Searching for God # 60

Why is it that we all feel so much more confident with and in our own convictions?

What actually is a conviction anyway?

Under the umbrella, ‘religious/moral convictions: a strong opinion or belief. (from dictionary.cambridge.org)

However, considering its primary, conventional definition, we read again from dictionary.cambridge.org:

The fact of officially being found to be guilty of  particular crime, or the act of officially finding someone guilty.

In this space, many times the point of the incursion of culture into theology has been pointed out, and this may well be another example.

In American culture, legalized to the degree that no other even democratic culture has been, sustained by the mind-set of writing and then passing laws of encyclopedic depth and detail, and then trying to enforce them, the deployment of the word conviction is featured in virtually every newscast and daily paper. Someone, somewhere, has been found guilty, convicted, of some crime. With the abhorrent inception of ICE on the streets of several urban centres, now reports of many men and women who are not guilty or convicted of any crime are being deported, almost as a sycophantic execution of a whim and at the pleasure of the occupant of the Oval Office. Dominating Washington politics for the last several weeks has been the potential and now partial release of what have become known as the Epstein files, purportedly loaded with photos of prominent men who, as associates of an already convicted man for sex crimes against young women, whose reputations unfortunately are besmirched merely by photographic evidence, whether or not they had anything to do with the heinous acts.

Homeland Security, established following the 9/11 attack has effectively become another police force, looking for anyone who poses what is considered a threat to the homeland. Their website lists: Border and Immigration (CBP) secures ports of entry, while ICE handles interior enforcement and investigations, cybersecurity, counterterrorism. The FBI, another highly visible and extremely active, if clandestine, agency seeks to find, charge and ‘convict’ all those committing crimes under several headings: violent crime, International Violent Crimes, terrorism, counterintelligence. Their website lists ‘key threats’: gangs, Violent crimes against children, Indian Country Crime, Human Trafficking/involuntary Servitude, Bank Robbery, Art Crime. And then there are the state troopers, Sheriffs, and city and county law enforcement officers. Little wonder convictions dominate the public consciousness. There are literally whole armies of men and women trained, paid and deployed to seek out and to find, charge and convict wrong-doers. And we have not even mentioned the Justice Department the home of federal prosecutors, parallel to the state prosecutors.

Little wonder too that the various layers of courts have agendas jammed with cases, so many that some never even come to trial. However, this is not a critique of the American justice system, per se, merely a note to introduce the American dependence, reliance and elevation of the pursuit of convictions, based on millions of pages of laws, both state and federal, that seem to exact what might be called an national historic conviction (strongly held opinion, belief) in the literal and absolute meaning and interpretation of the Original Sin of Genesis.

Conflating ‘convictions’ when used the legal, criminal universe (a universe that experiences exponential growth, parallel to the growth of the insecurity of politicians and their laws) with ‘conviction’ used in a religious sense, signifying strongly held opinion and/or belief, is a pattern to which many millions have complied.

(Side bar)The argument for enhanced literacy, both learning and practice, is so desperately needed in North American culture that, as a former English instructor, I am embarrassed at the paucity of language skills, vocabulary depth and range, and the degree to which superficial, reductionistic literalisms abound, indeed pervade the consciousness of the culture.

It is not only in the steroidally infected legal system that a mind-set of ‘convictions’ pervades; there are other equally nefarious cultural and familial sources of ‘judgemental opinions’ that reinforce, enhance and sustain the perspective of ‘judgement’ (and its concomitant, conviction, guilt, shame). Starting with our parents, then our elementary teachers, secondary teachers, and employers, we have, each and every one of us, deeply buried in our unconscious, the voice of the critical parent, some have referred to it as the ‘crow’ perched on the shoulder of everyone.

The church has a significant archetypal role to play in the drama of the application and implications of the concept of ‘conviction’ in the environment in which we live. Morality, that ubiquitous, pervasive and highly imperceptible ‘guard dog’ of public order and decency, (at least the minds of those in authority) has been subsumed by the church as its exclusive domain. “Let the state take care of the fractures of the legal system, and we in the church we take care of the fractures in moral and ethical behaviour” seems to be the mind-set of the church taken together as an institution of many sects, denominations and faiths. Common to both is the word, ‘behaviour’ as human  beings, in this culture has also been reduced and too often defined by ‘their individual behaviour. Sad and tragic is this last reality given that behaviour has so many root sources, most of which can be fenced into ‘human will’.

In a culture dominated by literalism, empiricism and also behaviorism all of that governed by a reductionistic binarism, everyone comes to consider him/herself as either a judge or a defendant. And, add to this sulphuric mix in the cultural petre dish the insidious, intoxicating, mind-numbing, universal, fashionable and globally demanded by all generations, scourge of social media, where one can be a ‘judge’ convicting others anonymously, and thereby with total immunity. And this power in the hands and finger-tips of youth, adolescents, and even angry, immature and unreflective adults, has secured so many ‘faux convictions’ and unnecessary and preventable suicides, as well as emotional and social injuries, for which the corporate monsters will never have to be accountable or responsible.

(Incidentally, the legislators who like to champion the latest ‘bells and whistles’ that can generate billions of income (and potential tax revenue) without stringent and prior ‘quality control’ are complicit in those social media deaths, just as they are in the illicit and prescription drug deaths from drugs that were not subjected to extensive clinical trials prior to distribution.)

Even, or should I saw especially, the church, with its behavioural perspective that is congruent with the culture’s fixation, is shamefully a participant in the evolution of an ethos of judge/jury/conviction. Even the psychological archetype of Freud’s super-ego, as a name for that internal psychic critical parent, is another of the social archetypes that embed and almost justify a widely-held normalizing of such attitude.

Parenting in and through exaggerated swings from excessive and highly caloric menus, and an operating room hygiene as intimate components and billboards of ‘love’ linked with excessive and inappropriate punishments for minor demeanours, a pattern with which many can identify, tends to lead to a perception of instability, uncertainty, enhanced and critical judgement of authority, and that old adage, ‘a chip on the shoulder’ (for some even a whole tree). If that last sentence sounds ‘grounded in experience,’ it is.

And, amidst all of the mind-set of convictions, commonly known more recently as ‘political correctness gone wild’ or WOKE,  there is the inevitable backlash and with that the predictable ‘collateral damage’. Like an oscillating pendulum, look for example at the viscious and exaggerated and unjustified attempt to erase all evidence of social programs under the rubric, DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion). WOKE is an originally African-American  term meaning awareness of racial prejudice, which has been arrogantly, and condescendingly and poisonously inflicted by MAGA as if it were a verbal ‘bullet’ against African Americans and others, especially the LGBTQ+ community.

It is on the cusp of this last ‘divide’ on which religion has become impaled. Those preferring the conservative derisive WOKE whether publicly admitting their preference or not, are reaping recruit rewards, (Anglican priests converting to Roman Catholic in UK, for example). Those trying to walk a moderate, even reflective path are considered by many to be ‘spineless, weak, and untrustworthy.’

Think about a culture drowning in a legal and national security ‘obsessive-compulsive’ mind-set of ‘fear of risk’ from both inside and outside, multiple bureaucratic edifices dedicated to ‘protecting’ the public from risk, a media gorging on the stuff of such stories, (especially the tabloids), a social media that devours ‘clicks’ for sensational, salacious deluges of stories, whether true or not, that ‘convict’ a subject of heinous behaviour, a geopolitical environment rife with cyber-criminals and state actors highly reliant on their spread of propaganda lies, and an underlying ‘behaviour’addicted’ binary perception and attitude, and imaging attempting to discern what is both important and relevant and authentic as both state and faith ‘interventions’ as  amelioratives and neutralizing and perhaps even reducing the shared risks.

And then, try to tell this scribe that it is both feasible and justifiable to maintain a ‘separate church and state’ philosophy. On this one the Muslims have some perspective worthy of consideration….without deferring to a Caliphate, one of the more dangerous of all the insidious forces plaguing the planet, along with rising temperatures and political insouciance.

There can be little doubt that the ‘specifics expectations of Muslims’ especially with respect to their marriage of their faith and their political life has emboldened many fundamentalist Christians as a response to the ‘fear’ of any and all iterations of ‘taking’ or losing control.

Indeed, those on the far right, consider this as a moment of inflection risking the withering, or the reduction or even the elimination of the Judao-Christian culture of Western civilization. Strident, and deliberate disregard of laws, norms, conventions and previously enshrined values and expectations of how people treat others are all part of the ‘war-room’ thinking and execution of the far right in America, and elsewhere.

Opportunistic state actors can readily see the advantages of joining this movement, enhanced and injected with energy to restrict immigrants and refugees especially from North Africa and like each one of us, the churches are caught in a catch 22. If they support the Christian, nationalism of the white supremacists, they will ignite a back-lash from moderates, liberals, and migrants and minority populations. If they reject the far-right Christian nationalism of the white supremacists, they will be accused of being spineless, weak, accommodating and appeasing.

The cultural war in which we are already engaged, wants the world to break into another binary choice. To succumb to such a simplistic, reductionistic, literal, empirical behaviour and binary choice is to abandon our inherent, God-given, creative, sensitive, resilient, imagination as well as that hope of which Moltmann has written, the hope left after all evidence for hope has disappeared.

Rather than focus on personalities, on specific crimes and savage behaviour, we might take a step back and recognize the trap into which the ‘war-monger’, tyrannical wannabees, and white supremacist Christian nationalists, of all stripes, along with the radicalized fundamentalists of the Muslim and Jewish faiths.

Our mystic, mysterious, puzzling and enigmatic, yet searching and probing and hoping and apagaic loving for a reasonable, attainable and imaginable reconciliation, not only between and among the major faiths communities, but also, for the sake of our children, grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren, a reconciliation into a more subtle, more nuanced, more creative, and collaborative, and co-operative mind-set.

The mind-set of violence, war, evisceration of laws and norms and institutions, without creative, muscular and collaborative (with surrendered  agency from all, including the various faith communities) alternatives, arrived at in a spirit of co-operation, respect, dignity and integrity, is predictably one that victimizes each and every one of us currently living on the planet.

The spectre of a God within, among, as an integral part of each of us, need not remain as an intellectual spectre.  It can and must shift to a ‘conviction’ in the religious sense, helping to remove the legal, moral, ethical, intellectual and philosophical and political and military shackles in which we have become ensnared.

First step is to recognize and to acknowledge that we are all currently, some more voluntarily than others, in an economic, political, ideological, literal, empirical binary and highly constricting template. We can all paint by number in this template. And as Leonard Cohen prophetically reminds us if we are prepared to listen, to repeat, to play again, to listen again, to repeat as we begin to thaw this frozen template that has gone far past its ‘best-before-date’:

Everybody Knows

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor the rich get rich

That’s how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows the boat is leaking

Everybody knows that the captain lied

Everybody got that broken feeling

Like their father and their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets

Everybody wants a box of chocolates

And a long-stem rose 

Everybody knows…….(verse omitted)

Everybody knows that the Plague is coming

Everybody knows that it’s moving fast

Everybody knows that the naked man and woman

Are just a shining artifact of the past

Everybody knows that the scene is dead

But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed

That will disclose

What everybody knows

And Everybody knows that you’re in trouble

Everybody knows what you’ve been through

From the bloody Cross on top of Calvary

To the beach of Malibu

Everybody knows it’s coming apart

Take one last look at this Sacred Heart

Before it blows

Everybody knows