The Faith of a Mustard Seed

     One of the very first posts I wrote for The Cynical Sarcastic was entitled "Faith and Religion."  For a very long while it remained the most viewed post on the blog and still ranks right up there in the top five most viewed.  For those of you who read that post last fall, I hope you won't see this as a rehashing of past ideas.  I try very hard not to recycle content.  As a side note I am also going to keep this post fairly civil in tone.  Believe it or not I'm not intending to tread on anyone with what I have to say on this matter.  Nothing I'm saying here today is intended to put anyone on the defensive, although if it makes you feel that way I would delicately offer that maybe you need a moment of introspection to figure out why.

     I've made several comments in the past in reference to tolerance for a wide range of religious views.  I personally happen to believe that a person with faith in anything is preferable to and a lot less unpredictable than someone who believes in nothing.  I also find it necessary to surround myself with a wide range of people whose beliefs are not my own.  I've found over the years that coming to understand their views in matters of faith and religion allow me come to a deeper understanding of my own.  Not only have I found value in that sharing of, for lack of a better term, 'religous culture' on an intellectual front but I have in all honesty found it necessary to adjust my own beliefs in some areas as well.

     The next comment is a statement of fact and, although some will find it inflammatory, it is not meant to be so.  Although I consider myself Christian in basic faith, I do not agree with nor hold true to the entire tenancy of Christian dogma.  I find portions of it to be unnecessary and in some cases no longer applicable.  There are those who feel that to label yourself as a member of any faith you must abide by all tenets of said faith and believe wholeheartedly in the entirity thereof.  Our views diverge on this point and all I ask is that you remember that your opinion is your right as is mine.  If I had to put an even moderately accurate label on my personal beliefs I would have to say that I am a Christian with inclusions of Taoist and Pagan principles.  Once you're able to work out that particular version of the faith in your head, get back with me.  It's an inclusion of my personal beliefs and even I get conflicted on occasion, truth be told.  Hey, you try blending the Crucifixion, meditation, and a Blood Eagle into the same ceremony and let me know how it works for you.

     I've front-loaded you with all of this information because I have a complaint that was derived from the Sunday morning service today at my local church.  I'm going to be careful with my phrasing here because I in no way wish to detract from anyone's opinion or belie my own opinion of the pastor in question.  My complaint is this: why is it that religious leaders feel the need to decry other faiths as false and/or cast dispersions on the tenets that said faiths are built upon from the pulpit? 

     Although it will most likely shock a large number of you, I have actually read the Bible cover to cover a number of times in my life.  Even the parts with the red words.  I'm familiar with everything from Adam and Steve (just kidding) to the 'begats' through the lesser and greater kings of Israel to the New Testament and the crucifixion and the new covenant (both with and without the Mel Gibson filter) to the really fun parts of Revelation that Tim Lehay didn't get wrong.  I know that one of the commandments was to have no other gods before God.  I get that.  I understand that this point is where a lot of church leaders rest their decision to decry other faiths.

     Fully aware that I'm treading in even deeper water by the nanosecond, allow me a little indulgence here and play devil's advocate with me for some blasphemy points.  If you look back in history and examine the horrific splintering of faith going on in the camps of the flock under Moses' command at the time of the Commandments, wouldn't it make sense that some form of unification would logically be called for?  If you're trying to keep a people together, wouldn't one religion make the whole process a lot more manageable from a leadership standpoint, particularly on an extended mass desert walkabout?  Allow me to really insult the more devout out there with one simple thought:  consider the Ten Commandments not as a religious mandate but as a personnel manual.  Interesting thought, isn't it?

     This gets into the area where my logical brain and the notion of illogical faith clash, to be frankly honest.  Pragmatically speaking there is a clear logical need for religion in the control of society dating back to prehistory.  If the fear of punishment or death can't keep the good people toeing the line, the fear of eternal damnation usually does the trick.  Ask the Roman Catholic Church prior to the Protestant Reformation and its whole herd of Pardoners.  If the church is too limiting or clashes too harshly with the wants and needs of the powerful, to heck with them, let's do it our own way.  Thank you Henry VIII, The Anglican Church, and Anne Bolyn's significantly-shorter-by-a-head corpse.  Oh look, women are beginning to think for themselves and that might become a difficulty for the good ol' men folk.  Enter the Malleus Maleficarum / Hexenhammer / Witches Hammer and the good people of the Spanish Inquisition to show you the best ways to implement it with abandon.  My point is simply that faith, even the Christian faith, has molded around the times it existed in so that it was relevant to the people and could continue to control them in that relevancy.  If it didn't, would Constantine's Edict of Milan in 313 AD, which granted religious tolerance to Christians, let alone his deathbed conversion to the faith to unify the Empire as a Christian nation, have been even remotely necessary?  Can anyone seriously tell me with a straight face that Constantine found out he was dying and thought "you know the orgies to Minerva are getting boring in my advancing illness.  Let's see what this Christ dude everyone is impaling each other over is talking about."  Seriously?

     The Christian church adapts itself to times, its a fact.  Imagine if you will St. Paul, upon whom the orthodox church was "built," reading his own writings on an i-Pad.  Well, at least you can get an app for Aramaic.  I guess that's something anyway. So why then does the church seem to lash out repeatedly through history at other faiths?  No, I'm not referring to times when politics and religion took a less than holy tumble through the sheets and bastardized a Crusade or twenty-three.  What I'm referring to are the times the church has gone after another faith simply because it can.  My favorite is the imposition of the Christian faith on the peoples of Scandanavia.  Why does this supposed horrorific slaughter of missionaries over nearly one-hundred years rank as my favorite one of these travesties?  It's simple, actually.  The pagan faiths (yes there were several in play at the time) that dominated that area of land all shared similar views regarding the faith of others.  Unless you were prepared to kill a man over the dispute it was considered horrifically uncivilized (yes, even for the 'Vikings') to insult another's God.  The fact that the Christian's were so violently expelled over and over again should tell you that they may not have been going about it the right way to begin with.  Without further devolving this into a history lesson, it seems to me that the faiths the church tends to pick on are the one's it couldn't find a way to slaughter or cajole out of existence.

     What does that mean for those of us in the modern world who don't hold wholly Christian faiths?  It means we get to sit through yet another sermon where the pastor slanders part of our beliefs because he finds them silly.  Do I still respect the man?  Yes, even though the whole things does make me want to hit him in the head with a copy of The Davinci Code.  Do I wish he, as a slightly less than elegant but still highly poetic pagan friend of mine posted on Facebook yesterday morning, would open a book and read something before making an ass of himself?  Yes, even if I was the only one in the congregation to ever notice the difference.

     When I think back over some of those aforementioned red words in the Bible, I'm reminded of a comment that Jesus made regarding having the faith of a mustard seed and being able to move mountains while he was exorcising a demon from a young boy (Matthew 17:20 for those playing along at home).  Not to be trite and with all contextual implications ignored, I just have one little nagging question: did he actually specify which faith?