Usually I enjoy Ron Erskine’s columns; sometimes I even benefit
from them. Last week, for example, just after reading his
delightful exposition on birds and wildflowers, I ambled out to the
back yard, intending to do a little weeding.
Usually I enjoy Ron Erskine’s columns; sometimes I even benefit from them. Last week, for example, just after reading his delightful exposition on birds and wildflowers, I ambled out to the back yard, intending to do a little weeding.
My intended target was a tangle of morning glory vines that has clambered into one of our walnut trees. But as I squinted up at the mass, a small, sleek grey bird alighted near the tangle, then hopped in.
A moment later, another similar bird joined him.
“Anne,” I called into the house, “I think a pair of bushtits is building a nest in our walnut.”
Anne grabbed her binoculars and Sibley’s, and within moments, confirmed my sighting and identification. She then went on the Internet and found pictures of the nest: a grey sack, about seven inches high and four wide, with an entry hole near the top, exactly what we can glimpse, half concealed in morning glory leaves.
So, thanks to Mr. Erskine’s timely column, Anne has spent many hours reading “War and Peace” beneath the walnut. She reports the bushtits to be lining their nest with feathery blossom fronds from another of our trees. And I will not have to weed out those morning glories for at least three months, till after the fledglings have flown.
On the other hand, Mr. Erskine‚s column about True Believers has been weighing on my mind since Oct. 1, 2003. Mr. Erskine says we need to beware of True Believers, whom he defines thus: “If anyone claims to have THE answer, turn around and run as fast as you can, you are talking to a lunatic.”
He goes on to state as an invariable progression: “When a charismatic zealot, a spellbinder, presents one path as the Ultimate Truth, then non-believers become heretics. Next comes intolerance, then hate, and finally violence.”
Mr. Erskine errs in equating a strong faith in THE answer with hatred and violence. I offer two counterexamples.
The first example is a pair of brothers, of non-extreme religious views.
These men were Muslims, but did not take the word of the Prophet seriously. They drank alcohol. They did not worship with the extremists in their society. Though uninspired by religious fervor, they did torture and rape and murder, both as political acts and as hobbies: Uday and Qusay Hussein.
My other example is a woman, a True Believer to the core. This woman seriously believed that she was a sinner, and that her Lord and God, Jesus Christ, had died for her sins and risen again. Read her biography; it is very interesting: Mother Teresa.
Now, I am not saying that all True Believers (or Christians, or women) are saints, nor that all relativists (or Muslims, or men) are mass murderers. I am saying that some people who think they have THE answer are not to be feared or loathed or run from. No more religious bigotry, please, Mr. Erskine.
On a similar topic, Mr. Ted Brett writes a long list of Levitical Law, and chastises Christians for picking and choosing. Actually, an Orthodox Jew will observe all those prohibitions. True Believing Christians will tell you that the dietary proscriptions were explicitly lifted in Acts chapter 10. Jesus Himself was always offending the Pharisees by healing on the Sabbath. The prohibition against homosexuality, however, was reaffirmed explicitly in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6.
Of course, the prince of religious bigotry on the opinion page of The Dispatch is Dennis Taylor. Mr. Taylor repeats ad nauseam the lie that the religious right wants to impose a theocracy in this country.
Not so. First, Christians have a long history of suffering persecution under government establishments of religion: the Roman Empire, the Inquisition burning heretics, Puritans having to flee England, Hitler throwing pastors who disagreed with his Final Solution into concentration camps, right down to modern Sudan and China.
Secondly, Christians know that a faith compelled is not faith. A person has to choose to believe in Jesus; faith cannot be forced on him. There would be no point whatsoever in mandating a state religion, because the lip-service thereby acquired would undermine True Belief. There is no such thing as true conversion by the sword.
