To the Least of My Brethren

When I was a small child, I watched a religious documentary on television about the life of Jesus. I have forgotten most of it, but I remember the ending. The narrator quoted Jesus: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do so to me.” The narrator made no further comment. But the film footage that accompanied it showed drug addicts sitting in the gutters of a major city. This was in the mid-1960s, during the height of the hippie era.

I felt really challenged and uncomfortable by the ending of this documentary. If I believed Jesus, which I did, then it was my responsibility to love drug addicts sitting in the gutters. Jesus did not say that the drug addicts first had to reform, and then we could love them. To me—and I was as neat and conservative of a little kid as there could be—this sounded like giving the nod of approval to their sinful life styles. I did not like this.

I still don’t. Jesus’ words are still hard to swallow.

But the most interesting part is this. I’m pretty sure that I remember that the documentary was sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. I very much doubt that Southern Baptists would produce such a documentary today. The Southern Baptists have pretty much sold out to the conservative, Republican political line that drug addicts are evil and unworthy of any assistance, and that poor people are poor because they are lazy. Conservatives today despise poor people, especially those who are, in fact, responsible for their own poverty. But they did sponsor this documentary fifty years ago. In the last half century, the Southern Baptists and other conservative religious groups have left Christianity behind and become an arm of the Republican Party. It didn’t used to be this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way.

I hope conservative churches might emerge out of their Trump-worshiping phase and go back to this particular aspect of what they used to be like. I’m not holding my breath, however.

The Holy Spirit: An Experiment

Back when I converted to Christian fundamentalism when I was in high school, I was told in no uncertain terms that the Holy Spirit was absent from me before I was baptized, and that it would enter into me at the moment of baptism. The details were unclear; would the Holy Spirit merge with my own spirit, or would they remain separate like two battling Zoroastrian entities? (Modern Zoroastrians seem to be the only cultural group that every major religion wants to slaughter.) It was also unclear whether the Holy Spirit would ever leave. But at least if I should stop adhering to fundamentalist beliefs, the Holy Spirit would become inactive.

Therefore my conversion experience, and my subsequent rejection of organized religion, followed the classic ABA experimental design. Situation A, my previous unconverted self; B, my converted self; then back to A, my post-fundamentalist self. My spiritual experiences during B should be significantly different from those during A.

It is true that, during B, I had deeply and soaringly religious experiences. My feeling of inspiration was sometimes so strong that I could hardly breathe. The whole world radiated colorful beauty. The problem is that I also had these experiences before, during the first A. Somewhere around age nine I started feeling unspeakable inspiration when I was surrounded by beautiful natural scenes. Once at a Presbyterian church camp (which clearly did not meet fundamentalist standards) up in the Sierra Nevada we wrote little skits. I was Paul Bunyan going to heaven, and I said that if heaven didn’t have trees I didn’t want to go. The feeling was so strong that I experienced it even when riding my bicycle through endless acres of pesticide-drenched monocultures of orange or olive trees. I can still remember the scent of Malathion. I identified this feeling with God. And I believed the basic Christian doctrines. But I had not yet been baptized.

Many years later, when I left theology behind, I continued to have these experiences. Just this past summer I felt inspiration over and over as I beheld the wonders of nature (see my evolution blog). I am not an atheist like Sir Richard Dawkins, but even he likes to quote someone who described him as “a deeply religious nonbeliever.” If I am indeed still experiencing the Holy Spirit, which really does make me love everybody and the Earth, then why is it still a palpable presence in my post-doctrinal life? Why did I have these feelings before and after my time as a fundamentalist? A statistician would say that my experiences (the dependent variable) during A vs. B (the independent variable) were not significantly different.

I experience the mental state that many (most?) other people experience, and I experience it more often than nearly everyone I know: I feel breathlessly inspired by nature, and I love altruism. (I also hate those times when people defy altruism. Those are the only times I get really, really angry.) But those experiences are not associated with the presence or absence of belief in fundamentalist doctrines.

We’ve been sold a big lie. Fundamentalists insist that everyone who has not joined their ranks is an abject sinner who lives only for pleasure and is constrained from harming other people only by the fear of Hell, and that when you join them you become a new person who is filled with the spirit of love. Both of these assertions are wrong, and are lies. There are perhaps billions of non-fundamentalists who behave in the way the Bible says we can recognize as Christian, except for the doctrines and rituals; and there are at least thousands of Christians in America who are constrained from acting aggressively toward you only because they fear the secular law of the land.

Christians Think the Rest of Us Are Just Places to Pile Their Shit

My next door neighbors seemed to be the nicest Christian people in the world. They just had a baby, their firstborn, and have been cheerfully preparing their house to accommodate the new arrival. Derek Brewer is a realtor, just starting his own business. His wife Whitney was one our our brightest and smartest alumnae from Biological Sciences at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.

I counted myself really lucky to have them as neighbors, especially since we have a shared driveway. They are very quiet, even when they have a lot of visitors. Because I wanted to encourage them to stay, and not move away—nearly anybody who might move in after them would be worse, I figured—I have given them unlimited right to park in the shared driveway, half of which is mine, and I waived my right to park there.

Apparently I was a fool for trusting Christian goodness.

I generate very little garbage. I am proud of treading lightly upon God’s good green Earth. I do not use disposable dishes except when the alternative is very burdensome. And my lovely wife Lee spent many, many hours washing cloth diapers when Anita was young. (One of the pleasures of having an almost-28-year-old daughter is that it has been a long, long time since this was necessary.)

But when I did open my city garbage bin to put a tiny bit of refuse in it tonight, I found that it was almost completely filled by a big plastic garbage bag full of disposable plates and newborn diapers (used, of course). This bag was as much garbage as I generate in two months. I know where it must have come from. In order to put the garbage in my bin, one of them had to open my gate, walk across my back yard, and put it in, then walk back and close the gate. It could not have been a simple misunderstanding. Anyone stupid enough to do this by accident would not have been smart enough to open a gate.

I’m fucking tired of Christians treating everybody else in the world as places to pile their shit, and I mean this literally, or for target practice, or as scapegoats to blame everything on. If only us fucking Democrat bleeding-hearts would get the fuck out of the world, all problems would be solved.

The possibility remains that someone else, maybe a space alien, just happened to have newborn diapers at this very moment when my neighbors do, and put them there. In that event, I will delete this blog entry and replace it with an account of Derek and the space aliens or whatever is appropriate.

It is, in itself, a small thing, since I generate so little garbage. I just wish they had ASKED first. But Christians don’t fucking need to ask before dumping their shit on neighbors, or parking their fucking cars in their neighbors’ yards, or any other fucking thing they want to do. They are the chosen of God and the rest of us are just standing in their way.

Now, if I trespassed in someone’s yard for ANY REASON they would consider it their right and God-given duty to shoot me. I do not have a gun or any plans to get one. But (see the previous blog entry) it appears that there are two groups of people: the people with guns who believe they have a right to do whatever the fuck they want, and those without guns who must just accept whatever the others do. Happy July 6, and God bless America.

Here is the letter I will be leaving for them, to give them a chance to set the record straight in the event that the garbage came from somewhere else:

“Derek and Whitney—In my trash I found a large trash bag full of disposable dishware and used newborn diapers. Would those happen to be yours? Or did you happen to see anyone enter my back yard through the fence and leave a bag of garbage there? They should know I am not the neighborhood dump. If you need extra space for trash please in God’s name ask first. You have my number. Dr. Stan Rice. P.S. If you see anyone doing this, please let them know it is a bad example for Christians. –S.R.”

If anything should change the accuracy of the above information, I will update this essay or simply delete it.