God's Side

This morning at breakfast, I heard the song "God On Our Side" by Bob Dylan. It reminded me that I had written a post specifically about this song, and after a quick check, found that it was almost nine years since that post. Here is a link to it, with the full text of the words of Dylan's song, and my comments at the time.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2015/12/god-on-our-side.html

As a result of this memory, I thought it might be timely to post again about religion in our lives, especially in terms of religion as viewed through a political lens.

Religion and Government

At first blush, it seems that this could be considered an oxymoron, as per our Constitution and the First Amendment which very clearly states that 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

I have commented more than once that it seems that many people focus on the second part of that amendment when they believe that any tenet of their religion must be allowed to be exercised, even when the very exercise of that belief would deny someone else their religious or any other basic freedom. 

Such lawsuits advocating for this philosophy can be found in cases which claim that certain employers need not pay for medical care related to birth control or abortion because the religion of the owners of the company forbids them to engage in such activities, regardless of whether all their employees feel the same or not. Seems strange that corporations now take on the religious beliefs of their owners.

Or to go back in time a bit, people that claimed that their religion forbade them to hire, house, or do business with a gay person simply because being gay violated their religious perspective.

Or in a similar way, the current focus on trans rights and how we needn't treat those adults or children (or their parents) as equals under the law when one's religion looks unfavorably on such people.

When Dylan wrote God On Our Side, his focus was war, and how people on each side of such a conflict were convinced that their God was on their side, so death and destruction, while undesirable, was sanctioned as long as it was done with their God's blessing.

While my recent forays into this topic focused on lifestyle choices as noted in the previous paragraphs, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas is rife with people who defend the atrocities of war with some version of what their God wants, or who God loves most.

Even crazier, in America there is a very vocal (and influential) group that has attached to the GOP presidential candidate some type of revelation of God's plan. That resistance to his election is not only anti-American, but displays a lack of belief in God, or worse, a belief that God actively supports one political party over another. 

The fact that this candidate has what was once described as a "checkered" past in regards to his treatment of women, his business activities, his respect for the rule of law, would make his candidacy comical, except that there are those who go the full Monty and believe his imperfections prove that God's method and anointed ones can not be understood by us, that this candidate's foibles prove God's  extreme love for us that he would use such an imperfect channel to work his Plan, to save America from itself, to make it great again.

Sometimes I wonder why the Democratic party has seemingly ceded the affiliation to God (and family and values for that matter), to the GOP. As such, it seems to free some Republicans to wrap anything in the cloak of religion, even when discriminating against fellow Americans and denying more than half of the population the basic right to reproductive freedom. 

I found the following post I wrote when reviewing the topic of religion. It was attempt to convey the idea that our rights as defined by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights flew in the face of most of human history, the Magna Carta not withstanding, during which any rights that the average man possessed came from someone claiming divine rights as leader, or was just the strongest person in the clan. Women and minorities of course, had no rights as they were considered property.

It was only by way of secular laws (although perhaps loosely based on some religious tenets) enacted by a government, local, or national, that regular people could expect some type of fair treatment when wronged. And even now, there is a propensity for those with more resources to be granted a different version of justice than the rest of us.

In other words, the concept of god given rights was, at best a fairy tale, at worse, a concept used by some to remove the rights of others. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2015/04/god-given-rights.html

Another interesting post I found, written just five years ago, involved a letter I received in the mail addressed to "my fellow Christian Patriot". I actually posted twice about this letter, but am only providing a link to the second one, as it goes beyond the actual letter and refers to my mother, whom I would never represent as a Christian Patriot, yet who embodies the spirit of Christ as well as anyone I know. I am fortunate to have her in my life as an example of how a follower of Christ actually behaves, even when we disagree on things, political, social, or philosophical.  

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2019/04/more-on-christian-patriot.html

Finally, it pains me to admit that I shudder a bit when I hear people say God Bless America, whether they be politicians, pundits, family or friends. In the case of politicians, I chalk it up to a necessary phrase, something they all need to express to help their supporters feel warm and fuzzy.

Still, the concept itself, that God loves our country more than the others, or that we wish Her to do so, seems both arrogant and prideful. 

It is certainly not quite as bad as an athlete who looks to the skies after a touchdown or home run, as if God had a wager on their personal or team performance and needed to break Her recent spate of poor bets. Perhaps when an athlete says the devil made me do it, after an error or misplay in the field, I might at least smile, although I would not acknowledge that Satan also has placed some misguided bets.

Well, they are just hoping for God's blessing, you might say. OK, but wouldn't it be more effective for us to say God Bless the Earth, to wish for Her grace and benevolence on everyone, not just our particular artificially created tribe? 

I mean, if God is to have a side, shouldn't She be on the side of all her creatures, those that live in America, the Sudan, Greenland, Lichtenstein? I would think it relatively simple for the creator of all time and space, everything that has been and is to come, to be able to bless all the inhabitants of a tiny planet in one solar system of the millions in a galaxy which is itself one of millions. Let alone any parallel universes, should you be an adherent of that concept.

In the end, thinking God is on your side, personally or nationally, in itself is not harmful. I am sure my mother believes a variation of that notion. 

It is the belief in favoritism that is dangerous, because once one believes God favors them or their country over all the rest, all kinds of horrors ensue regardless of whether that favoritism is wrapped in the superiority of one's religion, race, gender or creed.

If history tells us anything, it is that all great cultures, all great nations, all great civilizations, all which believed in one way or another that they were fated to be so, or blessed more than the rest, all of them have faltered or failed. 

And that's just the ones we know about as our knowledge of the history of humanity barely scratches the surface when we consider that our family tree is millions of years old, homo sapiens at least 250,000 thousand years old, yet written history only reaches back about five thousand years. A blink of the eye, so to speak.

I will leave you with this. I do believe there is other life in the universe, has always been, always will. But I don't expect that we will ever contact such life, as I am inclined to think that the Creator allows life to prosper, in different parts of the universe, at different times, then provides said life forms with the knowledge to thrive, independently of each other, and without Her further blessing or intervention. 

Let's hope that judgement day is not based on the overall success of each of those bursts of life. If so, should our entire species be judged, throughout times past and times to come, as one, it would certainly make the concept of God's side seem pretty fruitless, if not completely inane.