An editorial/thought for the day/sermon
Jul. 26th, 2005 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleA week or so ago, on a Live Journal community called ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mock_the_stupid, someone posted an entry quoting the reply of someone on a different message board to the idea of separation of church and state. This explained, using lots of expletives and spelling mistakes, that there was no reason for a separation of church and state because G-d created the church and the state and he was going to laugh when we baby aborting, heathen sodomites all burnt in hell. It would be easy to dismiss his comments as the ranting of a religious fanatic and refuse to engage with him. To be honest, looking at the tone of his post, maybe nothing could get through to him but I decided a better intellectual exercise would be to explain the reasons for a separation of church and state from within his world view. This also led me to examine for a belief in the separation of church and state within my world view.
Over the last week, spurred on by the prospect of meeting the rabbi at West London synagogue, and if I’m brutally honest by my lack of anything much better to do, I have begun to incorporate more prayer into my daily routine. The daily prayers are said three times a day, in the morning, the afternoon and the evening and their wording is laid out in my siddur. Quite clearly, in the prayer called the aleynu, which is included in all three prayer times, I pray for theocracy. I, a queer, liberal and all that jazz, pray for theocracy. And I’m not just going through the motions, I actually mean it. So how am I different from the religious nut mentioned above or, for that matter those who kill and maim in the name of Allah? Well, I pray and hope for theocracy. He, and people like him do not.
If you look at the word theocracy it means rule by G-d. Every day I pray for the day that G-d will rule over all the Earth like a king. Every government we refer to as a theocracy is ruled by people. Perhaps a better term for them would be rule by religion (my Greek isn’t up to working out the equivalent term for this). No person can be 100% sure they know what G-d’s will is. G-d is infinite; we are finite. We can not even understand a tiny fraction of G-d and G-d’s creation. It is important to understand this. This is why in the morning prayers we recite that before G-d “the intelligent are as if without incite, the wise as if without knowledge” and that even the difference between us and animals is like nothing. Anyone who claims to understand G-d’s plan is a fool or a liar.
But, you may say, we have scripture to tell as what to do. The problem, or perhaps the joy, of scripture is that it has to be interpreted, and different people come up with different interpretations. To read is to interpret and to translate even more so. This point was well made by Rabbi Greenberg when he mentioned that the 10 commandments can be translated as No, kill! No, commit adultery! This translation is as linguistically valid as the more usual one. Most people agree though that it is unlikely that G-d instructed the Israelites to covert their neighbours oxen. I give another, less flippant, example. Would the Christian theocracy some in the US crave allow divorce? It is very difficult to answer this question for the very good reason that Christian scripture says yes and no. Mark 10:11 clearly states that “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.”* However in Mathew 5:32 it says “ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness , causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced women commits adultery.”* allowing for divorce in certain circumstances. So your view on divorce depends on which gospel you read. Which is correct? Who knows?
All religious texts are full of these ambiguities and apparent contradictions. Over the past few weeks many Muslim leaders on the radio have quoted the line from the Quran “Whoever kills one person unjustly, is like killing the world entire” but they have tended to ignore or even omit that difficult little word “unjustly”. This word opens up a whole world of differences in interpretation. The London bombers would argue that their actions were just and so perfectly in line with the Quran.
Even if one is 100% convinced that their religion is completely correct and their scripture is the infallible word of G-d, a theocracy would require the interpretation of that scripture by fallible humans and so could not be relied on to enact G-d’s will. To forget this is to liken men to G-d and thus commit the terrible sin of idolatry. This is why I will continue, free of contradiction, to campaign for separation of state and religion and to pray for theocracy.
* NIV translation
mock_the_stupid, someone posted an entry quoting the reply of someone on a different message board to the idea of separation of church and state. This explained, using lots of expletives and spelling mistakes, that there was no reason for a separation of church and state because G-d created the church and the state and he was going to laugh when we baby aborting, heathen sodomites all burnt in hell. It would be easy to dismiss his comments as the ranting of a religious fanatic and refuse to engage with him. To be honest, looking at the tone of his post, maybe nothing could get through to him but I decided a better intellectual exercise would be to explain the reasons for a separation of church and state from within his world view. This also led me to examine for a belief in the separation of church and state within my world view.Over the last week, spurred on by the prospect of meeting the rabbi at West London synagogue, and if I’m brutally honest by my lack of anything much better to do, I have begun to incorporate more prayer into my daily routine. The daily prayers are said three times a day, in the morning, the afternoon and the evening and their wording is laid out in my siddur. Quite clearly, in the prayer called the aleynu, which is included in all three prayer times, I pray for theocracy. I, a queer, liberal and all that jazz, pray for theocracy. And I’m not just going through the motions, I actually mean it. So how am I different from the religious nut mentioned above or, for that matter those who kill and maim in the name of Allah? Well, I pray and hope for theocracy. He, and people like him do not.
If you look at the word theocracy it means rule by G-d. Every day I pray for the day that G-d will rule over all the Earth like a king. Every government we refer to as a theocracy is ruled by people. Perhaps a better term for them would be rule by religion (my Greek isn’t up to working out the equivalent term for this). No person can be 100% sure they know what G-d’s will is. G-d is infinite; we are finite. We can not even understand a tiny fraction of G-d and G-d’s creation. It is important to understand this. This is why in the morning prayers we recite that before G-d “the intelligent are as if without incite, the wise as if without knowledge” and that even the difference between us and animals is like nothing. Anyone who claims to understand G-d’s plan is a fool or a liar.
But, you may say, we have scripture to tell as what to do. The problem, or perhaps the joy, of scripture is that it has to be interpreted, and different people come up with different interpretations. To read is to interpret and to translate even more so. This point was well made by Rabbi Greenberg when he mentioned that the 10 commandments can be translated as No, kill! No, commit adultery! This translation is as linguistically valid as the more usual one. Most people agree though that it is unlikely that G-d instructed the Israelites to covert their neighbours oxen. I give another, less flippant, example. Would the Christian theocracy some in the US crave allow divorce? It is very difficult to answer this question for the very good reason that Christian scripture says yes and no. Mark 10:11 clearly states that “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.”* However in Mathew 5:32 it says “ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness , causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced women commits adultery.”* allowing for divorce in certain circumstances. So your view on divorce depends on which gospel you read. Which is correct? Who knows?
All religious texts are full of these ambiguities and apparent contradictions. Over the past few weeks many Muslim leaders on the radio have quoted the line from the Quran “Whoever kills one person unjustly, is like killing the world entire” but they have tended to ignore or even omit that difficult little word “unjustly”. This word opens up a whole world of differences in interpretation. The London bombers would argue that their actions were just and so perfectly in line with the Quran.
Even if one is 100% convinced that their religion is completely correct and their scripture is the infallible word of G-d, a theocracy would require the interpretation of that scripture by fallible humans and so could not be relied on to enact G-d’s will. To forget this is to liken men to G-d and thus commit the terrible sin of idolatry. This is why I will continue, free of contradiction, to campaign for separation of state and religion and to pray for theocracy.
* NIV translation
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-16 05:34 am (UTC)Also, you say that: 'Every government we refer to as a theocracy is ruled by people. Perhaps a better term for them would be rule by religion.' surely this misrepresents the direction of rule.. if it is in fact ruled by people under a religion then those that do not believe are outsiders and have no influence in the way the country is run... so in fact it is ruled by 'believers' of [said] religion and not of religion itself - as such, we who are imperfect in your eyes are obviously going to have skewed perspectives of the religion...religion itself cannot rule unless you truly believe that G-d is personified and can drop-down from on high and 'rule'?