Consistency

"Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her."

But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Isn't that beautiful? One of my all-time favorite passages. Ruth = da bomb. Imagine being so loyal to someone that you would stay with them until death, living where they live, dying where they die, believing what they believe... oh wait. Do we admire that? Do we think God admires that? What if you met someone who said "I'm devoted to this person. I follow their religion for that reason alone, not because of (and if necessary, contrary to) any intellectual or spiritual conviction." Say you have a friend who's a Muslim or whatever. You're praying for her that God would show here the error of her ways. You've got all your scientific proof that your religion is better than hers. You've got a strategy to become her friend and be nice to her so she'll be interested in the beliefs you're selling. At the right time you broach the subject of faith and she says "It doesn't matter what you say. I am loyal to my mother in law/husband/family and I will believe what they believe." Would that warm your heart?

I often feel like Christians apply a double-standard when evaluating people's actions. Never mind Old Testament genocides, barbaric laws, racism and hatred, there are plenty of examples in our day-to-day life. If you admire Ruth you must also admire anyone who adopts or sticks with the religion of their loved ones out of loyalty. Long ago (years before I became a heretic) I became convinced that if I was going to ask non-Christians to subject their current beliefs to scrutiny, I must be willing to do the same to mine. I wasn't worried, of course, because I knew that my own beliefs were true and thus impossible to prove wrong. But I thought then (and still do) that I can't ask someone of another worldview to think critically about their beliefs if I was unwilling to do the same. (If you disagree, please explain to me why.) If you admire a Christian for refusing to question their faith, you must also admire a non-Christian who does the same. If the non-Christian ought to think honestly and critically, so ought the Christian. If I'm going to ask a Mormon to consider the possibility of his book being fallible, I must do the same for mine.

Just in case you agree with me so far, let me get a little radical. If I admire a person with whom I agree for acting on her convictions, I cannot also condemn someone who acts of very different convictions. If I admire a Christian martyr for acting on her faith I cannot condemn a suicide bomber for acting on his. To be consistent, you cannot praise some who boldly stand up for their convictions in spite of intense societal opposition if you demonize others (say, Fred Phelps). I'm not sure who my readers are, but this cuts both ways. Do you love or hate James Dobson? George Bush? Osama Bin Laden? Mother Theresa? Mao? The Pope? Unless you can show me otherwise, I think all are people who follow(ed) their convictions. Either you must accept them all as good people on that grounds, or you must find something other than personal convictions on which to base your judgments of such people. And if you choose the latter, you must explain why a good God (if such a being exists) would allow some to be convicted of things for which they will later be condemned.

The easy way out is to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is acting against their convictions, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. I used to believe this, until my convictions started to lead me away from the beliefs of my friends. I have a hard time believing that every conservative Christians I know is acting against their convictions. Some of them maybe, but not all. Once you know the people on the other side (so to speak) it's a lot harder to dismiss them as depraved.

(Btw: October's up on my Journal.)