The Program

Midnight again, and posting about the Lord. Good times.

I haven’t been to church in quite awhile, and it’s bugging me, so I’m going this Sunday come…well, I’m just going. But it occurred to me last week that I went to something very churchlike last Saturday. I have several friends who are in AA, and I went to a speaker meeting with one of them last week. A speaker meeting is slightly different from the usual format, in which a lot of reading and discussion take up most of the meeting, and someone speaks for a short time. In a speaker meeting, obviously, someone speaks a lot and there isn’t as much (or any) discussion.

Anyway, if you know anything about AA, you know that a spiritual component is very important to the program. You don’t have to believe in God, but you do have to believe in something that’s bigger than you – many people think of the collective energy of the meeting they go to as their higher power. But AA is very much like church for reasons that have nothing to do with the spiritual aspect.

There’s a common purpose that everyone shares (to stop drinking). There’s a shared set of principles that every member believes in (the Twelve Steps). There’s a text that everyone refers to (the Big Book). There’s definitely a community of faith that makes it pretty easy for most people to talk to each other, whether they know each other or not, and whether or not they’re at the same place in the program.

What I liked about this near-church experience was that I think it had something that a lot of churches aspire to but don’t have. One of the things I’ve heard mentioned at more than one meeting (I had a partner for many years who was in the program) is that weakness, not strength, is what binds the members of the program together. They come together because there’s something they can’t do unless they have a lot of help. That seems to create a bond that allows for humility, kindness, dedication, effort – so many complex and positive things that come out of the shared principles. On the other hand, sometimes when I’m in church I feel that people come together because they’re many different things – strong, angry, frightened, judgmental, needy. But unlike AA, because there isn’t that admission of common weakness, it’s easy for people to hide the weaknesses they carry with them.

Not that I’m accusing churches everywhere of being filled with hypocrisy. Don’t get me wrong. I just have felt that bond more strongly when I’ve gone to AA meetings with friends, although maybe I was romanticizing the whole business. Anytime you go to a place where you think people really get to belong, it’s attractive. At any rate, it’s good to know that it isn’t necessary to go to church to feel like there’s a community of faith out there.

Then again, without being an alcoholic, I seem to be missing a fairly important qualification for membership.

Good and evil and the midnight hour

Oh, people, I’m having some big thoughts right now. (A friend of mine talks to her 3-year-old daughter like this; she asks her, “Are you having big feelings about this?” I love it.) The thoughts are all Glenn Greenwald’s fault. You probably haven’t heard of him, but he’s a former lawyer who blogs for Salon.com and also writes for The American Conservative.

Greenwald wrote a book that just came out, called A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. I mentioned it before, and yes, it has replaced whatever other book I was talking about recently. On occasion, I demonstrate a lack of attention span that a six-year-old would find embarrassing. Whatever. Anyhoo, this book is disturbing on many levels but since religion is my focus these days, it’s principally disturbing on that level.

Why? Because it’s causing me to question a central precept of an awful lot of religion, not that I haven’t before. The book is about the presidency of George W. Bush (which you no doubt figured out) and specifically how his tendency to view the world and his role in it as a fight between good and evil. Greenwald says that the mistakes and disasters of Bush’s presidency have been caused by his tendency to make every decision from a good vs. evil perspective and fail to see any of the complexities – or even the facts – that are essential to understanding the situation and making a good decision.

Before we get off into bad territory, I don’t care whether anyone agrees that Bush has made terrible mistakes or whether you think he’s the greatest president ever. I happen to agree that some pretty disastrous thing have happened on his watch, but rather than create controversy over which things, I’d rather discuss the good vs. evil thing.

The book disturbs me because the good vs. evil aspect is one of the factors that has always put me off of religion. I care more about right and wrong than good and evil. The book points out that although some acts are easily categorized as good or evil (murder for nor reason = evil, saving someone’s life = good), a lot more are not as easily categorized. A lot of acts (and situations) are hard to characterize, or at least they require a lot of understanding before you can judge them one way or another.

Consider our decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. It was a tragic situation; a whole slew of factors added up to the decision to drop the bomb; and Japan probably sees us as evil for doing it but we see ourselves as forced to do it to avoid other evils. The war in Iraq is another such crossroads. Iraqis probably see us as evil for invading them, yet George W. Bush has pitched the invasion as a fight against evil.

At any rate, I’ve realized: Given how often it is that good and evil can’t necessarily be agreed upon; given how difficult it is to label motivations and actions as such, and how doing so depends on the person’s perspective and background; given all that, I’m realizing that I find religion troubling precisely because many of its proponents use it to justify their certainty about good and evil, a certainty that ultimately isn’t reasonable.

And now my brain is calmly shutting down on me. Quiet, it says. Must sleep. Okay. More on this tomorrow.

A pome I liked

“The Good News”
Matt Mason

“Tll the good news about Jesus”
- a bumper sticker I followed for a long time

Jesus lent me ten bucks when I forgot my wallet at
lunch.
Sure, he could have ordered a chicken pesto sandwich,
and broke it into two full meals, but he’s no show
off.
That’s what I like about Jesus.

Jesus listens to cool music. If it weren’t for Jesus,
I never would have known about Tom Waits
or Ani DiFranco, and I sure wouldn’t own any Lyle
Lovett.
But Jesus makes a kickass mix tape.

Jesus loves cows,
thinks my poems with cows in them are a hoot and
encourages me
to look at herds of white cows
in a green field
and imagine salvation
is underneath each windmill.

Jesus tells me Pat Robertson’s right,
and so is Al Sharpton.
That they’re both wrong, too,
but that’s not the point.
His point’s how God’s sewn into every fabric.
Even yourself. Even Elvis.

Jesus eats fish for more
than Omega-3 fatty acids,
drinks red wine for more reasons than his sacred
heart.

Jesus doesn’t dress like the Medieval paintings
with the gold hats and the Mr. T rosaries.
Sure, he can clean up nice,
but Jesus likes blue jeans.

Jesus pisses me off
with his honesty
sometimes.
But it’s not like he’s ever wrong.

Jesus makes a killer chianti,
but he refuses to turn water
into Diet Coke for me.
“What’s the difference?” he asks.

Jesus acts real serious
when somebody rushes up to him hollering, “Jesus,
can you take me up to Heaven,
I will see you in the Kingdom, Jesus!”
Jesus says they should get their kumbayas off
by putting on some overalls
and hammering in the morning.
May as well make Heaven bigger,
not just your egos.

Jesus digs the “How does Jesus eat M&Ms” joke.
He won’t do it at a party, but he did to it once
when just the two of use were watching cartoons.

Jesus wanted me to tell you he loves you.
Jesus also wants you to stop doing that thing.

Jesus tells me I’m saved.
Then he laughs real loud.
Jesus makes me nervous when he does that.