Dollars to doughnuts, the Louisiana lawgivers who mandated the display of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom can neither recite them nor explain their genesis (in the Book of Exodus). Why these ten (though there are more than ten), why this selection (for decalogues vary by sect), what political problems was Moses wrestling, are these commandments laws (what about the adultery prohibition, Mister (heh-heh) “grab-them-by-the-pussy”?)…
The litany of ludicrousness never ends because, face it, theology is hogwash, a preposterous attempt to rationalize the irrational and explain the inexplicable. Religion is a deep human need and often a sublime good – I’m a huge fan of my God: He shores me, cheers me, steers me – but for humans to explicate the divine is not only blasphemous (the nerve!) but duplicitous. Worldly leaders deploy the divine to authorize their rule (“If God be for us, who can be against us?” – Romans 8:31), mistaking their interests for God’s.
The goal of the Louisianan lawgivers is not to ameliorate the morality of their constituents but to send a message like a No Trespassing sign: “We’re in charge – enter these premises at your own risk – violators will be shot.” It’s a declaration of intolerance for divergent views, a ham-handed effort to abort debate, to make of their state a gated community inadmissible to infidels.
Why would they do such a thing? Isn’t our goal as Americans to get along? Why pit people against one another? (“Why do the nations rage?” – Psalm 2)
Fear erects walls. “Before I built a wall,” muses Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”,
I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
These Louisianans know whom they’re walling out: modernity and its bewilderments: global competitors, Internet porn, loss of status, their infuriating inferiority, their children’s disrespect. Unhappy in their world, it must be somebody’s fault – the godless! If only we can get back to the good old days when folks knew their neighbors and n****s knew their place.
The emotional compulsion of today’s Republican party is to slam the door, hunker down, man the barricades against an inexorable tide of change. The economic compulsion of today’s Republican funders is a thief’s, to barricade their booty. One can empathize with, if not endorse, the simple souls spooked by their impotence (and duped by lies). We all feel at least a little lost and desperate as humanity hurtles to its demise. I might opt for a Savior too, were there one I could admire.
The panicky posting of divisive proclamations won’t mend our rifts. Pledging allegiance to outmoded statutes won’t make us kinder or wiser. If any sectarian slogans were to be brandished, I’d recommend Jesus’: “You shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And… you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Best advice ever.
These are scary days. It’s hard to be an optimist, tempting to slam the door. Prosperity, far from heartening, feels like doom. Totalitarian simplicity exerts an appeal. Governing ourselves, getting along, may be just too hard. Put a Big Guy in charge.
The problem with such simple solutions is they don’t work – not for most and not for long. Tyrannies topple as tyrants lose their bearings, misled by sycophants. In less than five months (yikes!), America will choose between uninspiring sanity and insane hope, between opening our eyes and slamming the door, between collaboration and vengeance, pluralism and totalitarianism, hope and despair. A wrong choice here may bedevil us till the end of time.