From Humanity’s Team to you…
A few years ago a writer named Sally Quinn wrote a piece for the Style section of the Washington Post titled “The G-Word and the new A-List.” In the story, Ms. Quinn noted that the word “God” has been rendered taboo in the most polite Washington society, not to be used around punch bowl or buffet, never to be brought up in party conversations or patio patter.
I agreed with that observation then, and I bring it up now because I believe that we would all benefit enormously if we could find a way to revitalize the experience of God in our lives. I observe that what Sally Quinn reported in her article extends far beyond the nation’s capitol, and so, it may be instructive to look for the reason that God has become taboo. Or, more tellingly, the reason behind the reason.
Many human beings say that they don’t talk about God and their personal religious beliefs in most social settings because it has been proclaimed impolite to do so. But why is it impolite? Presumably, because it is a subject on which many people may disagree, and placing sure and certain disagreement into a social setting is considered to be a faux pas. But why do people disagree so predictably, and with so much passion, about God? That is the key question. When we find the answer to that question, we will have found the answer to a great many others.
I believe that the reason we can’t find common ground or, to be sure, a place of even general agreement, around the subject of God and religion is that religion teaches us not to. This is the point made with startling clarity in The New Revelations: A Conversation with God.
There is one thing that most religions and their practitioners cannot say—and yet, if they said it, it would do more than make it acceptable to bring up God in social settings, it would heal the world. That single, unutterable sentence is:
Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.
Most religions, of course, teach exactly the opposite. Most religions teach, implicitly or explicitly, that theirs is the One True Path to God. And while some religions encourage tolerance of other beliefs, that is decidedly not true of them all. Indeed, religious intolerance has been at the root of conflict and wars for centuries—and still is.
Our preoccupation with being “better” spreads throughout our culture, injecting itself into our daily lives in some of the most insidious—and seemingly innocent—ways. We put our children in school or sports uniforms, and soon they are taunting those in different uniforms with, “we’re better than you.” If we are not careful (it happens now in all too many cases), our childhood teams and loyalties grow into adult arrogances. Our neighborhood is better than yours. Our country is better than yours. Our God, by God, is better than yours.
All of this is part of our cultural history of competition, which arises out of our cultural story of separation. A "cultural story" is a story we tell ourselves about how life is. It is based on fiction and has nothing to do with reality, yet it persists, because it is told over and over again—and acted out—by the members of our species who have an interest in perpetuating it. Others follow the model.
Our biggest cultural story, the one we have held onto the longest and that has spread the farthest, is The Story of Separation. In this story, we imagine ourselves to be separate from God, and therefore separate from each other. As with most cultural myths, this story has nothing to do with reality. Yet it persists, and has informed our individual and collective ideas and actions for millennia.
How has our Story of Separation birthed the idea of "competition?" Simple. If we are separate from each other, then we are each on our own, and must compete with each other for the limited resources which we need to survive. That is how the "story" goes. It is not the truth, but it is a long-told story, and we believe it. And so, it might as well be the "truth," since what we believe will be true enough for us.
Out of our cultural sub-plot of competition comes the idea of "better," for if we are competing with each other, we must have a reason for ruthlessly pursuing victory and for doing whatever it takes to come out on top. This reason, we tell ourselves, is that we are Better than our opponents. We deserve to win. They deserve to lose.
This judgment about our relative goodness, or “betterness,” allows us to justify our actions. Any actions, really, that we feel we have to take in order to “win.” And there’s the rub. For it is what we DO when we imagine ourselves to be "better" that sets the stage for the human tragedy.
In the name of our "betterness" we humans not only knock down and punch in the face other hockey players, we not only use “unnecessary roughness” on our football fields—some of us “ethnically cleanse” our nations. Some of us claim prerogatives which are not ours. Some of us dominate and rule over others who we imagine to be "beneath us," condemning them to lives of quiet desperation. And, in our worst-case scenarios, some of us kill others of us.
The beginning of the end of all this will be our talking about it. Which is why Ms. Quinn’s quite accurate observation that this is exactly what we are not talking about when we socially congregate is so important for us to note. We all need now to do whatever we can to reverse this trend; to make conversations about God not only socially acceptable, but socially imperative. This is part of the agenda of Humanity’s Team. To learn more about how you can play a role in all this, please go to
www.humanitysteam.com
Joanne Gabriel
for Humanity's Team
From Humanity's Team
- Thread starter Hevene
- Start date
Don't let others represent you, represent yourself. No matter what, you are still part of the humanity. The question is whether you are part of the group that makes the world a better place? Or are you still running away from reponsibilities that created today's world?