Tag Archives: fear

What to Believe?

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I was raised a Christian lad, not by proselytizing parents, but by a father and mother who passively practised the religion they’d been taught by their own parents.  As an infant, I was baptized in the Church of England; as a boy, I attended Sunday School, where I learned the Anglican liturgy. In my early teens, I publicly professed my learned faith in a confirmation ceremony; as a young man, I married my bride in a Christian church.

Growing up, I was enamoured of the tales of derring-do by British adventurers who set out to dominate the world—Richard the Lionheart and the Crusader knights; Sir Francis Drake and other explorers and privateers; Sir Cecil Rhodes and the rapacious conquerors of Africa and Asia. All of them ventured forth under the cross of St. George, ostensibly to bring Christianity to the heathen masses. Or so I was taught.

I wasn’t dissuaded by the troubling outcomes that sometimes occurred to me, arising from those teachings. For example, had I died before being baptized, I was taught I would not have gone to heaven; I was told that children of other faiths, unless they converted to Christianity, would not go to heaven; I believed none of us, being sinners, would go to heaven if we did not sincerely repent and swear never to repeat our sinful actions; and it was ingrained in me that those who did not go to heaven would be damned to eternal hellfire.

It didn’t dawn on me until much later how ludicrous it was that the God of love held dominion over me through fear. Still, I’ve never had doubts about the essential teachings of Jesus, as I understand them from the several writers of the Bible who have reported them—love; forgiveness; humility and service; empathy and trust; repentance and redemption; compassion and mercy. It seems to me that if everyone, Christian or not, practiced those teachings, the issues that plague our world would disappear.

From earliest times, my favourite part of being in church was listening to and singing the glorious hymns, accompanied by the mighty strains of a pipe organ. Because of the early, emotional indoctrination I experienced through my parents, they prickle my skin to this day when I hear them rendered—to name a few: Abide With Me; Blessed Assurance; Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer; Jerusalem; Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee; Nearer My God to Thee; O God, Our Help In Ages Past; and Rock of Ages.

A good number of hymns, I discovered later, were written by British lyricists and set to the melodies of classical composers, many of them Germanic. One of those, Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken (by John Newton, who also wrote Amazing Grace), is sung to the same Joseph Haydn melody that graces the German national anthem, Deutschlandlied (formerly Deutschland über Alles).

Given the 20th century history of conflict between those two nations, I always found it strange that they shared a love for such glorious music. Even more so, I found it preposterous that soldiers of both Christian countries were killing each other on battlefields, in direct contravention of their shared God’s commandment.

Yes, God is with us! Nein, Gott ist mit uns!

But perhaps that isn’t so strange, given the militaristic character of many of those hymns. Take these lyrics for example—

Stand up, stand up for Jesus! ye soldiers of the cross;
Lift high His royal banner, it must not suffer loss:
From vict’ry unto vict’ry, His army shall He lead,
Till every foe is vanquished, and Christ is Lord indeed.

Implicit in those words is the instruction that good Christians must overthrow those who do not believe. I found that to be in contravention of the Christly teachings mentioned earlier, which always struck me as invitational rather than compulsory. I was taught, after all, that God had gifted us with free choice.

Mind you, George Duffield, Jr., the American clergyman who wrote the lyrics in 1858 and set them to an original melody by Franz Schubert, may not have intended them to sound militant or jingoistic. But that is how they ring in my ear. And it is such sentiments that crusaders and conquerors of the past cited to justify their conquests.

If you doubt it, consider also the lyrics of such hymns as Onward, Christian Soldiers, We’ll Go Out and Take the Land, or The World Must Be Taken For Jesus.

In fact, many Christian buccaneers and swashbucklers set out to plunder the world for reasons far more crass than what they professed. Bringing Christianity to the heathen masses was, at best, a by-product of their colonialist ravages, and at worst, an excuse for them. As for those Indigenous peoples subjected to the messianic zeal of 19th century Christian missionaries, I’ve always wondered how their forced conversions could be deemed proper when similar depredations imposed on Christian victims during the 8th century Moorish invasion of Europe were considered barbaric. Did both aggressions not have the same effects on those who suffered and died? Were they not the same thing, save for the religious faith driving them?

Might makes right, some say. To the victors go the spoils. And history—the history I grew up learning—was written by those victors. The synoptic gospels have Jesus saying, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s…” A venerable phrase translated from the Latin has Caesar claiming, “I came, I saw, I conquered!” The emphasis, of course, is on that final word.

So now, with more yesterdays accumulated than tomorrows to anticipate, I find I am no longer the Christian lad I once was…not with how Christianity, particularly the degraded, evangelical sort, has come to be defined in this 21st century. I do believe in free choice, and I choose not to believe Jesus was all about conquest and subjugation.

Further, I do believe in the wisdom of the aforementioned teachings of Christ, although I do not need the backing of a supernatural mythology to support my belief. I regard those as universal truths shared by Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, among other religions…and indeed, by many folk who profess no religion. Those teachings promote adherence to the Golden Rule, compassion for and kindness to others, the valuing of family and community, and the pursuit of a moral life.

I’ve long believed that the evils of this world are caused, for the most part, by extremism—unbridled nationalism, greedy capitalism, and apocalyptic religions. How might it be if only we gave those universal truths a chance to show what they could do instead?

In closing, lest this screed be mistaken for apostasy or advocacy, let me assure you it is no more than a statement of personal belief, refined over many years of observation and experience. Despite the sage admonition not to believe everything I think, I have always felt that believing in something is important, so as not to fall for anything.

The question, of course, is knowing what to believe. And for me, seeking that knowledge will be an ongoing journey until, inevitably, the road comes to an end.

Making Sense of It All

Do you ever wonder at the chaos and disruption going on all around us during these tumultuous times, and wonder what to make of it all?

I certainly do, and the only way I seem able to make sense of it is to examine things through a very simple example.  A long, long time ago, I attended elementary school in a big city where everybody looked like me.  And as every Christmas season rolled around, the entire school was festooned in merry decoration—more of the Santa Claus variety than church décor, mind you.

Gaily-festooned trees inhabited every classroom, and carols of the season played before and after class on the public address system.  Every pupil in the school understood everything about the rituals and the reasons for marking the occasion because, almost without exception, we were a middle-class, white, Christian community.

Years later, I found myself employed as a teacher, then principal and superintendent, in the same school system.  But oh, how things had changed.  The schools were populated still by Christians, but in ever-diminishing numbers, as the city grew to include people from all over the world.  They were of all colours, from a multitude of nations, speaking different languages, practicing different religions.

By the late 1980’s, the school jurisdiction included not just Christians and Jews, but students who were Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and more.  We welcomed them, of course; they were all children, all happy to be in Canada, all eager to learn, all wanting to belong.  We made a point to celebrate our differences, even as we rejoiced in our togetherness.

Our mission was to empower every student to learn, to achieve success, and to participate responsibly in a pluralistic, global society.

Christmas was still important, naturally, to our Christian families, but equally important to the newcomer families were the religious celebrations of their different faiths.  And because there were many of those, the schools gradually moved from their previously-universal focus on only one to smaller-scale acknowledgements of them all.

In short, we changed.  We encouraged coexistence and tolerance.  And to me, immersed in the evolving culture, the change seemed both natural and justified.  But to some, particularly among those heretofore part of the WASP establishment, the transformation was abhorrent.

Those people are taking our country away from us!  If they come here, they should follow our ways!  If they don’t like it, they should go back where they came from!

Racism and bigotry—which had always existed, if not always visibly—became ever more prevalent.

In the 1990’s, I moved to a smaller, rural jurisdiction well north of the city.  To my astonishment, I found the schools under my aegis there to be almost identical to those I had attended in the 1950’s.  As I visited the schools at Christmas, I felt as if I had stepped backwards in time.  Almost everyone was white; almost everyone, including the Indigenous families, was Christian.  As opposed to the seventy-six languages spoken by the families of students at the high school where my wife had worked in the city, the entire community spoke only three—English, French, and Ojibwe.

To my dismay, however, I found the same racism and bigotry among some (although by no means all) of the local populace.

Why do the Frenchies get their own schools?  They should go to Quebec if they want to speak French!

How come the Indians get a free education?  Us taxpayers are paying for it!

Today, more than twenty years later, as I look at events going on in the larger world around us, I hear and see many of the same sorts of things, most often from those who have always enjoyed the privilege and advantage that come from having been part of the establishment.  Racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia—expressed in all manner of vile ways across social media, particularly.  And too often voiced, or encouraged, by people who purport to be leaders.

The reason such things happen, I believe, is fear.  It is our fear of change—the fear of being displaced, overtaken, cast aside.  Collectively, we seem unable to recognize that there is enough here for all of us, that hoarding what we have from others diminishes, not only the hoard, but the hoarders, as well.

 So, I try to remember how, back in those long-gone, halcyon school-days, we tried to accommodate each other—people of all races, all religions, all genders, all socio-economic circumstances.  I try to remind those of my cohort from that era of the same thing.  And I try to convince the younger generations, those who have grown up in a meaner, less-tolerant, get-it-while-you-can society, how it could be so much better if we put ourselves in the shoes of the other.

That really is the only way I can make sense of it all.