Making waves

 

It's a popular myth that autistic people lack empathy. Dehumanising the Other has always been the first line of attack, hasn't it. However my experience has been the opposite. As I wrote earlier, I can feel pity for inanimate objects. I physically and mentally can't bear to be around trees being cut down, I kicked a beloved teacher when he organised a Piano Smash (what was that all about? If you've never heard of them you are younger than me!) And I have a strong sense of social (in)justice.

These days that is acknowledged as one of the defining traits of neurodivergent people. Who knew that the uncaring, cold, ASC types might actually lead the way in caring about the world?

One of my favourite Bible verses is Micah 6:8 - And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy  and to walk humbly with your God.

This was a verse we focused on for a whole year in the Methodist Church. I sometimes wish this was the only religious text we had, because it covers pretty much everything. For me, it sits with Jesus' summary of the Law: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 

I especially love the way Jesus takes an ancient text and adds in all your mind. We are not required to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast in order to believe in God. We are not supposed to swallow lies and regurgitate them to our children, to say that myths are history, to deny the amazing discoveries of scientists and to blindly believe that everything will be fine in the end, without bothering to play our part in the world. 

We are called to act justly - to be agents for good in the world. We are called to do this from a place of humility, with a whole-hearted intellectual integrity which never gives up striving to make the world a better place for everyone. We are to live life abundantly, with all the strength we have. And for those who can't - for those people, we are to seek justice.

I didn't realise as a teenager that I had hyper-focused on Christianity as my special interest. 

I didn't know that I had taken the call to read the Bible and listen to God way more literally than most of my peers. 

But looking back, I'm glad. I am especially glad that after some years of raging Evangelicalism, I opened my heart and mind to the ideas found in other religions, in science and humanism and atheism. I'm glad that I have always thought of God as my working hypothesis, and have been prepared to ditch anything which doesn't work. Amazingly, this has left me with Jesus - not necessarily the Jesus from my Evangelical days, but still a person whom I relate to in his loving humanity, his striving for a better world, his refusal to rule out miracles and his willingness to live humbly to the point of dying for his cause. 

Was he God? 

Aren't we all? My Evangelical teenage self would have scurried from such blasphemy. But she would have been taking my words a little too literally. 

As I said yesterday, aren't we all waves in that ocean which flows through history, which encompasses every living thing? Jesus is reported as saying that we are all one. That we are in him and he is in us as he was in God and God was in him. Convoluted, for sure. But it makes sense to me.

I believe that wherever we come from in terms of religious belief, the measure of a life well-lived is how it has affected others for good. 

This is why you can live in poverty yet overflow with human riches. 

This is why religion warns against materialism; anything which leads to physical and emotional security can be a distraction. And if that distraction leads us to a place where we don't care about those who are worse off, then we have gained the world and lost our soul.

Jesus didn't actually call people to be religious. He was a practising Jew who simply called others to live in such a way that Love was their guiding light.

If you live from a place of Love, then Justice becomes second nature.

Religions will always become warped, because they are organisations with people in them. And try as we might, our egos clamour for attention. 

But know this: for every Right Wing Christian polishing their gun and hoping for Armageddon, there are 20 you will never hear of praying for peace, volunteering in foodbanks, quietly running old people's lunches and living from a place of Love. 

There are Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and Jains praying for justice, marching for peace, feeding the poor and holding hope in their hearts in a despairing, violent world. People of every religion seeking to follow it humbly, hating what's being done in their name. 

There are humanists, atheists and those who don't label themselves at all - living lives filled with love and hoping against hope that one day we will build a better world. 







  

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