I wrote this as a letter to an individual with whom I had a disagreement, in an attempt to clarify my views and make peace, but realize the message [scrubbed of personal details] is appropriate for a broader audience:
Dear Friend,
I honestly do not believe providing healthcare to women (the latest issue that evoked such a strong, hostile response from you) is controversial. I am saddened that expressing such views could prompt the impugning of my motives or even integrity.
I disagree with the Republican push to defund Planned Parenthood and this is no secret, but this is not the only area where programs helping women and the children they disproportionately care for are being systematically defunded. Certainly slashing Medicaid or WIC have nothing to do with either Planned Parenthood or the Mother of All Wedge Issues, abortion.
In fact, the defunding of Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with abortion, since no federal dollars can directly support abortion by law. Yes, dollars are fungible, but then we would have to make it illegal for private donors to give to Planned Parenthood also, and that would be going down a path I hope none of us wants to take. If you wish to overturn Roe v. Wade, the law of the land for over 3 decades, do so openly through the legislative process. Do not defund all of Planned Parenthood, because 3% of its services involve abortion. The other 97% is life-saving work (and ironically prevents far more abortions).
I do not reflexively dislike Christians in general, or Catholics in particular, as you seem to imply. I have tremendous respect for many of the intellectual and artistic creations that they helped sponsor, and for their ability to evolve and grow as an institution, embracing ideas that would have sent shivers through the spine of the first authorities in the Roman branch of Western Christianity before it rose to relative ascendancy, then broke apart into dozens of warring denominations that have since tried, however haltingly, to make their peace. At least we are not burning each other at the stake or torturing each other for worshiping in the "wrong" way as we once were, or condemning King George III as the anti-Christ because he granted Catholics in captured Quebec territories to practice their faith, but historically speaking, those events occurred yesterday.
Yes, I am concerned they could happen again, and little from what I read of the religious right makes me reassured that they all got that Enlightenment religious tolerance memo. It is quite clear that a number of lawmakers do not understand the importance of separation of church and state, or pretend not to (always a possibility when playing to the Least Common Denominator sort of TV-based politics we now enjoy).
I feel deeply, passionately, and strongly that we have a moral obligation to the least among us. If this obligation is not reflected in the policies of our society then it represents empty words, an unfulfilled promise, a banging gong.
I have not read about healthcare, I lived it and saw it. I witnessed people getting substandard treatment or losing everything they worked for because a for profit healthcare plan cut them off, "lost" their third submitted claim, or told them they ran through their lifetime cap. I have seen premiums soar and bureaucrats get heavily involved in the doctor-patient relationship decades before the Koch brothers invented the disparaging (and insulting) term "Obamacare" which is years away from full implementation and cannot possibly be blamed for the premium surges that predated its conception not just passage into law.
Government maybe inefficient - like any large organization, it is far from infallible - but in a modern, complex economy, it provides the only hope for millions of our citizens. It keeps our elderly out of abject poverty and finances their healthcare. Thanks to President Bush's push to expand the role of government in healthcare, it now pays for prescription medications also. For the least among us, there is no viable hope beyond the government for financing the pap smears and chemotherapy and surgery. If the donation basket at Sunday services could do the trick, we would not have the scandal of 59 million Americans without insurance, or 45,000 Americans under 65 dying each year for want of insurance. Health care costs would not be the cause of over half of all bankruptcies. In fact, the United States is alone in the developed world for all of these things. If private charity could manage something as complex as a modern healthcare system, then the mortality of those without insurance would not be 40% higher than the insured.
I do not believe you must believe in the divinity of Jesus to understand what he wrote and said. And that message of social justice made it quite clear where he would have stood on this issue. I would hope that whether one believed in the resurrection or transubstantiation or not, we would all help the man beset by robbers or the woman seeking healthcare or the child in need of a well-paid teacher.
Like Jefferson, I believe Jesus was a great voice of moral reason in an age, like ours, steeped in hypocrisy dressed up in the finest religious garb. The idea that only those who believe in a particular metaphysical interpretation could "get" the far more accessible moral teachings of Jesus is at best highly questionable, at worst arrogant and self-serving. There is something intellectually dishonest about this approach (particularly since all Christian denominations disagree about particular literal articles of faith), somewhat akin to stating that unless I am a Stoic, I could never understand the teachings of Zeno of Citium. I believe his message was universal, for all of us ("let him who has ears hear").
Metaphysical beliefs do not alter one's understanding of the moral message Jesus was teaching through easily understandable parables and stories (although belief in his divinity would, you would think, increase the sense of urgency about following it). He constantly chastised his followers for looking for "signs" and for ignoring the obvious good that had to be done in front of them. He equated how we treat the poor, homeless, imprisoned, and sick as how we treat him and follow his message, making quite clear that those who lived their lives in rectitude, following all the rules, but who did not care for the least among us would be in for a rude awakening when their judgment day came. Pretty harsh stuff, and at some level deeply insulting to the religious hypocrites of his time, but he was saying this for a reason, trying to shock his audience into doing something radical, something that even today is condemned as "wealth redistribution" or "socialism" or punishing the "economically successful." Jesus never said anything about a moral imperative to create jobs or grow the bottom line of a business, but said much negative about focusing on the accumulation and hoarding of wealth. Oh, and he said we should pay our taxes (that whole "yield under Caesar" thing).
His was a universal message and I deeply resent anyone telling me that they and only they have the One True Interpretation. This "There Is No God But God" exclusivism has caused so much cruelty and suffering throughout history (and still does today although thankfully less so in the post-Enlightenment West).
We are free to interpret, but not free to change or ignore the texts of the agree-upon books representing the moral teachings of Jesus. I can read, and I can count words. I can find significant omissions (such as of homosexuality, for example) and recurrent themes (such as the evils of adultery, hypocrisy, and the importance of social justice). I can compare texts and I can try to reconcile conflicts, or use those conflicts as a reminder that we have to make a choice between 2 or sometimes 3 or 4 different descriptions of the same event (who exactly came to find the tomb empty? what exactly were Jesus's last words? did Jesus's family flee at one point to Egypt or not?). Religious fundamentalists, who believe the Bible should be read with the literal concreteness of a physics textbook, are the only ones threatened by these sometimes annoying inconsistencies and contradictions. The rest of us can recognize that however divine their inspiration, these works were written, translated, and copied by men with all their foibles and faults (and impulse here and there to insert or alter a word to support or refute a local argument). To claim the Bible is inerrant and infallible as Jerry Falwell once did, is to place a blind faith in a chain of human beings we have never met to have gotten the story absolutely right.
Any work of literature has to stand or fall on its own merit. There is much that is troubling in the teachings of Jesus (his redefinition of divorce and remarriage as adultery, for example, was something few modern Christians agree with), but there was much that was about as plain as you could make it. Be compassionate. Don't just tolerate your enemies - love them! Be prepared to give everything to the least among us. Have faith. Focus at least as much on your own shortcomings as on those of your perceived enemies. Don't kill people, especially if you're not perfect yourself (none of us is). Don't meet violence with violence - turn the other cheek, even if you are in mortal danger. If you live by the sword, you will die by it. Treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. You are far more likely to be condemned by what comes out of your mouth (your words) than what you put in your mouth (dietary mitzvahs); don't allow the religious trees to make you miss the moral forest.
I wish that more people of good will spoke up and said, "Now wait a minute..." when some of the more outrageous claims are made.
We should all resist the urge to spurn the advances of those whose expression of faith is different than ours or nonexistent. There is a reason we were told not to cast stones unless we ourselves are perfect. Interpreting words and phrases such as "social justice" with deeper, more sinister meanings helps advance no cause or win any converts. We are all interconnected and I think we have a moral duty to look out for each other and be good stewards of our planet. I understand we may differ over means, but rarely over ends. Very little of what a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or humanist believes differs in the things that really matter.
We all love and nurture our children. We all try our best to do what we believe is right and to live up to our highest ideals. We all recognize (hopefully eventually) when we stumble. Whatever labels we give ourselves, we are all members of the same species and our survival depends, as it always has, on our ability to put aside our differences, explore our reality fearlessly, then adapt, grow, and cooperate.
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