Believers, Practitioners, and Pietists

Though I am writing this article from a Christian point of view I believe the observations are true of any particular religion or belief system. Make adjustments as necessary for you.

Most Americans claim they are Christian; 83% by a recent ABC poll, 78.4% by the Pew Foundation. 4.7% are Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim etc. And 16.1% are unaffiliated; 1.6% atheist, 2.4% agnostic. 12.1% nothing in particular. A further breakdown shows 51.3% are Protestant, 23.9% Roman Catholic and small percentages of Mormon, Jehovah Witnesses, and Orthodox. Evangelicals have the largest slice of protestant, 26.3% and Mainline churches have dropped to 18.1%. (I would add Roman Catholic to the Mainline group.)

More than enough data to show most folk say they are Christian or something. This is the group of people I call “believers” in this article. They believe in a deity whether they are affiliated with an organized religion or not, they believe. In my tradition, Presbyterian we define Christians very simply: one who believes in Jesus Christ and Lord and Savior. That’s it. We all have specific ideas, theologies, to debate about, but most simply we just believe in Jesus/God.

With that said a Gallup poll reports that 40% of the population attends church on a somewhat regular basis. Other studies such as a 2005 study in The Journal for Scientific Study of Religion by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler report that the actual number of people attending church each week is more like 17.7%; this is based on what churches report in attendance. In other word when asked we are less that truthful about our actual practices. There are lots of people who claim affiliation with a denomination but do not actually belong to that denomination. There is a disconnect here which I find thought provoking.

This leads me to my next thought; the difference between believers and practitioners of religion. Believing in God or Jesus and practicing the teachings of God or more specifically Jesus appear to me is a much different thing. I can’t find any data here but my educated guess after years of serving churches is that most members of a church, let alone those who claim religious affiliation or belief are biblically illiterate. They may know some biblical stories but may ignore their teaching or morals. They may profess belief but they do not follow the teachings of religion in their daily living.

Jesus simply summarized the Christian practice as loving God with our total being and loving others as much as we love ourselves. That should pretty much prove my point there. People may indeed love God but more than other things, probably not. If you observe human behavior we put a lot things ahead of God such as family, job, country, money, security, sports, etc. It is where we spend our time and money and effort. Even for those who give up an hour a week to worship God, may pretty well ignore God the rest of the week.

Jesus often gets pretty specific in what it means to be a practitioner of belief. His parables point these principles out well and the sermon on the mount/plain also are quite clear. Take the beatitudes part of that sermon: being poor of spirit, mourning, meekness, thirsting for righteousness, merciful, purity of heart, peacemaking, suffering persecution for beliefs… Do most folk even know what they mean? Jesus says we will be happy if we do those things. I think he is right, but most people do not practice those things. Turning the other cheek seems sissy like to most folk, being neighborly and wanting to take care of others flies in the face of being number one, we prefer completion to cooperation, and the common good – forget it.

We know the great practitioners of faith whether they are Christian or not. We see and are inspired by the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela; people of tremendous vision faith and practice. But they are few and far between. I am not saying that you have to be a great leader of people to be a practitioner of faith, there are many who are great practitioners who get no press at all, but they are still uncommon.

My point is simple. In our world we give lip service to belief, but we follow other rules that the rules of the great religions in our daily living and even regard those rules as impractical and stand in the way of our goals in life. My guess is most of us know that.

Now to a final group almost as a footnote to this article. This is the group I call by an old fashioned term, pietists. Even my word processor doesn’t even recognize the term. It has been defined as a movement in the Lutheran Church in 17^th century Germany as folk who stressed piety over religious formality and orthodoxy. That is a good idea, but the more popular version is those folk who put on a good show of religion but that’s about it.

Jesus put it well when he portrayed the Pharisee (the religious legalists of his day) who prayed, “Thank God I am not like those ordinary folk; the low lived robbers, nasty folk and tax collectors. I’m a good dude, I don’t cheat, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t sin.” Are you kidding me he was a self deluded spiritual snob and Jesus called him as such preferring those who clearly admitted their sins and asked for forgiveness.

My guess is those pious jerks are about in equal numbers in and out of organized religion. I don’t expect it to be any different. Lots of folk like to talk about hypocrites in churches as though there weren’t an equal amount of hypocrites outside the church. The church may be the visible embodiment of the body of Christ, but it is also a human institution filled with folk who screw up, sin just like folk in every other part of life.

None of us should be about the business of pointing fingers, though that is what I am doing in part, in this article. Instead we should be trying to practice our beliefs whether they are religious or humanistic. We should be working for the common good and taking care of all our neighbors. In doing that we show our love of God and our thankfulness to God and God’s creation.

Do You Want to Talk About It?: A Trip to the Vet

Thursday

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Lamont.

“No,” replied Patch.

“Nope,” replied Paw.

Friday

“ Do you want to talk about it now?” asked Lamont.

“Nope,” said Paw and Patch in unison.

Saturday

“Are you ready to talk about it now?” asked Lamont.

“Okay,” said Patch.

“Yeah,” replied Paw.

“Well, as you know last week the human servants brought home these plastics boxes and assembled them,” said Lamont.

  

“Yeah,” replied Paw. “At the time we thought they were very interesting.”

“Indeed,” said Patch. “We took turns going into the boxes as we like enclosed spaces. I guess it is a cat thing. And then they put in some nice soft towels.”

“I thought they had gotten a playhouse for each of us,” said Paw.

“Little did we know what was in their minds? Even you Lamont with your mind fogging powers failed to discern their intentions, “ said Patch with a little sniff.

“And then there was the fateful Thursday,” continued Lamont. “They brought out all three plastic boxes with wire doors. I think that is when they put in the soft towels. And one by one we innocently entered each box and as soon as we were in they closed those wire doors behind us and we were locked in!”

“Caged!” said Patch.

“Then one by one Meugh picked up each of us in our plastic boxes are took us outside, “said Patch. “It was cold out there. We’re not used to that”

“And then he put us in our little plastic boxes in a big white box in the garage,” continued Paw.

“They call the big white box a car,” stated Lamont. “Then a big door the cage in the big white box was opened after Meugh and Mewreen got into the big white box with us.”

“Oh yes,” added Patch. “Then Meugh made the big white box make strange noises and the big white box backed out of the bigger box it was in and we drove down the highway where our mother got flattened by the truck two years ago.”

“We drove and drove and drove and finally stopped,” said Paw. “Then Mewreen went into a strange building and Meugh began picking up our little plastic boxes are carried us into that building where we all ended up in a strange room with strange people.”

“One guy there wrote down some stuff on a piece of paper and they let us out of our plastic boxes in the strange room,” said Lamont. “It was good to be out of the boxes and our curiosity took over and we began to explore this new place. I took the lead of course.”

“Then a lady came in and talked to Mewreen and Meugh and picked us up one by one and put us on a platform and said a number,” continued Paw. “I think it was our weight. You know, I think she thought we were a bit fat.”

“Fat!” exclaimed” Patch. “Lucky she didn’t put Meugh on that thing. He would have busted it. His stomach has been growing all winter if you haven’t noticed.”

“I really hated it when the lady poked a stick with cotton on the end of it into both of my ears and poked about,” said Patch. It really didn’t hurt but it wasn’t pleasant either.”

“All our hearts were beating a mile a minute,” said Paw. “It was very scary. And then the lady poked needles into us twice each, which didn’t seem to hurt for some reason.”

“Yes, and then she put some goo on our necks, why I’ll never know,” added Patch.

“Finally, they put us all back into our plastic boxes and Meugh carried us back out to the big white box and we went home,” sighed Paw.

“Out of those plastic boxes at last,” exclaimed Lamont. “After a bit, Mewreen gave us some nice tuna from a can. I think she was trying to make amends for our traumatic experience.”

“Well,” said Paw. “as traumatic as it was I’m glad we’ve finally talked about it and gotten it out in the open.”

“Yes,” replied Patch. “It is good to get these things out in the open and to vent our feelings. It was very therapeutic. I’m glad we’ve had our say.”

“Enough,” said Lamont. “We’ve talked about it and we are finally back to our usual activities of bird watching and tracking beasties under the refrigerator and getting lots of attention from the servants. I think we can leave it there.

Tax Day

I writing this on April 15^th, or last chance to pay your taxes day; unless you file for an extension or if you are very rich and have super lawyers and lobbyists so you don’t have to pay tax day.

I want to pay more taxes. There, I’ve said it. I want to pay more taxes and I people who make what we do or more to pay more taxes. I want progressive taxes so the more you have the more your pay; that is a fair tax plan. I don’t want folk who make less that I do to pay any taxes that was the original tax plan in this country.

In fact, I want to pay 40 to 50% of our income in taxes. And I want that graduated so that the upper 1 percent are paying 90% of their income in taxes. (It used to be that way you know and the rich still got richer.)

With that said, I want benefits for those taxes. I want free healthcare for everyone in the country (free meaning we’ve already paid for it in our taxes.) I want free education for everyone to go as far as they want in education; that will make our country stronger and more competitive. I want free internet and utilities and get all those greedy… I want good highways, good rail system, and plane service with set prices. I want all politicians to run for office with a set amount given by the government with no outside money coming in for vested interests so they can do what is best for the common good rather than those who line their pockets the most. I want an adequate living allotment upon retirement. I want lots of government research in alternative energy systems so the world doesn’t collapse in the next few years. I want free childcare for couples and significant parental leave when a couple has a child. I want folk who can’t find employment guaranteed a living wage and incentives and education to they can find meaningful work. I also want them to work on government projects while they are unemployed. I probably want more things than I can think of right now.

You know there are countries that do exactly that and they don’t sit around on April 15^th or whatever their tax day is complaining but are happy because they realize they have all these benefits that give them a sense of security. They are freed up to think about what they want to do with their lives that will give the meaning and purpose. I want them confident that their government will look out for their welfare because that is their job and it is an important one.

With that said, I do not believe there is anything wrong with a market system but it should be a highly regulated one. But most developed countries realized that absolutely free markets just don’t work because they get abused. Just look at history in this country when the Rockefellers and the Carnegie’s and other robber barons were seized control of the free enterprise system creating monopolies that drove out small businesses and raked off huge profits. Today Walmart, Oil companies, Wall Street, replaces them, etc. with the same outcome; a class system where a few lived well and the majority worked hard but couldn’t get ahead. Let me and they pay more taxes and have a more equitable system. We need to get serious about anti-trust legislature again.

P.S. I also want to re-establish the draft system with no exceptions. Everyone should serve their country for 2 years in some fashion whether it is as a soldier or another form of service.

Equal Pay for Equal Work

This morning I heard on CBS the continuing debate on women getting less than men for equal work; 77 cents for women compared to $1.00 for women. We voted for equal pay 50 years ago, but something has gone amiss. Almost everyone agrees this is wrong but how to address the problem varies a good deal.

One of the participants in the discussion on CBS, whose name I don’t remember had recently, written a book on the topic, the name of the book I also don’t remember. What I do remember is her argument. She maintained that women are just not aggressive enough when it comes to negotiating contracts and that they have lower expectations in terms of salary and that the lack the confidence that men have in demanding higher pay.

While I can agree there is merit with each of her points, I think there is something missing from these discussions. Her points all seem to me to say that women should be more like men when it comes to demanding salaries. Has anyone considered perhaps it should be the other way around?

CEOs, largely men in our society are getting higher and higher salaries; obscene salaries in fact. The estimates vary but I see figures in the Huffington Post to CNN say CEOs ear 127% more than the average worker to 380 times more. Shouldn’t we be talking more about the relative value of work between workers and highly paid executives? And shouldn’t we add to the conversation that aggressive male techniques of demanding more and more money are just plain greed at the expense of others?

Perhaps we should also add to the conversation that lots of folk have an exalted idea of the worth, are egotistical and are just pigs at the material trough? Men in our society are typically trained to be more competitive and aggressive than women in all types of interactions. Women on the other hand have role models that lift up cooperation, mutual respect and cooperative efforts. Studies in the past on synergistic principles (cooperative) are more effective in the long run than competitive models. We also see the company loyalty pays off in the long run as well – compare Japanese corporations to American corporations where Japanese workers on all levels stay with a company that cares for them all their lives compared to job jumping to go up the economic ladder in this country. A lot of wasted effort and training is used in our competitive model.

Instead of saying that women should become more like men in the marketplace, perhaps we should be promoting men to become more like women in the marketplace. The Shark Tank may make for good TV but does in make the best sense economically? I don’t think so.

In a social Darwinist dog eat dog type of mentality there is the allusion that the most fit rise to the top. I doubt that, perhaps we just have the greediest rising to the top, which in the long run makes us less competitive than those companies and countries with more of a yin and yang balance. For example, look at the styles of a lot of the young entrepreneurs in the electronics field that have very strange cooperative, team operated management systems that are making huge bucks and sharing them.

P.S. I now know who wrote the book and its name. The book is Womenomics by Claire Shipman and Katy Kay. Katy Kay was the one I saw on CBS and works as the BBC anchor for the BBC World News America. Claire Shipman works for ABC news. Looks like a good book.