Afraid of the Extreme
I understand. After I moved away from an understanding of faith as fundamentalist Christian there always remained the gnawing fear that could they be right? To this day, decades and decades after I have moved away from the black-white approach of fundamentalism I still find myself cringing in fear. Or put more bluntly- what if they are right?
I have known "liberals" and radicals who seem to have the same determined certainty of belief that fundamentalists have. But there's often something different. Because the radical position is often the one going against the grain of accepted conventional wisdom in some way or another, that gnawing fear of being wrong is very present and very real.
I know there are radical leftist "fundamentalists." The Marxists often were that. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro are certainly that. In their countries and situations they use the power of fear to maintain their power.
In our nation that is the power of the extreme conservative position. It is based on an incredible amount of fear.
Over the past few days there has been a remarkable soap opera playing out between Republicans and Rush Limbaugh. He has been elevated to a position of incredible authority and insight. One day important Republican politicians (an oxymoron at this point?) will say that he is an entertainer or he is divisive. Limbaugh gets on the radio that afternoon and tells them to shut up and do their job. He lambastes them-- and they apologize. We didn't mean it, they say. You are the one with insight. We are listening.
Scary!
My gut tells me that we are on the edge of a McCarthyism-like crusade here- except this time the lunatic fringe isn't even elected to any office. He is a radio commentator with a lot of opinions who has managed to hijack the Republican party out of fear.
What if he is right?
Sadly it is a matter of yelling louder to make your point clearer. It works- sort of. Just look at all the airtime this has generated on both sides of the political fence. We in general are afraid of the extremes because they always sound so convinced of their rightness. There is never, absolutely never any sense of doubt in anything they say. There is never, absolutely never the slightest hint that the truth lies somewhere closer to the middle than where they are. The rest of us get kowtowed by that. We feel doubts. We feel uncertainties. On some issues more than others, but most of us have no understanding of that sense of complete, utter rightness that the fundamentalist approach is built on.
I have strong opinions that I want to share, hence I write this blog. Over the years my opinions have shifted- sometimes softer, sometimes more stubborn, sometimes more convinced. I have come to the opinion, that no opinion, not even mine, contains all the truth. The polarization that occurs in a time like we are in now is nothing new, but it is always dangerous. I hope that President Obama and other clear-thinking people of understanding will take the time to step away from the precipice of rhetoric that we are at. This is not the time or the place to drive us further apart.
Yes, on some things the fundamentalists may be right-
But so are the rest of us.
3 comments:
PMP - well, if they're right, your (and my) only hope is that God truly is gracious and merciful. You are correct in noting that the conservative forces focus on fear - for they live with that, I'm convinced. They are afraid of change, of losing what they have, of being wrong - and fear breeds anger and even hatred. I continue to focus on the Gospels and the life and teachings of Jesus - God' very word made flesh. No one can truthfully look at Jesus and conclude he was a conservative hate monger. Hang in there!
I have tried - with occassional success - to present my convictions and opinions (those are different creatures) with some awareness that I could be - often am - wrong. As I consider the possibility that I am dangerously wrong,I am comforted by the example of Bonhoeffer who did not claim that the attempt on Hitler's was morally justified but simply trusted in the mercy of God.
I recently read an analysis of Robert Browning's poem "Christmas Eve" by Clyde Ryals and thought you might find this quote interesting. "The poet here dramatizes his belief that no religious or philosophical point of view, no conceptual framework, no demonstrative proof can ever be adequate by itself. For every premise there is a context and a set of propositions taken for granted. For every argument there is a perspective unchallenged. For every moral or religious principle there are a social milieu, a set of cultural needs, and a history that makes such exercises intelligible and plausible. Like Foucault later, Browning (although within an idealist framework) recognizes
the reality of imprisonment, the incarceration of human beings within systems of thought and practice that have become so much a part of them that they do not experience these systems as a series of confinements but embrace them as the very structure of being human. In sum, the poet dramatizes his view that all embodiments are imperfect but necessary (because they are all one has to work with)."
Post a Comment