Parting Glances
There's an old saying about making a mountain out of a mole hill. Another about removing the beam from your own eye before demanding your neighbor remove the mote from his.
I have a theory, born of the experience that generally, but not always, comes with age. No it's not: if only I could do it over, I'd do things differently (now that I have to pay the Pied Piper for the jaunty tunes I've fox trotted to.)
It's a simple theory: we frequently create problems that are seemingly major – but actually are also seemingly manageable – if we keep working at them, and working at them, and working at them – in order not to have to deal with a big problem that has the appearance of being insurmountable. (It not infrequently is. Viagra helps.)
Let me consider dealing with A,B, and C. I may have a headache that comes and goes, but, God knows that X, Y, and Z, subset 1, 2, and 3 is a major migraine showing no sign of letting up in the near or distant future.
In this country we go to war on foreign soils – spending billions of dollars, in the process killing thousands of people, some militant, most innocent, our own and others – perhaps because the one insurmountable problem here where we live is dealing with – take your pick – crime, poverty, overpopulation, abuse of environment, failure of education, drugs, lack of meaningful health care, aging. All of the above?
Singly or collectively insurmountable? Or just seemingly so? It depends upon whom one asks. What politician and/or political party one confronts for answers. (And whether that senator, congressman, mayor, council member, or dog catcher is seeking reelection.)
Consider as egregious example: our major adversaries. Those who advocate keeping DADT in place, holding tight without budging on DOMA, insisting on employing discredited quack reparative therapy for LGBT youth, overwhelmingly working to ensure that any civil rights won for us at the ballot box be rescinded; by hook, crook, or crucifix.
These of the Fundamentalist (frequently, but not always evangelical) tribe of zealots – fundygelicals, Rebiblicans – keep attacking us gays because, well, when it comes down to it, confronting us, often to the point of day in, day out, 365, 24/7 obsession – keeps a bigger Biblical bugaboo at bay. Yea, verily! What if…
Those on the religious right are faced with a multitude of pressures that weren't present when the Puritan-steeped, Calvin-predestined, Southern Baptist-endorsed, "the Bible is free of all error;" "the world is 6000 years old;" "if you're not a born-again believer, you'll turkey roast it in Hell forever," got going full tilt in the latter half of the 19th Century. Amen! Selah!
It's a new hand-held ballgame, and what's being hand held is not the Bible (in spite of 125 "specialty bibles" being a million dollar industry – with the once sacrosanct Zondervan Publishing Company now owned by Murdoch). It's the Internet, with access to "revelations" undreamed of in biblical times.
What if the earth is several billions of years old? What if evolution is true? Creation Science, a pseudo science? What if the X-rated sites are being viewed by – Heaven forfend! – Christian believers? What if Rev. Fred Phelps gives the lie to the gospel of Jesus? What if muslims are making headway in America?
What if mega-churches are swallowing up smaller churches? What if missionaries are not welcome in India and China? What if wily televangelists and faith healers are exposed as frauds? What if fifty percent of church-sanctioned marriages end in divorce? What if our kids need Hard Rock Gospel to convert? What if … What if …
Jesus doesn't come. (But gays usually do?)
