While awaiting a table for dinner recently, I spied a guy
with a plain white T-shirt that had a silk-screened message. So what, you might respond. The same happens in restaurants all day,
every day. This message, however, was a
bit different. I read, re-read and
tossed it around in the empty cavern of my skull most of the night. The message, boldly stated, was “Religion is
the Politics of Spirituality”. In this
most desperate of political seasons, it resonated with me. A search of several well-known computer
databases to locate the author of this simple concept came up empty. Perhaps it originated with Zeus, Socrates,
Jean Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell or any one of hundreds of philosophers. Maybe a bartender made it up. Irrespective of to whom attribution belongs
and from every direction I attack it, the conclusion was inescapable. It seems so simple; I fear I’m the only one
who didn’t know it. If that be the case,
stop reading here.
As I thought about it, though, I tried to recall the
long-ago Sunday school lessons, college classes in philosophy and religious
history (I perhaps didn’t attend as often as I might have) as well as
subsequent readings, but over decades too many brain cells have been sacrificed
on the altar of good times. I did manage
to conjure up images going back to battles between tribes of idol-worshipers
(with competing idols, of course, sounding like today’s political campaigns,
probably with negative ads) in 12,000 B.C., to the Israelites, through the
Crusades, past the Spanish Inquisition, the unimaginable horrors of the
Holocaust and the more recent carnage between Protestants and Catholics in
Northern Ireland with many stops in between.
Logically enough, I ended my memorial tour with the battle being waged
today against the U.S., Iraqi coalition countries, Afghanistan, Israel, most
recently Russia and the rest of the non-Muslim world by a relatively small, but
fanatical band of radical Islamists. In
some sick, twisted interpretation of the Koran they have created a veritable
Manifesto of War against the rest of us, collectively referred to contemptuously
as “the Infidel”. Having read the Koran
myself, I didn’t reach that interpretation any more so than I concluded that
slavery and polygamy were fine ideas after reading the Bible.
This battle, while being waged in the name of Allah and
called by many a “jihad” or “holy war”, is in its simplest form a political
skirmish, much like the ones being waged ad
nauseum on our televisions, radios, live streams and in the few newspapers
extant, though with a critical difference being the tragic loss of human life
as a result of the former. There is
nothing “holy” about this war as it has little, if anything, to do with
religion. The T-shirt doesn’t lie. When
distilled, these hostilities are simply religious politics. The difference is that in the case of the
Muslim extremists, individuals are willing (or at least brainwashed) to
intentionally sacrifice themselves as “martyrs” to further the ostensible cause
of establishing an Islamic caliphate or state. Now that
is either the ultimate political dedication or “holy” stupidity. Perhaps they are one and the same. Unfortunately, this particular “war” has
already had tragic consequences on many continents, including our own, with tens
of thousands of casualties and no end in sight.
As it has so many times in history, the politics of religion
has sidetracked the search by many for the spirituality they seek in an
increasingly complex world. For those
who are spiritual, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Gnostic, Pagan or
whatever, most believe that “god” is God, whether someone happens to call Him
God, Jehovah, Allah, Yaweh or Bill. Each
who believes also strives--some more zealously than others-- to reach his or
her own spirituality in spite of the “politics” that are calculated to keep us
from that goal if it is sought outside of an organized, recognized religion,
i.e. one that has ‘not-for-profit’ IRS status.
Not that any well-recognized and organized faith in and of itself is
necessarily a hindrance to one reaching a personal peace, but again, the
T-shirt doesn’t lie. Having now thought
about it in these terms, doesn’t it seem like the current political climate is
much the same, i.e. it’s the politics and the surrounding debate of which
particular “sect” is the true route to salvation (or vision of government) that
is the root cause of the bickering, arguing and negativity (the electoral
replacement for bloodshed)? The
religious belief system which purports to offer the quickest, guaranteed path
to Heaven or Paradise or wherever it is to which our soul ascends at death
seems to grab a majority of the attention of the flock. It is a primary point in the religious
proselytizing process calculated to retain the faithful and gain converts as
larger numbers of “believers” translates to more power—and money. Sound familiar? It’s the same path the American electorate
and its political parties travel during the “political season” and what we
currently endure: the battle for
power. Whoever offers quick, easy
solutions and most important, painlessness in the process stands to gain the
most. Our Congress is full of mostly twisted
individuals who care about two things:
Power and money. The way they
keep it is to keep the status quo. Think about it. Every election cycle we hear the cries of “Throw
all of the bastards out”, but behind the cry is the whisper of “Except for my
bastard”. Think about it. Look at the reelection percentages. Power is the intoxicant whether political or
religious. But I digress.
If politics and striving for “religious” power are
eliminated from the divine equation, the quest for spirituality would be much
simpler wouldn’t it? Instead of
religious guerillas fighting in a “holy war” to find martyrdom and killing
those who would dare to espouse a contrary dogma in some sort of morbid bid for
recognition as the single, dominant worldwide religion, this “political battle”
should be waged on a local level with clergy of all stripes assisting each
individual in the quest to reach a personal spirituality and peace, however one
completes the journey and achieves the goal.
The same is true with our own political process. When the nonsense is stripped away, it all
seems very simple. About as simple as a
plain white T-shirt.
And now you know the rest of the story.