Too Much Conviction
The Problem of Overly Fervent Belief
I am Right and You are Wrong
At first I thought it was funny. I was in China, teaching a class on modern Chinese culture with a colleague from China, and she (the colleague) was lecturing on the Cultural Revolution. She had been a young girl during the Cultural Revolution, and she remembered the fear that people had that they would be turned in for being "intellectuals" or "artists." She wrote this poster and displayed it to the class to show what it was like. Everybody thought it was funny. I did, too.
The class suggested that I post it on my door in the dormitory where I was staying, just as a joke. At the time it seemed like a good idea, and I did so. Then everyone could see it. As it happened some Chinese students came to see me, and they saw this on my door. They thought it was serious, and they were very embarrassed for me. They thought it was a throwback to earlier times, and it worried them. One of them explained that her grandfather had suffered at the hands of the Red Guard because he was an intellectual. I realized that some things are too painful to be joked about. I took the sign down.
But it got me thinking about that impulse within human beings to "strike down" others and its relation to the need to "be right." What is this impulse? Why do we need to be "right" about things? I don't understand it myself, but I know that is it inside me and other people, too, including fellow Christians.
There is Only One Way
Those of us who study religion recognize that this aim is shared by some of the world's religions, too. Religious people also seek cultural revolutions of heart and mind, desire and behavior. Buddhists think the world would be a better place if everyone realized how interconnected things are; Christians think the world would be a better place if everyone loved their neighbors; Muslims think the world would be a better place if everyone felt the unity - tawhid - which is within and behind the whole of creation; atheists think the world would be a better place if everyone realized God doesn't exist. Implicitly or explicitly, we are all evangelical.
This does not mean that religions necessarily seek converts. Many Buddhists recognize that non-Buddhists can awaken to interconnectedness without becoming Buddhists; many Muslims recognize that people of other religions know tawhid, too, even if they happen to be members of another religion. In truth most religions do not seek converts. Rarely if ever do you meet a Taoist missionary, or a Navaho evangelist, or a Bahai baptizer, or a Buddhist who claims that Buddhists - and Buddhists alone - are recipients of salvation. Jews don't think this way, either. Judaism is not a proselytizing tradition.
Nevertheless, we must be honest. Many evangelically-minded Christians and Muslims do proselytize in aggressive ways. Many believe that God commands them to seek converts across cultures; to proclaim that their religion is the only true religion; and to be clear that all who do not follow their religion are in big trouble, in this life or the next. They may not pull people's hair in such a forceful way, but more than a few wish they could pull bad ideas out of people's minds and replace them with what they believe is the Truth. There is only one way to salvation, they say, and we happen to have discovered it.
Beloved Community
Usually they ground their aggression in the idea that they know how the world ought to be. This raises a question: What is the world as it ought to be?
For the communists it was that of a free and classless society in which each person would share with other people without class divisions: "From each according to ability to each according to need." The Chinese got this idea from Chairman Mao and from Karl Marx. As a Christian I like this idea very much. I think Marx's saying is a good rendition of Jesus' own hope. Jesus' hope was that his own people - fellow Jews - live from love rather than power, in a spirit of sharing and humility, not greed.
Thus it is not surprising to me that Marx was Jewish. He did not believe in God but he believed in justice and love, and he got these ideas from the prophetic traditions of Judaism. Jesus shared his hope. He may not have been a communist but he was at the very least a communalist. He called the free and classless society the Kingdom of God or, as we might speak of it, the Community of Lovingkindness. Martin Luther King calls it a Beloved Community. For Jesus this community would be one in which the will of God, originating in heaven, dwells in people's hearts, so that they are kind and forgiving, loving and caring, non-greedy and sharing. In our time we realize that there need not be one beloved community; there need to be many of them, in small places, all over the world. These communities may or may not be conjoined with powerful governments. And they may never be fully realized. But even approximations are worth the effort. A beloved community is a democratic and socialist community. It is democratic socialism.
A Way which is Truthful
People like Martin Luther King and Jesus share this hope with Gandhi. He, too, realized that the best hope of humanity is not violence but love. But Gandhi realized, along with Jesus and Martin Luther King, that the dream for beloved community, worthy as it is, is not worth harming others.
Indeed the principle of non-harm was built into Jesus' teachings. He was a pacifist, non-violent Jew. He taught that, even as people tried to follow his way of love, they should pray for those who persecute them, turn the other cheek when someone slapped them, and sell their possessions and give to the poor. He asked them to become the love they hoped to see in others. Love was the Way which, for him, was also the Truth and the Life. When he said "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life" this is what he had in mind. He wanted others to become the Way and Truth and Life, too.
It is doubtful that Jesus fully embodied his own dream at every moment of his life. Sometimes he lost his temper; sometimes he was too hard on his own brothers in faith, the Pharisees; sometimes he may have been too hard on his own family. This is what makes Jesus lovable. He was good but not perfect. He was not sinless. Christians do him a disservice when they make a god of him. He is our brother. And somehow, in his humanity, he shared God with us, inviting us in a journey into love. As the great theologian Karl Barth put it, Jesus reveals the humanity of God. Why can't we live into his dream? Perhaps it has something to do with sin. The Christian tradition says that there are seven deadly ones.
Sinful Habits of the Heart
Gluttony is rooted in an emptiness of the heart, wanting to fill it with food or intoxicants that offer temporary satisfaction. Sloth is rooted in a sleepiness of the heart, an inability to pay attention to what is happening in the here-and-now. Envy is rooted in a jealousy of the heart, a desire to have what others have. Pride is rooted in an arrogance of the heart, thinking that one's own life is the center of the universe. Lust is rooted in a desire to make objects of other things and possess them, not allowing them to be themselves. Anger is rooted in a meanness of the heart, wanting others to suffer because they have done wrong. And greed is rooted in an ignorance of the heart, a failure to recognize that, no matter how many things you possess or objects you own, your only real taste of eternal life lies in wisdom, compassion, and willingness to share with others.
Let's consider anger and greed a little more, especially in their relation to the darker sides of evangelism. Evangelism can have a good side, too. It is good to share our points of view and be challenged by others. It is good to listen to others and be transformed even as they might be transformed by us. Mutual evangelism, with a soft touch, is part of the spice of life. It is seeking truth together. But I want to say a word about bad evangelism: that is, evangelism when we are pretty sure that the other people are just plain wrong.
Righteous Indignation
When other people are "wrong," we become angry. Among Christians and Jews this anger is sometimes validated as righteous indignation. We say "I am outraged. I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." This indignation seems holy to us. We feel right in being indignant. We want to ventilate. Some of us wrongly imagine that even God is filled with this kind of feeling. We speak of a wrathful God and say that this wrath is called holiness. We speak of God as scary and unloving: a holy warrior who is preoccupied with being right.
For my part, I do not see holiness in righteous indignation. I find holiness in tenderness, in forgiveness, in gentleness, in love. And in the beauty of life, too. The other night I was at a karaoke bar. I watched the older people sing along with the younger people, laughing because their voices were so beautifully off-key. I think this was holy. I see holiness in what one of the columnists for Open Horizons - Vivian Dong - calls the tininess of God.
Does God hold grudges?
I know that some people think God gets angry and holds grudges. I don't think so. Paul describes the love to which Christians are called as patient and kind and forgiving. Here is what Paul says in First Corinthians:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (13:3-6)
I think this is the love to which God is called, too. In Buddhism there is a tradition which says that even the gods are not enlightened and need our prayers. I like to think that God is already enlightened. I hope so. I like to think that Jesus discovered the Buddhist side of God.
Cool Off, Calm Down
But I know that we ourselves are not so enlightened. I'm not. I feel resentful a lot, especially when I am in the presence of people who are filled with resentment and anger. Buddhists tell us that when we are angry we should be aware of the emotion, but also not cling to it when, if allowed to run its course, it passes away. If we cling to it, the anger becomes becomes resentment. We want to harm others. We want them to pay for what they have done to us or to others about whom we care. We want them to be punished. We want to strike them down. When this happens resentment becomes a fire inside us which needs to be extinguished.
In Buddhism the word nirvana comes from a word which means to blow out. Of course, ultimate nirvana is much more than an extinction of anger-turned-into-resentment. But for many of us the spiritual journey does indeed require an honest recognition that we can be controlled by emotions which we feel are honest and right, but which make slaves of us. This is the seductive nature of resentment. It feels right, and it leads us to want to strike down others.
Greed for Views
Another the seven deadly sins is greed. It lies is wanting too much of something, even if that something is a good thing. Often we associate greed with money. The New Testament tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil. When we want too much money, we begin to make a god of money. In the process we harm others and ourselves. This is the dark side of capitalism. It pretends that greed is a virtue, when really it is a sin.
There is another kind of greed that is also harmful, and we see this kind of greed in those among us who are filled with too much conviction. Buddhists call it greed for views. It lies in holding onto a belief so tightly that the belief becomes a false god. When we hold on this way, we divide the world into good and bad, right and wrong. Many of us commit this sin all the time, liberals as well as conservatives. We think they are "right" and others are "wrong." We divide the world into believers and non-believers. We become arrogant. Sometimes arrogance can look very sophisticated. But it is always smug and self-assured. It is never humble and honest. It wears protective armor covered with an emblem which says "I know and you don't."
Evangelical Atheism
Make no mistake, anti-religious people can fall into greed for views, too. They, too, can be fundamentalists. The communist movement prided itself on being atheistic and non-religious. During the Cultural Revolution this pride was expressed in a ridiculing of people who were religious and a burning of religious icons. No distinction was made between different kinds of religion: all were suspect. They were seen as opiates preventing people from thinking for themselves.
One parallel in our time is the new atheist movement, pioneered by champions of atheism such Richard Dawkins. To be sure, they are different from the proponents of the Cultural Revolution, but their passions run as high when it comes to arguing against religion and for atheism. The new atheists are fervent in their belief that people who believe in God or who are religious in some other way are superstitious and evil. They, too, commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. They, too, would like to free the world of bad ideas, like the idea of God.
Suffocating Patriotism
This desire to be on the right side runs very deep in human consciousness. Perhaps it has evolutionary origins. Perhaps it is rooted in a will to power or an impulse to control the world. Or perhaps, as Buddhists would suggest, it is rooted in a kind of suffering, a kind of dukkha, a painful sense of having been wronged by the world, and by a need to correct the moral imbalance. In any case the desire to be on the right side can create a dichotomy within our own minds between good people and bad people, with us on the side of the good. Americans like to say that we are the greatest nation on earth. Why is this so important? Why not say that we are one among many, partners in a human journey, with strengths and weaknesses, like every other nation? Why not be more humble?
One of the sadnesses today is that too many evangelical Christians have come to confuse God and country. They salute the flag as if were a god and they hope for a "Christian" America in which all things will be "under the reign of Jesus." Often they do this for the same reason that the Red Guard understood a cultural revolution. They want a cultural revolution in America, where people think in the right way and live in the right way. What is the motivation? Is it anger? Is it greed? Is it envy? Is it lust? One thing seems clear: It is still another way of killing Christ.
Cynical Chic
But at other times the will to be right is expressed less forcefully. We simply make fun of other people and joke about them, assuming that we know the truth and they do not know the truth. We see this in people who are overly smug, or sarcastic, or dismissive, or defensive - including ourselves.
Consider cynical chic. The word chic is used to name something that seems cool or hip, progressive or advanced. Cynical chic emerges when groups of people find it cool to be dismissive of others, to laugh at them, to ridicule them - all in the name of good fun.
Usually this cynicism functions as a kind of protective armor. As individuals we are protecting ourselves from feeling vulnerable. The Buddhists reminds us that this self-protection is grounded in an illusion: namely that we are, or can become, skin-encapsulated egos cut off from the world by the boundaries of our skin. The people in the image above are laughing at someone and thus giving expression to this illusion. They are pulling hair, but just don't know it. They, too, need the Buddha-mind.
The Freedom to Be Sincere
One thing I like about evangelical Christianity is that it recognizes the imperfections of the world. It takes sin seriously. For my part, I am not an evangelical Christian. I am drawn to those traditions within Christianity which see Christ as a spirit at work in the world who is more than Christianity, and whose gentle promptings blow freely, wherever they will, without requiring my mediation or my understanding. I want to cooperate with that spirit but I do not think the spirit can be restricted to a system of belief, including my own. I do not think the spirit can be restricted to Jesus.
Thus I appreciate the opening to the gospel of John, which sees Christ as the light that enlightens all people, not just Jesus; and which says that Jesus reveals the light, but does not exhaust it. I have seen more than a little of this light in people of other religions and no religion. I have also seen it in evangelical Christians. I cannot join the critics in a wholesale critique of evangelical Christianity. I think the spirit can flow even in those who might think they, and they alone, possess the spirit.
Moreover, I understand the evangelical approach, because I find it in myself. Implicitly if not explicitly, we are all evangelicals. In espousing our own values there is an implicit universalism. I would not be writing this article if I did not think it would be nice if you - my reader - might be affected by what I say. I conclude with the hope that as we try to influence others with our views, we simultaneously avoid anger and greed; we cool off and calm down; we remember that the spirit can be at work in our lives even apart from our mediation; and we recognize that our way, at its best, is but one way of being open to the spirit of wisdom at work in the world. Let's hold onto our own convictions with a relaxed grasp, lest we fall into the sin of too much conviction, and fall away from the very hope that rightly inspires our hearts: namely that the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven.
I am Right and You are Wrong
At first I thought it was funny. I was in China, teaching a class on modern Chinese culture with a colleague from China, and she (the colleague) was lecturing on the Cultural Revolution. She had been a young girl during the Cultural Revolution, and she remembered the fear that people had that they would be turned in for being "intellectuals" or "artists." She wrote this poster and displayed it to the class to show what it was like. Everybody thought it was funny. I did, too.
The class suggested that I post it on my door in the dormitory where I was staying, just as a joke. At the time it seemed like a good idea, and I did so. Then everyone could see it. As it happened some Chinese students came to see me, and they saw this on my door. They thought it was serious, and they were very embarrassed for me. They thought it was a throwback to earlier times, and it worried them. One of them explained that her grandfather had suffered at the hands of the Red Guard because he was an intellectual. I realized that some things are too painful to be joked about. I took the sign down.
But it got me thinking about that impulse within human beings to "strike down" others and its relation to the need to "be right." What is this impulse? Why do we need to be "right" about things? I don't understand it myself, but I know that is it inside me and other people, too, including fellow Christians.
There is Only One Way
Those of us who study religion recognize that this aim is shared by some of the world's religions, too. Religious people also seek cultural revolutions of heart and mind, desire and behavior. Buddhists think the world would be a better place if everyone realized how interconnected things are; Christians think the world would be a better place if everyone loved their neighbors; Muslims think the world would be a better place if everyone felt the unity - tawhid - which is within and behind the whole of creation; atheists think the world would be a better place if everyone realized God doesn't exist. Implicitly or explicitly, we are all evangelical.
This does not mean that religions necessarily seek converts. Many Buddhists recognize that non-Buddhists can awaken to interconnectedness without becoming Buddhists; many Muslims recognize that people of other religions know tawhid, too, even if they happen to be members of another religion. In truth most religions do not seek converts. Rarely if ever do you meet a Taoist missionary, or a Navaho evangelist, or a Bahai baptizer, or a Buddhist who claims that Buddhists - and Buddhists alone - are recipients of salvation. Jews don't think this way, either. Judaism is not a proselytizing tradition.
Nevertheless, we must be honest. Many evangelically-minded Christians and Muslims do proselytize in aggressive ways. Many believe that God commands them to seek converts across cultures; to proclaim that their religion is the only true religion; and to be clear that all who do not follow their religion are in big trouble, in this life or the next. They may not pull people's hair in such a forceful way, but more than a few wish they could pull bad ideas out of people's minds and replace them with what they believe is the Truth. There is only one way to salvation, they say, and we happen to have discovered it.
Beloved Community
Usually they ground their aggression in the idea that they know how the world ought to be. This raises a question: What is the world as it ought to be?
For the communists it was that of a free and classless society in which each person would share with other people without class divisions: "From each according to ability to each according to need." The Chinese got this idea from Chairman Mao and from Karl Marx. As a Christian I like this idea very much. I think Marx's saying is a good rendition of Jesus' own hope. Jesus' hope was that his own people - fellow Jews - live from love rather than power, in a spirit of sharing and humility, not greed.
Thus it is not surprising to me that Marx was Jewish. He did not believe in God but he believed in justice and love, and he got these ideas from the prophetic traditions of Judaism. Jesus shared his hope. He may not have been a communist but he was at the very least a communalist. He called the free and classless society the Kingdom of God or, as we might speak of it, the Community of Lovingkindness. Martin Luther King calls it a Beloved Community. For Jesus this community would be one in which the will of God, originating in heaven, dwells in people's hearts, so that they are kind and forgiving, loving and caring, non-greedy and sharing. In our time we realize that there need not be one beloved community; there need to be many of them, in small places, all over the world. These communities may or may not be conjoined with powerful governments. And they may never be fully realized. But even approximations are worth the effort. A beloved community is a democratic and socialist community. It is democratic socialism.
A Way which is Truthful
People like Martin Luther King and Jesus share this hope with Gandhi. He, too, realized that the best hope of humanity is not violence but love. But Gandhi realized, along with Jesus and Martin Luther King, that the dream for beloved community, worthy as it is, is not worth harming others.
Indeed the principle of non-harm was built into Jesus' teachings. He was a pacifist, non-violent Jew. He taught that, even as people tried to follow his way of love, they should pray for those who persecute them, turn the other cheek when someone slapped them, and sell their possessions and give to the poor. He asked them to become the love they hoped to see in others. Love was the Way which, for him, was also the Truth and the Life. When he said "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life" this is what he had in mind. He wanted others to become the Way and Truth and Life, too.
It is doubtful that Jesus fully embodied his own dream at every moment of his life. Sometimes he lost his temper; sometimes he was too hard on his own brothers in faith, the Pharisees; sometimes he may have been too hard on his own family. This is what makes Jesus lovable. He was good but not perfect. He was not sinless. Christians do him a disservice when they make a god of him. He is our brother. And somehow, in his humanity, he shared God with us, inviting us in a journey into love. As the great theologian Karl Barth put it, Jesus reveals the humanity of God. Why can't we live into his dream? Perhaps it has something to do with sin. The Christian tradition says that there are seven deadly ones.
Sinful Habits of the Heart
Gluttony is rooted in an emptiness of the heart, wanting to fill it with food or intoxicants that offer temporary satisfaction. Sloth is rooted in a sleepiness of the heart, an inability to pay attention to what is happening in the here-and-now. Envy is rooted in a jealousy of the heart, a desire to have what others have. Pride is rooted in an arrogance of the heart, thinking that one's own life is the center of the universe. Lust is rooted in a desire to make objects of other things and possess them, not allowing them to be themselves. Anger is rooted in a meanness of the heart, wanting others to suffer because they have done wrong. And greed is rooted in an ignorance of the heart, a failure to recognize that, no matter how many things you possess or objects you own, your only real taste of eternal life lies in wisdom, compassion, and willingness to share with others.
Let's consider anger and greed a little more, especially in their relation to the darker sides of evangelism. Evangelism can have a good side, too. It is good to share our points of view and be challenged by others. It is good to listen to others and be transformed even as they might be transformed by us. Mutual evangelism, with a soft touch, is part of the spice of life. It is seeking truth together. But I want to say a word about bad evangelism: that is, evangelism when we are pretty sure that the other people are just plain wrong.
Righteous Indignation
When other people are "wrong," we become angry. Among Christians and Jews this anger is sometimes validated as righteous indignation. We say "I am outraged. I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." This indignation seems holy to us. We feel right in being indignant. We want to ventilate. Some of us wrongly imagine that even God is filled with this kind of feeling. We speak of a wrathful God and say that this wrath is called holiness. We speak of God as scary and unloving: a holy warrior who is preoccupied with being right.
For my part, I do not see holiness in righteous indignation. I find holiness in tenderness, in forgiveness, in gentleness, in love. And in the beauty of life, too. The other night I was at a karaoke bar. I watched the older people sing along with the younger people, laughing because their voices were so beautifully off-key. I think this was holy. I see holiness in what one of the columnists for Open Horizons - Vivian Dong - calls the tininess of God.
Does God hold grudges?
I know that some people think God gets angry and holds grudges. I don't think so. Paul describes the love to which Christians are called as patient and kind and forgiving. Here is what Paul says in First Corinthians:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (13:3-6)
I think this is the love to which God is called, too. In Buddhism there is a tradition which says that even the gods are not enlightened and need our prayers. I like to think that God is already enlightened. I hope so. I like to think that Jesus discovered the Buddhist side of God.
Cool Off, Calm Down
But I know that we ourselves are not so enlightened. I'm not. I feel resentful a lot, especially when I am in the presence of people who are filled with resentment and anger. Buddhists tell us that when we are angry we should be aware of the emotion, but also not cling to it when, if allowed to run its course, it passes away. If we cling to it, the anger becomes becomes resentment. We want to harm others. We want them to pay for what they have done to us or to others about whom we care. We want them to be punished. We want to strike them down. When this happens resentment becomes a fire inside us which needs to be extinguished.
In Buddhism the word nirvana comes from a word which means to blow out. Of course, ultimate nirvana is much more than an extinction of anger-turned-into-resentment. But for many of us the spiritual journey does indeed require an honest recognition that we can be controlled by emotions which we feel are honest and right, but which make slaves of us. This is the seductive nature of resentment. It feels right, and it leads us to want to strike down others.
Greed for Views
Another the seven deadly sins is greed. It lies is wanting too much of something, even if that something is a good thing. Often we associate greed with money. The New Testament tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil. When we want too much money, we begin to make a god of money. In the process we harm others and ourselves. This is the dark side of capitalism. It pretends that greed is a virtue, when really it is a sin.
There is another kind of greed that is also harmful, and we see this kind of greed in those among us who are filled with too much conviction. Buddhists call it greed for views. It lies in holding onto a belief so tightly that the belief becomes a false god. When we hold on this way, we divide the world into good and bad, right and wrong. Many of us commit this sin all the time, liberals as well as conservatives. We think they are "right" and others are "wrong." We divide the world into believers and non-believers. We become arrogant. Sometimes arrogance can look very sophisticated. But it is always smug and self-assured. It is never humble and honest. It wears protective armor covered with an emblem which says "I know and you don't."
Evangelical Atheism
Make no mistake, anti-religious people can fall into greed for views, too. They, too, can be fundamentalists. The communist movement prided itself on being atheistic and non-religious. During the Cultural Revolution this pride was expressed in a ridiculing of people who were religious and a burning of religious icons. No distinction was made between different kinds of religion: all were suspect. They were seen as opiates preventing people from thinking for themselves.
One parallel in our time is the new atheist movement, pioneered by champions of atheism such Richard Dawkins. To be sure, they are different from the proponents of the Cultural Revolution, but their passions run as high when it comes to arguing against religion and for atheism. The new atheists are fervent in their belief that people who believe in God or who are religious in some other way are superstitious and evil. They, too, commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. They, too, would like to free the world of bad ideas, like the idea of God.
Suffocating Patriotism
This desire to be on the right side runs very deep in human consciousness. Perhaps it has evolutionary origins. Perhaps it is rooted in a will to power or an impulse to control the world. Or perhaps, as Buddhists would suggest, it is rooted in a kind of suffering, a kind of dukkha, a painful sense of having been wronged by the world, and by a need to correct the moral imbalance. In any case the desire to be on the right side can create a dichotomy within our own minds between good people and bad people, with us on the side of the good. Americans like to say that we are the greatest nation on earth. Why is this so important? Why not say that we are one among many, partners in a human journey, with strengths and weaknesses, like every other nation? Why not be more humble?
One of the sadnesses today is that too many evangelical Christians have come to confuse God and country. They salute the flag as if were a god and they hope for a "Christian" America in which all things will be "under the reign of Jesus." Often they do this for the same reason that the Red Guard understood a cultural revolution. They want a cultural revolution in America, where people think in the right way and live in the right way. What is the motivation? Is it anger? Is it greed? Is it envy? Is it lust? One thing seems clear: It is still another way of killing Christ.
Cynical Chic
But at other times the will to be right is expressed less forcefully. We simply make fun of other people and joke about them, assuming that we know the truth and they do not know the truth. We see this in people who are overly smug, or sarcastic, or dismissive, or defensive - including ourselves.
Consider cynical chic. The word chic is used to name something that seems cool or hip, progressive or advanced. Cynical chic emerges when groups of people find it cool to be dismissive of others, to laugh at them, to ridicule them - all in the name of good fun.
Usually this cynicism functions as a kind of protective armor. As individuals we are protecting ourselves from feeling vulnerable. The Buddhists reminds us that this self-protection is grounded in an illusion: namely that we are, or can become, skin-encapsulated egos cut off from the world by the boundaries of our skin. The people in the image above are laughing at someone and thus giving expression to this illusion. They are pulling hair, but just don't know it. They, too, need the Buddha-mind.
The Freedom to Be Sincere
One thing I like about evangelical Christianity is that it recognizes the imperfections of the world. It takes sin seriously. For my part, I am not an evangelical Christian. I am drawn to those traditions within Christianity which see Christ as a spirit at work in the world who is more than Christianity, and whose gentle promptings blow freely, wherever they will, without requiring my mediation or my understanding. I want to cooperate with that spirit but I do not think the spirit can be restricted to a system of belief, including my own. I do not think the spirit can be restricted to Jesus.
Thus I appreciate the opening to the gospel of John, which sees Christ as the light that enlightens all people, not just Jesus; and which says that Jesus reveals the light, but does not exhaust it. I have seen more than a little of this light in people of other religions and no religion. I have also seen it in evangelical Christians. I cannot join the critics in a wholesale critique of evangelical Christianity. I think the spirit can flow even in those who might think they, and they alone, possess the spirit.
Moreover, I understand the evangelical approach, because I find it in myself. Implicitly if not explicitly, we are all evangelicals. In espousing our own values there is an implicit universalism. I would not be writing this article if I did not think it would be nice if you - my reader - might be affected by what I say. I conclude with the hope that as we try to influence others with our views, we simultaneously avoid anger and greed; we cool off and calm down; we remember that the spirit can be at work in our lives even apart from our mediation; and we recognize that our way, at its best, is but one way of being open to the spirit of wisdom at work in the world. Let's hold onto our own convictions with a relaxed grasp, lest we fall into the sin of too much conviction, and fall away from the very hope that rightly inspires our hearts: namely that the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven.