A couple things I've read today (so none of you can take sole credit) reminded me
that I haven't yet commented on some items news that made me very, very happy.
Both, as it happens, were the sort of thing that straddles the boundaries between
religion and politics. (It's amazing how fuzzy that boundary is, even when the
Constitution is being allowed to keep them properly separate.) Both relate to some
deeper convictions of mine, which is why I'm about to divert from my track for a
couple of paragraphs.
As it happens, I disagree with Saint Paul on
most issues, except maybe his name. I realize that to many Christians this just
automatically means I'm wrong, which is one reason it's probably a good thing I
was born Jewish. Though I do believe there's a lot of wisdom in the Bible, even in
the New Testament, I don't believe in Divinely inspired speech, which gives me a
freedom I cherish to think about and disagree with some of the things in there.
(And anyway, I wonder how many Christians agree with what Paul said about tax
collectors.)
Even Paul's most famous saying, the one about "...faith,
hope and love, and the greatest of these is love". I'm not at all convinced that
hope doesn't take first place, because so often hope enables us to survive while
we don't have love, whereas any Dear Abby column or AA meeting can show examples
of people who had to give up on love when there was no hope left. Faith is on a
different level, a sine qua non component of both hope and successful love. Still,
I agree with Paul that love is one of the most important facets of being
alive.
That's why these two news articles resonated with me: both
were about people accepting love and having faith in their hopes to change the
world.
I've always admired the Episcopalian church for its reasoned
theology and academic traditions. A few days ago they gave me a new reason for
admiration: their acceptance of the variety of loving paths, in the ordination of
their first openly gay bishop. Three points: I do not believe love, when it's real
love that wants the best for the beloved, can ever be sinful. (Echoes of Paul
here, in his most true and beautiful speech: Love suffereth long, and is kind;
Love envieth not; Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave
itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.) Second, even if
homosexuality were a sin, I have not heard yet of any denomination of any religion
anywhere ever finding itself a leader with no
blemishes on his conscience.
Third, this is pure conjecture but I suspect that this is far from the first gay
bishop in the nearly half a milennium since Henry VIII started the Anglican
Church. What other problems must have stemmed from the cover-ups and subterfuges
the others had to perpetrate?
The other news item that brought me to
tears was a bit on the evening news about the
href="http://www.mideastweb.org/bereaved_families_forum.htm">Bereaved Families
Forum, a group made up of both (BOTH!) Israelis and Palestinians who
have lost family in the fighting there. They are working together to try to
prevent the slaughter of more children on both sides. As the Palestinian members
would say, "Insha'Allah" - may God will that it be so.
I have hope,
and I am working on having faith, that these acts of love really will help to
change the world, to bring about a day when they will convert their missiles into
rocketships and their guns into butter, when nation shall not lift up ARMS against
nation and neither shall they learn war any more.