CERTAINTY

Christian Fundamentalists, Muslim Fundamentalists, and Orthodox Jews all have one thing in common: CERTAINTY. All three of these groups are very difficult to deal with. They have the truth and they are not about to "compromise on truth". At the present time, the Muslim Fundamentalists are the most difficult problem, because they are so violent. I actually remember Yassar Arafat stating that he was going to raise an entire generation of children to hate the rest of the world. And he did it. And we are living with the result of about two generations of those children. It is truly sinful to raise children to hate. And it may be impossible to teach those generations anything else. They are truly lost generations. But we do have to work with children and teach them to love and to accept people of different nationalities and different religious beliefs. The words tolerance and compromise used to be good words. They were good concepts. Now they are considered evil. We can not be tolerant of people who are "sinful". Tolerance is considered wrong. I find it strange to see the different definition of this word. Compromise is also considered wrong. That is why the Christian Fundamentalists refuse to compromise on anything politically. They would be unfaithful to their religion if they compromised.



They have a need for certainty, and they like absolute authority, because absolute authority usually has great certainty. The world is becoming too complicated and it is too confusing for them. There was one psychologist who said that the proof of maturity is the ability to live with ambiguity. Life has a great deal of ambiguity. That does not mean that there no values that remain stable. But we do have to be open to new ideas and not so rigid in our dogma. God is love. And all religions teach a form of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or, do not do unto others what you would not have them do to you. Treat others with respect. It is not necessary to have an Ayatollah, or a Pope, or a Jerry Fallwell/ James Dobson to tell us every move to make. We all have a conscience, or most of us do. There is probably nothing we can do about psychopaths. But most of us have an "Inner Light" as the Quakers/Society of Friends, would say. And we are capable of communing with God and determining what is right for us. We do not need to have religious laws forced on us.



Here in America, we have freedom of religion and separation of church and state. George Bush and the Christian Fundamentalists, are trying to do away with these rights, but we must fight for our religious freedom. Religious freedom does not mean prayer in school. School is for education. The church is the place for public prayer. Anyone can say silent prayers anytime, anywhere. Jesus told us not to make a scene of our prayers, but to go home and pray in private. Europe had state religions for hundreds of years, and that is why Europeans are now considered non-religious. Having religious laws drilled into us tends to turn us away from religion rather than making us more religious. I know that these groups want to save us in spite of ourselves. They want laws to see to it that we are not allowed to stray. But laws do not accomplish this. And drills do not accomplish it. Teaching peace and love is what accomplishes it. Some people may still make decisions that others do not consider acceptable: abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, living together outside of marriage, etc. But forcing specific laws on the rest of the population to save them from themselves does not really accomplish the goal. However, it is very difficult to convince the fundamentalists of that. They want the entire society to obey THEIR laws. That is simply not going to happen in Jerusalem, New York, or Mumbai. The entire society is not going to obey the laws of the Fundamentalists. It is unfortunate that we have to go to war to convince them of this fact. How can we teach and reach the Fundamentallists? Their children and grandchildren may be driven away from their rigid teachings. But that is a long wait.