Birthdays of heroes

During this last week, we have celebrated the birthdays of two great men – Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Lincoln was President of the United States during the American Civil War, the war in which Americans killed each other by the thousands.  Ostensibly the issue was states rights.  But in fact, they were fighting over the issue of slavery, and it was Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Decree freeing all the slaves in America.  From then on, the Constitution that declared that “all men are created equal” did not have a hidden parenthesis excluding people with black skin.

150 years ago Charles Darwin published his book about evolution, “The Origin of the Species.”  Evolution is a story of amazing beauty and astonishing complexity in which life moves forward in a myriad of glorious manifestations.  To those who believe in God, it is a great peon of praise and honour.

Both Lincoln and Darwin in their own ways defended and celebrated the diversity of mankind.  What both were saying is that our strength lies not in our uniformity, but in our various talents, our different abilities, our divergent insights.

When the temptation is to retreat into our bunkers and shoot anyone within sight who is slightly different, who speaks a different language, wears different clothes, or worships at a different altar, learning again that our strength and survival lies in embracing our differences might help save us once again.

In today’s fractious and globalized world in which we rub so closely together, perhaps the lessons of these two men are more needed than ever before.

An awful anniversary

In 1170, 839 years ago today, as he was beginning Vespers in the cathedral, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury,was murdered by four soldiers of the English King Henry II.  Becket and the King had been close friends for years, but when Henry appointed Becket as the head of the Church in England, he was not as pliable as Henry had expected.  In fury and exasperation, Henry cried out one day to his court “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”  

In 1890, exactly 720 years later, the Massacre at Wounded Knee took place in what is now the American west.  The last of the fighting Sious Indians had agreed to surrender to U.S. troops for transport from South Dakota to Omaha, Nebraska, but it all went horribly wrong.  An Indian who was deaf and did not understand the command given to him refused to give up his arms.  By the time the resulting mayhem subsided, more than 200 Sioux men, women, and children were dead.  25 of the 500 U.S. troops also died.

And 69 years ago, on this day in 1940, the German airforce dropped more than 10,000 incendiary bombs on London.

I find it a despairing list of anniversaries – an assurance that we as humans seem to have learned so little about how to get along with those with whom we disagree.

But perhaps there is a glimmer of hope.  Killing ones enemies leaves the evidence of bodies to confirm the atrocities.  100,000 acts of kindness, of forgiveness, of tolerance, can disappear from our history books without a trace.

But they happened too.  And perhaps their effects have been just as great as the results of the numerous murderous outrages that pepper the history of Homo sapiens.

Talking about talks

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the problem between Evangelicals and liberals (for want of a better description, though “liberal” is a poor description).  Generally speaking, it seems to me that Evangelicals believe they have found the true faith, while liberals, who may or may not be believers, are not as convinced that their personal beliefs are necessarily the absolute truth in the same way Evangelicals are. These are fundamental differences for many are both personal and global. They are differences that can  divide families, and have destroyed friendships and marriages. They are a constant source of discussions on the internet, are threatening the unity of the Anglican church worldwide, and underlie some of the worst political conflicts in the world.

And yet almost everybody runs up against this terrible problem that we can barely talk to each other with respect and kindness if we stray on to this topic of religion.  I began to understand for the first time how it is that sometimes opposing groups spend years “talking about talks,” in an attempt just to reach sufficient common ground even to begin to talk directly.

I am personally committed to never dismissing another person’s views until I can understand it well enough express their view in terms that they themselves acknowledge are an accurate and fair description of their true feelings. I do not pretend this is always easy. On the topics around science and religion, I have spent years trying to understand views that sometimes have seemed bigoted, ignorant, rigid, illogical, or uninformed. At this point I can claim to have been only partially successful.

But in the process, I have often learned to respect an opposing view even when I continue to disagree with it.  And so I am going to begin a short series of posts in which I try to look objectively at both sides of some of the most contentious issues that divide the human community in the world today.

The next post will begin the series with a look at the question of the existence of a God. 

And now for some good news

It is easy to understand why we hear so much more bad new than good news.  It’s not that there is so much more more of it than good.  It’s that mostly bad news sells newspapers, increases website traffic, and television ratings better than good news.  Then religion, along with some people’s natural pessimism, often slant the picture further, seeing more of what is selfish, stupid, short-sighted, and irrational in the human species and less of what is generous, courageous, ingenious, and innovative.

I personally think there is as much reason for hope as there is for despair in the human condition, however, if we look for it.  Often the good, the heroic, the creative and generous emerges side-by-side with what is the worst in us.

So here is a true story.  In 1557, the Catholic Queen of England known as Bloody Mary was presiding over one of the savage reigns of the century during which either the Protestants or the Catholics were furiously and self-righteously burning each other at the stake.  In a little village called Laxfield in Norwich, England, a shoemaker expressed the view that the host at Communion was not literally the body of Christ.  Unfortunately, he had the temerity to express a Protestant view during a Catholic reign.  300 people were burned at the stake for far less so it was an extremely dangerous time to be out of step with the powers then wielding the fire lighters. 

But the villagers disagreed with the authorities.  It was not just the Protestants who dissented;  so did the Catholics.  They disagreed with this kind of intolerance, and so every house in the village put out their fires, with the hope that the execution team would be unable to be able to light the fire to burn the convicted heretic.  In the end, an executioner was able to light his faggot from the smoldering embers of one house, and the shoemaker was burned alive.

But 450 years later, Laxfield still holds a Festival of Tolerance every year.   All the burning and the killing never convinced them that intolerance was closer to God than tolerance.