A Sad Irony

I genuinely believe that the vast majority of war, crime, hatred and general violence against others/nature emanates from religious conservativism. I don't mean just Christian conservatives either. In general, terrorists and hawks are the conservatives and fundamentalists of every nation or people. Remove the conservatives from the equation and both terrorism and counter-terrorism evaporate.

I would say that conservatives of all ilks are defined by three primary characteristics: 1) Resistance to change, even if the change means progress; 2) Once the change becomes the entrenched status quo, embracing it like it was their idea to begin with; and 3) Believing that they have found the ultimate truth and hitting everybody else over the head with it.

The Christian religion offers a great illustration of this three-step process. It was the conservatives of Jesus' day who fought him at every turn, criticized his every move, castigated his every word and ultimately sentenced him to death. It was these same conservatives who then tried to snuff out the subsequent spread of Christianity.

However, once Christianity became firmly established, it was the later conservatives who embraced it. Once it was embraced by the conservatives, it was then used as a weapon against others who didn't embrace it also. The conservative leadership of the Church used Christianity as the theological impetus to torture, maim and kill millions of pagans and followers of other religious traditions.

If you look back through history, almost every war you come across has been initiated by conservatives. What's most interesting is that though the conservatives make the decisions to go to war, they rarely engage in the art of war itself. Both Bill Clinton & Dubya are great examples. Neither of them ever fought in a war. Both found creative ways even to avoid genuine military service. Yet both have had no trouble sending others off to die, often needlessly.

But it's not just the issue of war. Fundamentalist belief serves not as the foundation of love and compassion but of hate. Because fundamentalists believe they have a special corner on the truth, anyone not sharing their belief is demonized. Demonization leads to depersonalization and depersonalization in turn spawns hatred. It's easy to kill people you hate. It's easy to lock up people you hate. It's easy to create economic and social systems that keep the people you hate in their proper place -- dead end jobs, ghettos, underfunded schools, lack of adequate health care, etc.

For me then, this is the tragic irony of conservative Christianity (it applies just as easily to fundamentalist takes on other religions too). Conservative Christians talk so much about love, compassion, salvation, devotion and the like, yet they behave in the exact opposite fashion toward most of humanity. Unwittingly, fundamentalists commit the exact same "sin" that Jesus accused the Pharisees and Sadduccees of. They have become so caught up in dogma and rigid belief that they miss the genuine liberal spiritual freedom that Jesus advocated.

Jesus gathered around him prostitutes, vagrants, and tax collectors. He spent most of his time with the underclass, the throw aways of his society. The conservatives of his day lambasted him for such behavior.

Today's conservatives hold Jesus up as their ultimate role model, yet they lambaste the very same people Jesus sought to uplift. Today's conservatives support underfunding mental health services so that the mentally ill are left to wander the streets in homelessness. Instead of trying to heal these people, as Jesus would, they instead support building more prisons so they can lock them up far away from general society. Jesus brought these people to him; conservatives push them away.

Jesus gathered the poor and tried to uplift their spirits. Today's conservatives underfund welfare programs that might allow some of the poor to rise above their poverty. Again, the distinction is startling: Jesus brings these people to him, while conservatives push them away.

Jesus, the revolutionary, has become the icon of present day anti-revolutionary forces. It's a sad and rather pathetic irony.