Godfightclub

When the 9/11 attacks occurred, people around the world (definitely across the United States) poured into churches, temples, synagogues and mosques to send silent pleas to their God; pleas for justice, pleas for peace, pleas for love and pleas that the dead find their ways quickly and painlessly into His reach.

Some, as you can read in the link above, questioned the mercy of God that allowed fully-filled and fueled airplanes to slam into filled skyscrapers. Why didn’t God stop the buildings from falling down? Why did God just sit by and let this happen? Simply put, where was God?

I’m not going to address where God was on Sept. 11, 2001. I can’t answer for God.

But what’s more important, or maybe more tangible is the question of why faith became so bastardized to turn words of wisdom and love into a weapon of mass destruction. We can’t put God on trial, but we can answer for our own actions done in his name.

The world is now poised to fight a war between the West and Muslims. After 9/11, the lines grew larger and clearer: There is a Jihad against the United States, and the “holy war” had taken a new and horrifying brutal turn.

All religions require surrender of some sort, whether it be surrendering money, time or your will. Adopting a religion is the part of a spiritual journey, when you divine path is laid out before you in some holy writ. As in relationships, you give up a bit of yourself for the joy of merging into something better. Arguably, it’s supposed to be a peaceful journey, which is why we were so shocked to hear Islam connected to such terrifying and bloody acts. For Americans, it was a chilling fact that the word of the Islamic God was being used to have people empty themselves of love and compassion and be replaced with a singularity of hatred and revenge…all for a paradise beyond this world filled with feasts and attending virgins. What sort of religion is this, Americans thought.



I don't know if I feel anything toward Muslims. Yes, there are Muslims who hate us Westerners, and I'm not about to get into who started it...an argument that reaches back to The Crusades and possibly beyond. I think if some American madmen drove a plane into Mecca, there would be a lot to answer for. As an American, I'd feel ashamed. As a former regular church-going Christian, I'd say though that I wasn't surprised.

Every religion has the ability to be taken way too seriously. Anyone can dive too deeply into the pages of any holy writ and lose one's mind. Anyone can twist and turn scripture to suit their own needs, including enslaving or killing whole peoples. Holy books, I think, work best as a poetic device to understanding the divine...it's not something to be taken verbatim and it's something not to be taken internally.

Furthermore, I feel a fundamentalist streak running through the U.S. leadership that is only matched by the angry rhetoric of the Islamic leaders in the Middle East and those who head Islamic terrorist groups. The only difference is the U.S. strain is carefully crafted to public consumption. In the end, there are two major religious powers clashing: the Christian and the Muslim (with dashes of Judaism tossed in on the Christian side). Sept. 11 was yet another stage in this idiotic God fight.

I think the rabid right in this country are just more stealthy in their oppression of women and harassment of minorities and gays and any other undesirables compared to those in hardcore Muslim countries.

I suppose I'm more curious about what's driving this ardent Islam. Is it due to the end of the Cold War? Did it have to do with a sense of betrayal after the end of the Cold War when the superpowers stopped propping up these religious fighters who were used at puppets to fight proxy battles for the U.S. and U.S.S.R.? Does it have to do with the encroachment of the global market, replacing local traditions with Coca-Cola billboards and local temples with the chase for the almighty dollar? Does it have to do with fear or helplessness?

In the U.S., the surge of fundamentalism during the few decades could be traced to the “End Times” brigade saying Revelation is at hand. Talk of the world ending will whip your flock into shape, trying to score some last-minute brownie points with God by following the Word to the letter. But it's a faith out of fear, fear of change, fear that whatever faith you have isn't as absolute with the advent of science and common sense (excuse me? the earth in seven days?). When people are afraid, they'll grab onto anything.

As an aside, there was a time, back when I lived in Houston (early to mid 90s), when I nearly drifted into the whole End Times hysteria. The notion of Revelation coming true terrified me and I thought I wouldn't be one of the lucky ones taken up in the Rapture. I'd watch some Bible Channel when they would broadcast their weekly "End of the World" update (that's not the name, but it was close), detailing how tragedies and other new events signaled the approach of the Four Horsemen. I'd go through Revelation and chart out the path of destruction the unleashed angels would hand out, followed by the suffering of those left on Earth. I can't explain what happened, but something
in me just reoriented itself and told me this was a really shitty thing for God to do, ending the world and all just when we were getting on the right track. I always felt like God was copping-out, just destroying the world by letting Satan show up. What kind of God would let this happen?

Later, I figured out this "End of the World" biz was an ongoing money-making gig, and this generation of "doom" stories just had fancier graphics. A bit more cynically, I figured that this current wave of "doom" stories was cooked up by a bunch of boomers who were going older, growing out of touch and who wanted the party to end with them instead of having their self-gratification culture die at the hands of some Kurt Cobain-fueled upstarts.

But from what I learned from being in the orbit of the “End Times” school of thought was the sense of extremity that hung in the broadcaster’s mouth. It’ was do or die, be saved or burn, face Heaven or burning forever. And you better do it now. You better be a spiritual warrior, always on guard from the forces of Satan. I would be you against the world after the Rapture came. For the “End Times” crowd, the end was always coming, just around the bend.

In a day and age when the fiery spectrum of political books (Bibles of another sort, I suspect) like “Stupid White Men” is facing off against “Slander” for best-selling bragging rights, religion and politics are culminating in their own versions of extreme sports. There's no room for moderation...you have to be old school to be legit, you can never ever apologize, never ever change with the times. Moderation is for pussies because holding onto some religious text is a solid item that gives one power, to give up thinking, to give up wondering why.

I will not apologize for how Muslims treat women, just as I won't condone the odious Promise Keepers movement. All I'm saying is that this form of old-school religious doctrine is poison for anyone. It's all about trying to force control in an ever-changing world. Love, the unconditional kind, is hard. To embrace someone who thinks you are an infidel is the ultimate challenge of one's faith. If you follow one of the Big Three of Faiths, it's the fiercest act of love you can give, besides sacrificing yourself for your beliefs. To embrace like that is to set aside your dogma and realize this alien is your brother or sister somehow...and that's something you don't hear a lot about in our political and religious discourse these days. If you get to know that alien, you'll eventually ask, "Why does my faith leader want me to hate this person?" and that's bad for business when it comes to controlling the masses.

Besides, I imagine that when we died and we do move on to whatever destination that may await us, some supreme being (whether it's god or some wisdom-spouting amalgamation of souls) will look at us a bit crossly and ask, "What the hell were you doing? I sent you down there to get along. Did you really think I'd give you all this nature and poetry and beauty just so you could kill each other in my name? Honestly, I can't leave you alone for a second."

People overdose on faith, I think, ironically, for the same reason people overdose on drugs: They have no hope. They have no joy or love in their lives and they feel that if they are true to this one things, all their pain will be traded in for bliss in the afterlife. From what I understand, conversion to Islam is remarkably easy...you just sit alone and give yourself over to Allah. I think it's the same for becoming "born again," (a revolting theory that says that you can fuck up your life and the lives of everyone around you, but it's okay if you accept Christ in your life at a later date) but I think the latter involves actually confessing to someone about it. A sort of baptizing may be involved, too. Converts talk about being bathed in a warm glow of tranquility when they make the change, perhaps akin to having an emotional/chemical reaction in your brain, like a good cry or learning good news. And of course they'd feel it...they've heard about the cleansing from giving yourself over...it's been wired into their brains. You think, therefore you feel saved.

I suppose, in the end, it's what you are exposed to, whether it be what your parents tell you, what you learn in school, what you hear in church or through the media. All I know is that we humans are suckers for the party line and we can drift in movements, even if the movement is a bad idea upon retrospect. We should learn why hardcore Islam is so popular. We should try to share, not push, our religious beliefs with those alien to us. We should listen. Even if it doesn't work on the first, second or 17th try.

To me, there's very little choice in the matter. Let's consider the alternative: If we don't talk to people with different religions, they're only going to get poisoned by some ideological huckster looking to recruit fodder for another God fight. This time around, all the contenders have nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and someone, somewhere is going to push the button and have a righteous orgasm of joy in how many infidels he killed in a just cause.

And yet, I agree that we have failed many times to get down the basics of talking and listening. My solution only works if we happen to give a shit about the other person. I’m not sure abolishing religion would work either...if religion ever fades from prominence, it'll be how Bruce Sterling (or Aldous Huxley for that matter) once pegged it...through designer drugs which equal the bliss of a religious experience.

In a sad way, we'll only figure this out through trial and error, and with it too many lives. People will always look for something to guide them. They'll come up with their own religions if you take the others away...look at primitive cultures. When people grew terrified of the night sky, they made up grand stories of angels and demons...each chasing each other by way of the sun and stars. We still carry with us the ancient patterns the Greeks made up for the night sky.

No, what drives our ever-creative minds to do terrible things is fear and greed. It's a curse, one I don't think we'll ever be able to wiggle out of. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe we just need to be kind and loving in the best way we can while trying to unlearn all the crap foisted on us by the older generations, the ancient tribal elders who didn't have to live with the threat of atomic weapons or suicide bombers or mad cow disease.

Some days it's hard to have hope. It's easy not to have hope. Some days I don't. Some days I do. Some day I hope that we’ll figure out that religion isn’t a contest where the object is to be the better worshipper.

Maybe we’ll come to see all the common threads that Christianity, Judaism and Islam have. Maybe we’ll find the strength to sit together. And to listen. And to see each other and children of God, even if God we talk to God in different tongues and in different dress. I can’t say when this will happen. I just know that it can happen.

I suppose this is where faith comes in.