It seems to me that a number of the so-called representatives of the faithful in America really aren't that faithful at all. All the moral crusaders shouting down Hindu clerics in the Senate, jumping up and down outside of abortion clinics, boycotting any company that dares to acknowledge GLBT persons -- they aren't the faithful; they are the fearful.
Obviously, that statement needs some explanation.
I hear complaints all the time that God is somehow being forced out of the public square or that pray is being forced out of the public schools. Sometimes I just roll my eyes. More recently, a think to myself -- baby, if your god is weak enough that a spineless US Congress can knock him out of the public square, then he ain't much of a god now, is he? The "faithful" apparently don't have faith in God's ability to make God's message/eternal truth heard despite any and all efforts to stop it. According to them, God must have government support. It's apparently beyond belief that God could be working through secular/modernizing/liberal/ecumenical forces to accomplish God's work. They don't have faith in a God that can work without their help or who can appear in many forms or even work behind the scenes.
Rather they are fearful that God is weak and lying in his deathbed, probably attached to a respirator. Oh, and the power went out in the hospital, and they have to desperately pedal on a stationary bike to keep that life support going. Fearful that God can't do whatever God pleases regardless of what humans do, or if humans even know God acted. It's hubris, if you ask me, to claim that God somehow needs you in order to exist and to function.
Most importantly, it seems that many of the so-called faithful have no faith in grace and mercy on the part of God. Oh, they'll claim that one is saved by grace and not by works to explain why doing good to one's fellow human beings is next to pointless in the grand scheme of things, but they don't actually believe in mercy or in grace. They don't actually have faith that God will judge them by their hearts, by their desire to know truth and to do good, and will show mercy to them should they stumble. Faith in a truly loving God is beyond them.
Nope, rather they are fearful that God is so petty as to send them to hell for the slightest of transgressions. And so it is necessary to codify everything, to kill the sense of religious mystery, to restrict wonder, to trample of the free will of other persons, to quickly capture and contain God so that they know that they are saved.
Because they aren't faithful; they are fearful.
Man, now I feel sorry for them.
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Absolutely. I think the same thing. I keep asking myself, why do they need the Bible to be literal? What's so wrong about it being a book of stories that offer some truth, without being The Truth Complete and Unfallable? Why do they need so many rules? Do they have so little faith in the God they claim to love and serve that they have to be absolutely perfect? Because that's a horrible way to live. I tried to do it for years and I was miserable. Suicidal even. What's with the need to put God in a box? And really, if I get mad at God and yell at him because someone I love had died or I have a chronic illness and it's not fair and I'm pissed off about it -- isn't God big enough to take that? All those people who told me I could never be angry with God...what were they thinking? If you have a real relationship with /anyone/, sometimes, you get angry at them. If it's a good relationship, it can handle that. So why wouldn't God be able to handle me being pissed off and letting Her know about it? It makes no sense.
I couldn't live with that much fear. I couldn't live with that much anxiety and worry. And yeah, I feel sorry for them too, because they're missing the whole point of being alive. God doesn't want us being miserable and worried and on pins and needles all the time. God wants us to be happy and to live and to enjoy the world She made for us. How hard is that to comprehend?
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