In the course of civilization—or
what has passed as civilization—there have been a precious few courageous souls
who have pushed against the tide of propriety.
In the mid-eighteenth century, when slavery
was at its peak, the American Quaker John Woolman traveled from one farmhouse
to the other and simply asked some troubling questions. What does the ownership
of slaves do to your moral being? What
spiritual legacy does it leave for your children? He did not preach. He did not
scold. He gently questioned. And, amazingly, he did it for thirty years. As a
result of his persuasion, the Quakers were the first to outlaw the ownership of
slaves, some one hundred years before the American Civil War.
On March 3, 1913, eight thousand women, led
by Alice Stokes Paul, marched for women’s suffrage from the Capital to the
White House. Not everyone was in
agreement. In the crush of antagonists, one hundred suffragists were
hospitalized while the police looked the other way.
Abel Meeropol composed, and Billie Holiday sang,
the haunting strains to “Strange Fruit”:
“Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging
from the poplar trees.” The year was
1939, and one club owner after the other disallowed Holiday from singing the soul-searching
protest song.
These people were not always embraced by
their compatriots. All too often they were reviled as enemies of the state. But thanks to them—and to their inspired
progeny—those days are gone. Today no mindful citizen would ever challenge
their revolutionary pleas for the end of slavery, women’s inequality, and racist
lynching.
And now I introduce another outrageous
claim—one that, once again, may be reviled by the popular masses. Inspired by John
Woolman, I will simply pose a few disquieting questions. My hope is that the ideas may be considered
mindfully—unfiltered by unchallenged doctrines.
These are my questions:
Is God real? Did he create all living things?
If he is real, does he love us more than we could ever imagine? Is his eye
truly on the sparrow—and on every other living thing?
If God’s love is boundless, how is it
possible that two of his smallest creatures—mosquitoes and tropical freshwater
snails—are responsible for an annual death toll of one million people, most of
whom are children? Are we being punished? Are we being taught a lesson? Is our
faith being tested? Are we being taught to love God more fully, more purely?
Are Christians right when they argue that all
evil comes from Satan? But if that is true, what do we do with Isaiah 45:7 that
reads “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I
the Lord do all these things”? Or what do we make of Lamentations 3:38 that
reads, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good
things come?”
And is Satan even real? When Jesus said to
Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” was he singling out the “rock of the church” as
an omnipotent and evil fallen angel? Or was Christ merely drawing on the Hebrew
translation of “Satan” as “an adversary”? Likewise, when Jesus referred to
Judas as “a devil” was he telling the world that his disciple was indeed a
monstrous demon, or was Judas, however flawed, just an ordinary human being?
And although one million annual deaths by
mosquitoes and snails are horrific, what should we make of the forty-five-million
global abortions each year?
Is
God off the hook because humankind is blessed with free will? Was it not the
Supreme Being who gave us independent will and an implacable sex drive? Should not an omniscient God know what he was
creating? Should he not have predicted the murderous wedding of two volatile
and voracious human temperaments—sex and free will?
Would any decent father place his
children—born and unborn—in the path of so much misery? When I was a child, my
father might scold me or even apply a wakeup swat to my backside, but would he
ever choose to kill me? Would any conscionable father murder his child to teach
a lesson?
Those are my questions.
I realize that my inquires may go against the
grain in a country where seventy-seven percent of the population believes in
angels. I also understand that for many, perhaps for most, the concept of a
loving God is comforting—what the evangelist, Billy Graham, celebrated as “life’s
greatest joy.” For those believers I am genuinely happy that they have found a
wellspring of peace.
However (to conclude with a few additional rhetorical
questions), may the same grace be extended to a nonbeliever? May the source of
personal peace be secular? May a moral
life be based on the scriptures of nature and social civility? May that creed be
the extent of one’s faith? May nonbelievers live a life of independence—free
from the restraints of doctrine or dogma? May they be guided by good sense and
compassionate sensibilities?
To speak personally, for these precious few
days on earth—a blink of an eye in cosmic chronology—may I live a life of peace
and honor by the good graces that nature gave me? With deference to all other religious
and philosophical penchants, may I be granted, without derision or disdain, the
right to be a freethinker—a free man?
