God's House Doesn't Have a Roof

"Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person."
-- Robert Heinlein, Glory Road 

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently made waves with comments about the “false theology” of those concerned with environmental degradation. One hardly knows where to start with so patently absurd a series of claims as can be heard coming from Mr. Santorum on a regular basis, but the subject does dovetail nicely with something we have been thinking about – a lot – at Myrtle’s place for a while now, which is the relationship between being a good neighbor and being a good person.

Now, living in the buckle of the bible belt, we are routinely regaled with chapter and verse on the subject of faith versus works, and we are surrounded by folk who sincerely believe that it is “not enough” to be a good person, one must recite the magical incantations from the New Testament (and make sure it is the correct translation!) or the pearly gates will remain shut to you, you gnasher of teeth and wailer of wails.

So our musings are somewhat out of place geographically, even if we believe them to be of paramount importance ethically, spiritually, and communitarianily (if you will allow us a neologism or three, we’d be most appreciative).

In short, those whose theology answers questions like “What must I do to be saved?” (presumably from damnation for the crime of having been born human), or even the more benign “What must I do to go to Heaven?” (though how any theoretical divine realm could be any better than the dinner table set by Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance is beyond our comprehension) are already on the wrong path vis-à-vis real wisdom. Punishment and reward are not the proper sphere for a discussion of God and morality. Punishment and reward are the proper sphere of the kindergarten teacher and the local constabulary.

Any religion worthy of the name has as its basis two senses which ought to be engaged: a sense of awe, and a sense of obligation. Anything else is gafla – the great “noise” or “distraction” – a concept, by the way, which is clearly delineated in ancient Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic and Muslim texts, but which is only hinted at by Jesus in a few parenthetical asides in the Gospels, and absent altogether in the legalistic screeds of the epistolary apostles. We have always suspected Jesus spent a great deal of time talking about the subject, but his more metaphorical-minded Jewish audience was too busy being flogged and starved by colonial Rome at the time to take proper notes, so we are left only with the more literal-minded renderings of whatever it is he may actually have said. But we digress…

The original point for which we were attempting to provide elucidation is just this: no matter what God you may worship – or even if you worship no God at all – the point of theological musing ought not be “What’s in it for me?” but rather “How do I make sense of all this wonderful stuff of which life, the universe and everything is made?” and “How can I best serve those around me, so they can appreciate all this wonderful stuff, too?”

This, of course, is as abundantly rife with what Rick Santorum calls “false theology” as it can be, particularly since it does not even require the existence of God. But we retort that the God described by Mr. Santorum and his like is so small it is blasphemous. If God really were so petty as to judge so arbitrarily and cruelly as does the character described by authoritarian fundamentalism, it would be a moral imperative to rebel against Him. If God exists, then surely [S]He is more mature and emotionally secure than we are.

Otherwise, what purpose does this creature serve?

Praise of God is fine, so far as it goes, but without defining the term in a meaningful way, we find it offensive. If your God is an abusive father who abandons the people of Darfur to genocidal rampages, what good is he? If his only purpose is to allow your team to score more points than their opponents, again we ask, who cares?

If, though, your God only makes an appearance when someone, anyone, notices the pain and suffering of others (be they human or otherwise) and decides to do something about it, then we at Myrtle’s place say “Now you’re talkin’!”

It seems to us, simple backyard chicken raisers that we are, that we are in an interdependent web, and just as we require much from our surroundings for nourishment and comfort, there is every likelihood that our surroundings, in turn, need to be nourished and comforted. At least, it seems that way every time we feed the chickens, or better still as an example, when we feed the cat. Ungrateful though she may seem most of the time, she expresses great degrees of warmth and feeling when her dinner bowl is filled.

Whether gardening, volunteering at a food bank or homeless shelter, reading to a child, paying the toll for the car behind you in line, picking up litter in a state or national park, riding your bike instead of driving your car, or just smiling at a stranger, everything you do which makes life a little more pleasant for those around you is fundamentally moral. By contrast, anything we do which detracts from the lives of others, and makes their very existence a little more difficult is immoral.

God, if there is a God, must needs function on much the same plane. We submit further that any activity which tends towards the care and feeding of others is by default the only kind of prayerful or worshipful activity worth condoning, regardless of what any particular texts may or may not say about the subject. You want to know what is “holy”? It’s a lot like the judicial wisdom on pornography: “I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it.”

To that end, we find it truly shocking that a candidate for President of the United States of America would call any endeavor to clean up our national parks – let alone any attempt to prevent calamitous increases in greenhouse gas emissions, or a whole host of other environmental damages done by our rogue materialistic culture – “false theology”; there is more spiritual wisdom in an Ansel Adams photograph than in a dozen papal decrees.  And there is more piety in handing out blankets, or peanut butter sandwiches, than there would ever be in a million pompous speeches about "pure" Christianity and the dangers of letting women decide what to do with their own bodies.

But what do we know, right? We’re just a bunch of heathens. Sigh.

If Rick calls, let him know we’ll get back to him; we’re out back, praying. Or, as some might call it, gardening.

Happy farming!