Vos vestros servate, meos mihi linquite mores (Latin)
You cling to your own
ways and leave mine to me.
--Petrarch, 14th
century poet and humanist
Religion is a funny thing.
By funny I don’t just mean, “A priest, a rabbi and a
minister walk into a bar…” Yes, faith can
be funny. But religious faith can be
funny too: as in odd, strange,
difficult to explain or understand, especially when the faith you profess is
different from the faith your neighbor holds on to, or visa versa. Times when faiths clash in the world, with
the world. It’s the old “my God is
better than your God” argument. Just read
the news. Jews against Muslims. Muslims against Christians. Christians versus the Muslims. Buddhists rejecting Hindus. Atheists mocking believers. Yada, yada, yada…
That is funny,
because you’d think God would not take sides amongst God’s people, right? That instead God ultimately wants all folks
of faith, all people, regardless of faith or no faith, to live in peace. You’d
think at its best, religious faith would respect other faith paths and
traditions, remember that as religion moves through this amazingly pluralistic world,
from the sacred to the secular, religion should do so with humility and not so
much hubris. As Elvis Costello sang,
“What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?”
After all, this is God we are talking about. GOD: as in the
creator of all things, eternal, always was, always will be, beyond any human
comprehension. Who can know the very mind or will of God? In my little human
mind and opinion, no one. So as a person of deep faith, I get really nervous
when my fellow believers insist that everybody else is supposed to believe exactly
what they believe, live just like they live. I get annoyed when they then take what are private beliefs
into the public sphere and demand that the rest of society get on board.
That’s not funny.
Just ask same sex couples seeking to be legally and lawfully
married in Rowan County, Kentucky these days. Newsflash: as of June,
same sex marriage is a constitutionally protected right in all fifty states. I
don’t think there was an asterisk in the Supreme Court’s ruling exempting this one
place. But apparently the clerk of that
county, Kim Davis, thinks the law doesn’t apply to her. Davis has refused to issue marriage licenses
to any couples, gay or straight. She cites her religious faith and her struggle
for religious freedom as the reasons for her defiance.
Davis
certainly has a constitutionally protected right to express her beliefs freely
and fully. To worship as she wishes. To bring her God inspired ideals into the
world and then try her best to get others to believe what she does. Organize. Preach. Vote. But here’s the problem, the not
so funny thing. Davis apparently also believes
she has a legal right to insist that her private beliefs trump her public
responsibility as a government employee, a duly sworn representative of the Kentucky state government, bound by all of the laws of the United States of America.
As a fellow Christian I wish she’d take a real stand and resign
her position immediately. Be true to her conscience and step down. Take her
place in a long line of faith inspired folks who have the courage to accept the
full cost of discipleship. Then I’d
really respect her stand, if not her specific beliefs.
This is what I believe, as a Christian and person of faith.
All my life, as a citizen and pastor, I’ve enjoyed the benefits of living in a
nation which reveres the separation of church and state, the Jeffersonian ideal
that government has no business promoting, or preventing, religious practice. As
a Christian, Uncle Sam can’t tell me what to believe or what not to believe. My
responsibility is to live side by side in respect, with folks of my faith,
other faiths, and no faith. Religious freedom does not give me or Davis or any
other person of faith the legal right to discriminate against a fellow citizen,
or deny their legal rights.
So here’s a serious suggestion to my fellow believers. Be as
convicted and sure of your beliefs as you desire, but then live and let live. Live and let live. The United States
is an incredibly and increasingly diverse nation, a secular democracy, not a
faith based theocracy. Therefore if a person’s religious practice (or lack thereof)
does not impinge on the rights of others to practice religion, or directly hurt
others, I say live and let live. When we who are religious carry our beliefs
into the public sphere, we must abide by the same laws which apply to all the people. Especially for those of us who are people of faith:
maybe we need to worry more about how well we
are doing with our God and less about how our neighbors live their lives. As
Jesus once said, we need to watch out more for the log in our own eye than the
speck of sawdust in the eye of a fellow citizen.
A Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, an Atheist and an Agnostic
walk into a bar and guess what? They all
get along. They respect each other. They
live and let live.
Wouldn’t that be funny?
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