small god

The marble we live on is too small for small gods. The first job of any religious person now is to make their own religion safe for the rest of us. People are shredded to the shouts of Alla Akbar while others pray Jesus’ blessings on  drones. Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Buddah and all the deified founders would puke.

There is no space for tribes and tribal spirits encouraging the  sacred difference or distance; no possible zone where the Jesus people can go off to themselves and whoop it up stoking their fears and fires. And no possible zone—even one with hardly any trees—where those that walk in the name of Mohammed (yes, his name should be blessed) can stoke their bitterness and bile, either. 

I write from San Francisco watching my grandson play amid the preparations for his first birthday party later in the afternoon. It makes me think about his 10th and 50th and that of his sons when I just a picture on the wall and the world is even smaller.

Any god small enough to fit into any tribal scheme is too small for this world, no matter their name, creed,  kind of hat or where they wear shoes or not. If it’s not for us all, it’s not safe for any. 

If the faith doesn’t call us all to humility and release of unjustified privilege—especially over the stranger—it is not safe for our melting earth. If you are a Christian and you think that Jesus loves you more than Jihadi John, you don’t know Jesus. And, it follows, you probably don’t know much about John, either.

Today any person of faith must suspect their own faith, go into our own sacred space and look around asking how and who we exclude, what stuff we stole and thanked our little god for, what parade of mean and violent jerks successfully used our hymns to cover their path. I am a Christian, which gives me quite a lot of complicities to consider. 

I notice that the largest and longest violence is not of radicalized christianity—and its obviously miniaturized Jesus—but of the banal moralized version that rides like a Dalmatian on the fire truck chosen for its spots and failure to hear the siren. Beware a faith that fits quietly around the fist.

Paris could be the end of faith blaming faith for what is actually nihlism. But Paris has been the end of faith before in earlier revulsions from the perversions of radical Christianity (radical in its subservience to armed priviledge). 

Paris could also be another beginning. It depends on what we hope for and on what we are willing to give away. And it depends on who we hope for. If it is not a hope for us all, it is a hope too small for any of us.