One warm and sunny day last year, Rita and I drove up to the Dari Twist in Dresden for a Coney dog and a Sundae. It seemed like the proper thing to do on a lazy Sunday evening. After we had placed our orders, we stood there waiting while a young mom and her little girl got their orders. This little girl had an ice cream cone in one hand, was holding her mother’s hand with the other, and then saw a car in the street that excited her. “Look mom, look at that funny car!” Her mother patiently explained to her that it looked strange because it was an antique car. Then she turned to us, not knowing us from Obama and Michelle, and said, with a warm smile, “Life is good.” We were immediately impressed that she would be a great mom, patiently educating and guiding her child, helping her grow, giving her pleasure, and always letting her know that she was loved. We immediately got that warm and fuzzy feeling that we had witnessed, in this simple gesture, what life is all about. When you have shelter, sustenance, clothing, food, direction, and the love of your parent, life is very good.
Of course, we know that for millions of humans on the face of the earth today, life is not good. The opposite of very good is very bad. Millions live in fear, are tortured, young adults are dying of AIDS and children starve, dying of hunger. These human disasters occur while corrupt rulers surround themselves with wealth, women, and sycophants, erecting palaces and monuments to glorify themselves. These disasters occur as wealthy nations spend billions of dollars on new weapons of destruction and war. This human suffering occurs as politicians throw our money away on space programs, and subsidies for energy sources which corrupt our atmosphere. Our national goals are to protect our business interests around the world, rather than to develop self-help programs for those other humans on the face of this earth who are in need. We seem to be caught up completely in callous aggrandizement, only concerned about getting more for ourselves regardless of what other human may be deprived. We live in a terribly selfish world.
What offends me the most about this misdirection of human resources, I suppose, is that our religions, which claim themselves to be our moral guides for our lives, are amongst the worst of our humans institutions which foster egocentricity, self-aggrandizement and callous disregard for the suffering of other humans. These religions carry that heartache even further, and without doubt in my mind, are the worst of our human institutions which glorify death, rather that sanctifying life. Each of them has their own particular way of encouraging us to die, rather than live long, productive and loving lives. Each of them has their own different way of saying that humans should kill other humans in order to protect their own particular religious myths. Each of them has a gloriously convoluted theology to explain why they preach incessantly that humans of other belief should be tortured or killed, rather than loved for what they are, regardless of what other beliefs they may possess.
Judaism does not emphasize the afterlife much, but ii is without doubt, in my mind, the most egocentric of our major religions. They are the one and only chosen people of the only God of the universe, and that God has chosen them to be the dominant rulers over all other people everywhere, according to their belief. This pretend contract with the God of everything gives them the right, they believe, to take away other people’s land and possessions, to treat anyone who does not accept their self-chosen superiority as an inferior human being, and to kill other humans any time and in any way necessary to protect their self-appointed status as the rulers of all other humans. The history and current practice of Judaism both prove that they carry out this egocentric mission with vehemence. Christians may not be as egocentric, but they are terribly intolerant of any other faith, and believe that all other humans should believe in their mythology or pay dearly. All who are not Christians are going to burn in Hell forever, according to their belief. Killing those who believe otherwise may be kinder, in their minds, to this eternal torture. Christianity, by this contorted thinking, condones torture and killing. Islam is the most militant of these religions in fostering death. The Koran, in stanza after stanza, encourages its followers to torture or kill anyone who is an infidel. The current violent outbursts from Islamic terrorists in our world are not a mystery. Their religion, in a litany of constant repetition, tells them to do these terrible things to other humans.
I guess I have learned to accept that, at this particular time in the development of the human psyche, we have not grown enough to understand that all of life is precious. We have not matured enough to understand that all of life, human, animal and plant, is tied together as a symbiotic organism, which suffers as a whole if any other part of it suffers. John Donne, in the seventeenth century, as he lay on what he thought his death bed, heard the church bells tolling in the adjacent town. He suddenly had the realization that all of life is one, that we are all obliged to take care of each other whatever our status or beliefs, and that if we do not all live as one, all humans doing whatever it takes to foster the life of other humans, we will pay dearly:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The bell tolls for us. We have to learn to direct all our resources toward taking care of each other, and all other life, or we do not have much time left on the face of this planet. The failure of our religions to emphasize life, rather than glorify death, is appalling. Our religions are terrible failures at directing us to find the prescience of John Donne. Our religions will have to mature immensely if they are to serve as adequate moral guides for the human species. Otherwise, life will not be good much longer.