Charlie. My Dad turned to my brother and said: "It's not up to me who goes to heaven or hell, that's up to God," to which my brother said:

" Dad, you're on your own. I don't believe in hell."

I piped in too, following my wife out of the room "Neither do I and neither do Jews, its just a remnant of Zoroastrianism plagerized by John of Patmos to advance his doomsday cult (by which I meant Christianity).

My father tried to continue the argument by saying that his pastor, an ethnic Jewish convert to (a fiery version of) Evangelical Christianity, was a real Jew...that True Jews were circumsized by the spirit (I remember the Epistles)...not the flesh...blah...blah...blah.

My mom was pretty mad at my dad: "Those were not loving things to say, they we hurtful, you should apologize."

I hadn't argued religion with my dad for ten or twelve years. None of his kids believe in his God, and part of that I assume is the refusal by our early mentors to accept criticism of their faith, to consider the other side, or to innovate or generate new ideas in light of new information. The most dangerous conflict of the modern era is not between Christendom and Islam, nor is it between the modern industrialized west and the developing world. It's not even between religious people and non-religious people (like it seemed to be during the cold war with the godless Russian commies). The conflict of the age is between fundamentalists: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah, Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Hamas and other Radical Islamists, ultra Orthodox Nationalist Jews, Hindu Nationalists and Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists who cannot yield ground with respect to their interpretation of (fill in name of Holy Scriptures), and who cannot even bring themselves in their FUCKING holy roller pride to concede ANYTHING to reason.

In my house THAT is an abomination...

I have many religious friends, some of whom probably belive that I'm going to some version of hell after I die. But it doesn't mean they have less in common with me intellectually that my dad has with the Taliban. To the contrary, most people I know can concede to reason, and don't require prophesied genocide as an alternative...and it makes me sad that my father cannot or will not.