Religious faith can do for the spiritual being what some miracle drug can do for its corporal counterpart. It can make you whole, offering healing, strength and even salvation, but taken in an excessive or improper dosage, it can be fatal. It seems to me that the difference between using religion for good and using it for ill depends on whether someone is driven by that faith to perform acts of charity, compassion and service to others, or if someone is using religion as a blunt object with which to beat people into submission. It's the difference between volunteering to be an ambassador of mercy for a loving god and becoming a vigilante aligned with a vicious and wrathful god.
Fundamentalists often master trivial minutia about their religion yet somehow manage to miss the larger point entirely. If they knew baseball the way they knew The Bible, they could easily tell you that Jack Cusick hit two triples as a member of the 1951 Chicago Cubs, but they would have no idea how many outs complete an inning. This disconnect comes from picking parts of The Bible they like, claiming they are the inerrant words of God by virtue of being in that book, while ignoring whatever biblical passages don't suit them. They also greatly overstate the impact that The Bible has on society. For example, look at Alabama's former Chief Justice, Roy Moore and his band of followers, whom I call "Moore-ons." Judge Moore was a hero to these people for refusing to remove a giant monument of the Ten Commandments, which he had installed in his courthouse. He argued that these commandments provide the moral foundation of U.S. law. Needless to say, he's not even close as I intend to show by this brief hypothetical tale:
Sanjay came to the United States with little more than the clothes on his back. His parents, devout Hindus (as is Sanjay, who keeps a statue of Vishnu in his room), demanded that he stay in India but the pull of America was too strong. He dreamed of having the things that Americans had, and he worked extremely hard, often seven days a week, all the while being a model citizen with no vices besides his mild profanity. He became successful and even married the woman of his dreams after she left her no-good husband.In this profile of the American Dream, our hero just broke seven of the Ten Commandments (see if you can spot them). That leaves only murder, theft and perjury, but I would point out that the correct term for people who think these three things should be illegal is not "Christians", "Jews" or "Americans"; the correct term is "Everybody". These were proscribed by societies before Moses was born and their prohibition is universal. The Ten Commandments all fall into one of three categories: 1) self-evident and thus redundant; 2) fairly inconsequential; and 3) flat out contradictory -- since "keeping up with the Joneses" is as American as apple pie, we would make coveting mandatory long before we would prohibit it. Moreover, does anyone really believe that a rape victim who takes God's name in vain by screaming, "Oh God, stop it!" has fundamentally violated our morality but the rapist hasn't?
When I look at hardcore right-wing "Christians" in this country I see little that would make Jesus proud. Jesus taught humility but these people maintain a hypocritical sanctimony much like the Pharisees Jesus detested. Jesus preached sharing whatever we had and condemned those who would amass wealth instead, but conservative Christian America swears that a system reflecting the motto, "I want more, more, more no matter how poor others may be" is the only one that isn't immoral. Where Jesus preached peace and loving our enemies, I see warmongers who kindle animosities as they spread division and hatred. Those who scream at the top of their lungs that they're Christians may not be the complete and perfect opposite of real Christianity, but they're certainly close. Gandhi said, "I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." This is terribly unfortunate since the path outlined by Jesus is a wonderful prescription for living, as are many spiritual paths advocated by other religions and by non-believers who push for a world of kindness, decency and peaceful coexistence.
