c. 2004 Religion News Service
(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. Visit his Web site at http://www.onajourney.org.)
(UNDATED) Michael Moore’s documentary film “Fahrenheit 9/11” isn’t for everyone.
For some, it preaches to the choir, adding fuel to their dismay over President George W. Bush. For others, it seems an unfair attack grounded in unlikely conspiracy theories. For many it is confusing.
What I take from it is a call to seriousness. These are serious times. This is a serious election. People intend us serious damage, not only foreign terrorists but partisans in our midst working to undermine the democratic process. We are engaged in a serious war, at a serious cost of life. By any measure, our economy is in serious trouble. Our commonwealth is seriously divided.
It is time for us to get serious.
It is time for us to get serious about information. Powerful tools of disinformation and misinformation are aimed at us from all sides. Lies and half-truths get repeated until they take on the aura of fact. If being informed means reading beyond headlines, checking out a newscast by doing our own research, and exploring serious issues with friends, so be it. It is difficult to overstate the damage that can be done by an uninformed electorate that considers itself possessed of all necessary fact.
It is time for us to care more about real people and less about celebrities. When your child has gone to war, your job is in jeopardy, your health is failing, or you are in love, who cares about entertainers? When the issue is freedom _ and that, believe me, is the issue at hand _ the fortunes of Shaq or Britney are insignificant. We need to turn off our televisions and talk to our children, partners and neighbors.
It is time for us in the religious world to get serious about our faith, fellowships and responsibilities. We have spent too many years perfecting our infrastructure, jousting for position, seizing shreds of power and privilege, demonizing our opponents, reducing the faith enterprise to sides-taking in culture wars, and hoping to influence politicians by press releases. It is time for us to serve more and bicker less.
We are becoming one more cultural diversion, wedged between Saturday crime drama and Monday football. Fear-mongering politicians tap our religious passions to set us against each other. While we argue about sex, lawyers fan out to every voting district, looking for ways to distort the electoral process. While we argue about doctrine and threaten schism, a ruling class compromises our civil liberties and funnels billions into their own pockets. While we aim blistering attacks on people who hold divergent views, truly demonic forces like hubris and greed have free rein.
It won’t be easy, fun or convenient for Americans to get serious. We have been “wishing on a star” for a long time. Being an informed citizen means more than waving a flag and naming an enemy. Being an informed citizen means reading newspapers and magazines, talking about political issues and candidates, and engaging with aggravating people. Love of country means more than hating someone. It means getting outside our cocoons and knowing our goodness and diversity.
For those whom faith guides, seriousness will take humility and self-control. Being serious about faith means time on our knees, time with our Bibles and time with each other. Servanthood starts in confronting our own demons, not the other guy’s.
Our denominations were born in discord, in the belief that we were right and all others wrong. Such triumphalism has led nowhere worth going. We know how to build structures for housing the like-minded, but little about building sustainable community. We know how to compete, but not how to cooperate. We know how to hate, with varying degrees of politeness, but not how to love in the way Jesus commanded.
As a result, politicians play us like violins. They flatter our clergy and then ask for membership lists. They throw out red-flag words like “values” and “marriage” and then, while we fume, get down to their real business.
Enough of our power grabs, enough of our quests for control and right-opinion, enough of our scowling at a changing and perplexing world.
It is time for us to get serious.
DEA/JL END EHRICH
