Culture of Death: Part XVI

Courtesy of The Anchoress:

"An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity quickly vanished Tuesday after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death. [...] "We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to," he said. "His family was there when he was freed, but I don't know where he was taken."

As Michelle Malkin notes, this is hardly reassuring since his family - during a custody dispute - turned him in, in the first place.

Meanwhile the Death-people are at it again, chanting, "Death, Death, Death!"

On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting, "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif...

Yeah, yeah, Death to Christians, Death to Jews, Death to cartoonists, Death to gays, Death to unveiled or "dishonorable" women, Death to the West. Death to all who don't agree with us! Death, Death, Death - that's all these people know. Maybe it's because they know so little about loving life? Seems to me if you reverence life as sacred, you can't be constantly hollaring for Death to all of these Created Creatures who were loved into being by God.

Seems to me that if you love God, then you love his Creatures and you do not presume to kill them because of the words of a mere human man - be he a prophet or no. "Religious" people who can look at half the world and say, "God loves us, but not YOU, and therefore you must die," are very screwed up "religious" people who suggest that God does not love what He makes. Nonsensical and probably pretty insulting to God. [...]

I'm trying to decide if people who are this enamored of death are simply supremely insecure in everything, from the rightness of their faith to their manhood. Fascism always contains a "conform or face the consequences" note [...] It stinks of insecurity. Values, morals and beliefs built upon solid foundations are not so quickly or thoroughly threatened by opposing viewpoints that they require literal or metaphorical calls for death, threats to one's livelihood or safety, or the right to free expression and free assembly.

So, everyone just take note: If the cause you are embracing, or the "community" with which you've aligned yourself demonstrates its "strength" by using these tactics... you might be hanging around with fascists. It might be time to reassess your association.

Wise words. And, as she concedes, not just for Islamofascists to consider. How many times was I strongarmed as I sat in the pew at my former Fundamentalist Pentecostal church? How many times was I threatened with eternal damnation for not heeding the words of the PASTOR, himself only a man? How many times in my former, unchurched years was I approached by someone with an I'm-going-to-"Save"-you-or-else attitude? How many times has a conversation shut down completely only because I've mentioned that I am a practicing Christian? And how many times have I had to plea the Faith against people who "know" the Bible better than I and yet grossly misinterpret it?

My sister and her husband threw an oyster roast for St. Patrick's Day the other weekend. I complimented one of their neighbors on her new haircut and we started chatting. This was at 5pm. Her whole house is decorated with Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead; lots of retro stuff, lots of kitschy brick-a-brack that she and her husband have collected over the years in a very, very interesting home that they have written their specific signature on. Quite an effort. I know, they took me down there at a lull during the party. I felt so honored... and strange.

I don't let many people in my house. I don't know why. I don't let many people read my poetry, look at my sketches or hear my music. I've been that way since I was a child. I'm just... shy. And I'm awfully apprehensive of what people think. Better to leave the door closed and be safe than open it and invite criticism. Or so I profess with every interaction. Besides, I don't want the world beating a path to my door to accost me for advice, much less to praise me. Go to someone else who's 100% sure of their wisdom; someone else who feels secure in the spotlight. Not me. I'm just a singer. I'm just taking notes on my way to somewhere else.

But she just invited me into her home, no bones. Here's our treasure, here's our dream, here's our passion, welcome. How scary for someone like me. Even scarier since what I have to guard is precious. But what will come of that preciousness if I lock it up behind gilded ivy walls? We chatted and laughed and I complimented them on their Antique Roadshow worthies. We went back up the street to the party.

Around 10pm she started the God Talk. This always happens to me at parties. I don't know if I subconsciously steer conversations that way or what, but it's almost never not happened. I'd like to think that I have an aura of light within me that brings it out in people, but... whatever. She works with both an atheist and a group of Pharisaic Christians.

"The Baptists spend all their time pointing fingers at people and saying, 'Well, she does such-and-such, take her off the list,' I mean, if the atheist in the office really needs to be "saved", why do they treat her that way?

"My brother's gay. I don't think he's going to Hell, either. But people are just so judgmental. Who's to say who's going to Hell? Why is that any of their business?

"I've been to all the churches, Pentecostal, Baptist, Unitarian, Roman Catholic... and I just can't find what I'm looking for. I mean, nothing really grabs me, you know? But I wish I could. People die all the time and someone says, 'They have their Faith to pull them through.' Well I don't have that, and I wish I did. What would I do if my husband died? I just wish there were Christians who really loved people and accepted them for who they are."

At this, I smiled and put up my hand in a little wave. She'd gotten to know me for the last five hours, I figured it was time. Up until that point, I'd felt like a spy. I gave her a little of my perspective. How even when you know to Whom you belong, you don't always know Where you belong. I told her about the various churches we'd been to ourselves and how we were in the process of investigating one last avenue of the Christian faith.

"And people who push others away are just scared. It's easier for it to be "us" and "them" isn't it? It's way easier to push someone away than to love them. Because once you love them, you have to stretch and give of yourself and ask really hard questions about your Faith. And if you truly disagree with what someone is doing, you should love them and pray for them, never forgetting the situation you yourself were in before you obtained Faith."

I shook my head, "They're just scared... that's all. I know, I used to be one of those people." And I did. "But you have to wrestle with your Faith on your own. There are people all around who can tell you what they think and why, and there are certainly books to point you in the right direction, but ultimately, you have to come to your conclusions yourself. Or you're never going to have Faith. You'll have something, but not Faith."

She changed after that. She backed off a little. She hugged me when she left the party and said something about getting my number to hang out later on. But I could tell from the look in her eyes, she wanted to run. Fast. I'm still sad about that. But sadder still about the station of her heart. That she has nothing she feels she can believe in, nothing she feels she can trust. She's been in my prayers ever since, almost every day. Because I know the Hell it is to not have Faith. I know the Hell it is to have a counterfeit Faith. And now I am on the edges of beginning to know the stretch and pull of true Faith. They all hurt, in different ways. But the latter is the most tender and precious rend. Because I have Someone to heal it.