Interpreting "God's Will"

For any of you who are familiar with the newspaper called The Onion (www.theonion.com), you will know their tongue-in-cheek approach to news and their satirical commentary on the culture of the day. Following the attacks on the World Trade Center I went to the online version of the paper to see just how they intended to handle something such as this — something that seems to demand only a serious interpretation.

Interestingly, among their articles, they had one entitled, "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule." The article was a pseudo-parody, reporting God’s appearance to explain to the world that he is opposed to us killing each other. The basic gist of the article was God clarifying His 5^th Commandment to Moses: Thou shalt not kill. "I guess I figured I’d left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four- word sentence with one-syllable words.... How much more clear can I get?" God was reported as saying.

While I found the article particularly humorous, given my own Catholic upbringing (like the Holy Trinity being described as "Big daddy, JC, and the spook"), I also found it thought provoking from another angle. I’ve had numerous conversations with my mother regarding religion. After being raised Catholic, I moved away from the Church many years ago. She finds this slightly distressing, and thinks that I have a distorted view of religion. Personally, I think I have a fairly well developed view of religion, having studied theology & philosophy for years, as well as having traveled widely throughout the world. I printed the article for my mother, expecting to be chastised for being so blasphemous. She found it hilarious and took it to show the priest at their local church who also found it pretty funny. Wow.

In the ensuing discussions, she and I discussed many aspects of religion, both Judeo-Christian ones, and the non-theistic (Buddhism) and pan-theistic (Hinduism) religions of the east. One thing that came up repeatedly, across any religion we touched upon, was the guiding rule to treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated. The Bible states this sentiment as "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," and "love your neighbor as yourself." Other religions have equivalent statements saying the exact same thing.

As most of us are aware, one of the greatest obstacles to LGBT persons being treated equally are the primarily fundamentalist forms of most religions. Fundamentalist Christians, such as the Baptists and the likes of Fred Phelps (www.godhatesfags.com) and other hard-line Christian churches, vehemently oppose LGBT persons mere existence. In many fundamentalist Islamic countries, the punishment for being LGBT is frequently long prison terms, or in some areas, death. Fundamentalist Judaistic religions are just as opposed as other fundamentalist forms, yet they remain less vocal about their opposition.

In discussing the Onion article it became exceedingly clear to me that those who claim to perpetuate "true" religious doctrine are quite frequently those who do the most to pervert religious doctrine to conform to their own belief system — then reissue their doctrinal beliefs as though that is what their religion represents.

It is my belief that regardless of where you take your religious doctrine from, the overriding rules are those laid out in the simplest of terms. Don’t kill. Be kind to your fellow man (or woman, or person). Where the fundamentalists attempt to interpret religious doctrine in the most strictest of terms, to prescribe a narrow and repressive philosophy of hate supported by a spiteful God and call it love, they do not represent the spirit or goal of religion.