Lord Save Me From Certainty and Jerry Falwell

by guest blogger Joe Hack

I was thinking as I sucked down my jolt of caffeine this morning, and flicked idly through the fairy stories that make up most of the mainstream ‘news’, that there are two kinds of people in the world; those who say with certainty things like ‘there are two kinds of people in the world’ and everyone else. I believe I must fall into the latter category because I’m finding it increasingly difficult to be deal with certainty. I can handle moral ambiguity all day long but Lord preserve us all from people who are certain. Those flushed with certainty and its close-companion, self importance, are just plain trouble. They can’t stop themselves from meddling and trying to control the lives of others and, in doing so, they make everyone else miserable. The harsh truth is that zealots of all pursuasions, in their childlike moral certainty, have caused more suffering and death through history than any number of evil dictators or nuclear bombs or serial killers. Lives are still being blighted on a daily basis by sometimes well-intentioned people who are absolutely sure that their way of living is the best and only way. Just as dangerous, and infinitely more disgusting, are the sleazy politicians and tv evangelists and newspaper columnists who cynically wrap fake moral certainty around themselves like a flag to excuse the inexcusable. The fact is, life is very rarely black and white. Don’t believe anyone who pretends otherwise and always look for the shades of grey.

I guess what prompted these ruminations was the news about the ‘Reverend’ Jerry Falwell’s death. What a guy ! I’ve read some of his Christian fundamentalist rantings and, frankly, he reminded me of nobody so much as the Taliban. I guess that fundamentalists of all persuasions, Christian and Islamic, must share the same basic DNA. They’re programmed to destroy. That was never really a problem as long as the Islamic fundamentalists just limited themselves to blowing each other up and the Christian fundamentalists simmered away angrily, largely unseen and unloved, somewhere south of the bible belt. What changed was when George Bush’s brain, Karl Rove, came up with the unholy idea of forging an alliance between the extreme-right neo-con wing of the republican party and the even extremer-right Christian fundamentalists. It was a marriage made in hell but, for a short tawdry time, it served its purpose. Bush and the neo-cons got into the Whitehouse on the back of the fundamentalist vote and the likes of Jerry Falwell got exposure and influence at a level unwarranted by their loony-tune beliefs. As a great man once said though, you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cant fool all of the people all of the time. So gradually the unholy alliance of the Bush neo-cons and the Christian fundamentalists has dissolved into internecine bickering as the sleaze of the former and bigotry of the latter have collided like two nasty old tom-cats fighting in a sack. Someone asked Jimmy Carter in an interview the other day how he dealt with his very strong Christian faith while he was President of the USA. You know what he said ? He said that he built a wall between the two because the constitution of the United States was very carefully and wisely set up to ensure a separation between church and state. Good for you Jimmy ! If only some other politicians had been as honorable. So lets make a deal, shall we ? A deal to be more patriotic in future. To really honor the constitution and treat with distrust and contempt any politician who tries to use his ‘Christian certainty’ as a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card in the game of politics ? Because you just know anyone who does that is likely to be a scoundrel, don’t you ?.

Want to hear my thought for the day ? It’s ‘ Don’t Follow Leaders’. Seems to me like the very act of putting yourself forward as a political or spiritual leader is deeply suspicious and should automatically debar anyone from being taken seriously. Remember, moral uncertainty is unlikely to kill you. Dogmatic belief has a fine track record of doing just that. And you can tell anyone who says different that Joe Hack told you so..