RHETORIC

Not supposed to talk about politics or religion.

Sorry.

In Americans: Undecided About God? a NY Times Op-ed, Eric Weiner explores the world of the ‘Nones’: the undecided of the religious world who “drift spiritually and dabble in everything from Sufism to Kabbalah to, yes, Catholicism and Judaism.”

Nones are on the rise, and, according to David Campbell and Robert Putnam, of the University of Notre Dame and the Harvard Kennedy School, politics is to blame. Weiner explains: “Their idea is that we’ve mixed politics and religion so completely that many simply opt out of both; apparently they are reluctant to claim a religious affiliation because they don’t want the political one that comes along with it.”

“We are more religiously polarized than ever. In my secular, urban and urbane world, God is rarely spoken of, except in mocking, derisive tones," Weiner continues.  "It is acceptable to cite the latest academic study on, say, happiness or, even better, whip out a brain scan, but God? He is for suckers, and Republicans.”

God is for suckers, and Republicans? 

What has happened to God?

It's God's season, but it reads more like Open Season on God.

He is constantly under attack. Mocked. Derided. Used to bully and incite hatred. Used to get ratings or a quick rise in the polls.

I can't help but feel sorry for God.  Why would God ever want to be God?

Isn't He exhausted by all the multi-tasking He must do?

If He's helping Tim Tebow and the Broncos win football games, is He noticing that hope, tolerance and respect have been permanently benched on the sidelines?

If He's at the table with selected members of His church, is He also plotting to build a flock with repression rather than progress?

If He's telling our leaders and pundits what to do and how to act, is He also listening to their disingenuous, critical and cynical discourse- discourse that has brought a nation to its knees as destructively as any banker’s decisions?

If God can incite so much trouble, can He incite a change of heart?

Or, at the very least, a change of discourse?

Our Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell world has morphed to a Zero Tolerance world.

Selective interpretation of message.  Zero tolerance for each other.

We need a Ph.D. to defend ourselves and our beliefs from the experts of God’s mind who regularly appear on our doorsteps. Our laptops. Our radios.

We need Noise Cancelling Headphones to silence the rhetoric of distrust, blame, partisanship, and silliness that has replaced leadership.

Adults argue, bully, bet, demand, ignore. Cameras and cell phones broadcast every word and action to a nation that has become more high school cafeteria, than classroom or science lab.

In this holy season, believers look forward to the birth of the Child of God. But we forget to look back to the lessons we learned about God when we were children.

Love Him.  Love our neighbors as ourselves.

Simple words - in life or religion - that translate to action. Words that lead to faith in the mind and heart.  Words that lead to action with the hands and feet.

Tomorrow morning, the world will learn whether or not physicists have discovered the ‘God’ particle.  We will be told if Scientific thought and experiment has revealed the secrets of the universe, once and for all.

Outside the laboratory, we will continue to question and ridicule people of Faith. We will continue to question and ridicule people who have no faith.

Rhetoric- that has nothing to do with God- translated to the action of zero tolerance.

I expect that God will get over it.

I wonder if humanity will. 


QUING Hereby Decrees:  Rhetoric counts. Childlike trumps childish.