And Yet You Start to Reply- Heavy Words Are So Lightly Thrown

We seldom think about the religious claims we make much further than the claim itself. Maybe it's because sometimes they are nothing more than calculated kowtowing claptrap... what else... craziness... caca... I guess the first worked well enough. Sometimes it's just cynical code for, "Of course you can trust me; listen to my God-talk." Politicians are especially good at this. It makes a certain type of sense that in the church-going, God Bless America-ing, Pray for the Troops-ing, 10 Commandments Monument Building climate of Congress only one representative, Pete Stark, honestly says he is an atheist. It's a sad type of sense, but a type of sense nonetheless. Maybe we're all playing the same game- we're just saying what we think we're supposed to say and then doing whatever else (after all, works are dead- right?). Maybe most Americans want their politicians to at least pretend they're playing the same game as everyone else.

That may be too cynical. It is too cynical- maybe politicians aren't the best population to sample. Maybe it's a matter of our religious claims being sincere but shallow- the equivalent of a birthday greeting to a seldom seen uncle.
"To a Great God On This Special Day: Your Ways Are Just Purrr-fect"

It seems earnestly shallow.

The Qweenbeen delivered a wedding cake this weekend. Part of the reception was outside and the wind was having a go at the decorations. Eventually the wind died down- as it does- and someone said, "God loves His children." (I don't know if she capitalized the pronoun in her speech, but I am assuming she would have). I suppose this could have been in response to anything- a warm spring, the cake, 600 dead Iraqi civilians last week. Who knows for sure (other than the lady that said it)? I think she meant it in regards to the wind dying down. That's how she/we knew God loves His children.

I doubt that if the tables and umbrellas had blown away she would say, "God does not love His children." Well, I would hope she would not come to that conclusion because of the wind. But saying, "God loves His children," in response to the wind stopping suggests an awful lot I don't think she/we would mean to suggest.

I think what she really meant was, "I am glad the wind died down- it's easy to feel grateful and loved when things go the way I like." I am probably making more of her comment than she would have. Which is still problematic if we're supposedly talking about God- if she didn't mean all that much by it, isn't it vainly invoking God? As far as commandments go, mightn't "God loves His children" in this case be somehow worse than a sincere "God damn such and such" if some such and such is really damn-worthy? And as far as being a faithful response, mightn't the latter be more than the former?

But we're not always cynically motivated or all that shallow. Maybe we just say things we don't understand or fully appreciate. Maybe we really mean what we say only we don't understand what we mean. We really think we can say "even though all fall away because of You, I will never fall away," or, "it is good for us to be here, let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah," or even, "You are the Christ, Son of the living God." But when it comes down to it, we just don't know what it means to say something like that.

And then to make things worse we pretend we can safely build theocratic systems on our flimsy foundations- or no, what's worse is we do build theocratic systems on our flimsy foundations.

I'm temperamentally and theologically fond of the Quaker traditions of silence, and waiting, and being creed wary, and living in a way that corresponds to what we realize we can't say about God. I'm troubled by the contemporary Evangelical tendency to try to give life to statements of faith, and trying to find just the right name or acronym for some curriculum or other, and letting words rather than actions serve as metaphors of faith.

Still I'd Leap in Front of a Flying Bullet For You
Bump It- Erykah Badu
Never- Cat Stevens
I Don't KNow What To Do With My Life- Buzzcocks
Dig It- The Beatles
Koka Cola- The Clash
Bob's Uvula Who?- Green Day
Something Against You- The Pixies
Freddie Freeloader- Miles Davis
Isobel- Bjork
Guerilla Radio- Rage Against the Machine