Recently, a quote from an Obama speech has been floating around the internet. I'm not sure why it has become so popular all of a sudden since the speech was made in 2006, but I've seen it posted on Facebook multiple times in the last few days. Here is the text of the quote:
"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."-Barack Obama
Now, there is a sense in which I agree with President Obama. We will never be able to discuss issues effectively if my only reason for believing something is that the Bible says so and you don't believe that the Bible is truth. But that is about where my agreement ends, and in fact, this view that we hold in common leads me to a rather opposite view.
What I think Obama is missing here is what it means to be "religiously motivated". His speech assumes that my religion is a part of my life, a portion of my beliefs, that I can pay attention to or ignore as I will. But that is not the case, because in fact, my belief in the God of the Bible is the foundation for all my beliefs, and ideally every belief I hold stems from this underlying truth. Therefore, either my belief in the God of the Bible will be (explicitly or implicitly) involved in all of my political discourse, or I must recuse myself from politics entirely.
The real problem is this idea of "universal values". There simply is not such a thing. I suspect if there were, we would eventually be able to come to some sort of political consensus. But this is not possible, because my values are inherently "religiously motivated". I know no others. Similarly you, if you are not "religiously motivated", have a basic set of beliefs that your values come from that may not make sense to me. I suspect that even if we were able to find a set of values that every person in the United States could agree on, a person from Bangladesh would find them completely foreign. The idea of "universal values" as Obama means it here is a farce. We all have different assumptions that form our beliefs, and when we talk around them it makes it even harder for us to see eye to eye.
This is why I think that our discourse would be much more civil if we instead acknowledged these underlying assumptions. You will never understand my arguments unless you understand what belief system they flow out of; similarly, I will never understand your arguments unless I understand your underlying worldview. Instead of fleeing from any mention of religious beliefs in political discourse, I think that we should welcome the opportunity to understand more fully what is behind the beliefs of those with whom we disagree. It may not allow us to come to a consensus, but democracy requires no such thing. It will simply allow us to make sense to each other in a way that is quite impossible otherwise.
There are two other problems that I have with this quote, which I will deal with much more briefly. The first is this: I take great issue with the implication that religiously motivated concerns are not amenable to reason. With the assumptions that I hold, my belief system is rationally sound, and reasonable discourse can certainly be achieved within it. A claim to the contrary would imply lack of knowledge of the underlying assumptions, a problem which can be solved by allowing the underlying assumptions into political discourse, as I proposed above.
Lastly, the claim that removal of religious discourse is demanded by democracy seems to go against what the founding fathers of our country intended our democracy to be. From the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." If the very foundation of our democracy required a reference to the Creator, I find it odd to believe that our democracy demands that we avoid making any such reference. I like to believe that our democracy welcomes such discourse as a way of including each individual in the political process of this excellent nation.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Crazy, Stupid... ?
It seems like every three days there's a new story about another celebrity marriage falling apart. In Hollywood a 5-year marriage is an incredible accomplishment; 10 years is a lifetime. None of them actually seem to last forever. And while the lives of movie stars are far from being representative of the general population, we certainly are not immune from the culture of divorce. It's everywhere.
I will go ahead and admit from the start: I'm not married. I have no idea what it's like to be married; I cannot speak to this from experience. But I get that it's hard. I understand that there are many things that cause marriages to fail, and I know that there is much pain involved in these situations. That is not something I want to make light of at all.
That said, I was watching the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love the other day, and as I thought about it there was something that began to bother me. (Aside from the title's ridiculous punctuation.) At first glance the main point of the film seems rather inspiring: the two main characters have a marriage that is falling apart and decide to get a divorce, but by the end of the movie they come to believe their marriage is worth fighting for. It's honest about the difficulty of marriage but hopeful about the possibility of working it out. How nice; let's all go home and have some ice cream.
But what their change in outlook comes from is the rather creepier storyline involving their son. He's a thirteen year-old boy who is "in love" with his seventeen year-old babysitter. She does not return his affections because, well, he's a thirteen year-old boy, but also because she's "in love" with his father. Creeped out yet? Yeah, me too. Creepy details aside, however, at one point our little thirteen year-old boy tells his father that said babysitter is his soul mate, and when it's your soul mate, you don't give up. Adorable, right? Oh, except that babysitter has asked him to stop bothering her, and she doesn't seen to be appreciating his repeated advances. More creepy.
Of course, in the end, thirteen year-old boy gets worn out by endless rejection and is about to give up, when his dad gets up at his 8th grade graduation ceremony (creepy?) and reaffirms that when you find "the one" you don't give up. Nice for him to say, because he's married to his "the one", less nice for his son. But of course, babysitter comes around--not just yet, but she'll reconsider when they're older. Adorable.
But why do dad and son keep trying to work out their relationships with their respective women? What is the driving force? The fact that they've found their soul mate. And how do they know that they've found their soul mate? It's unclear. What do they do in their given situations if they decide that the woman is not their soul mate?
And that's where we have the problem. We seem to have an idea as a culture that if you find the right person, your marriage will work out, and that if you're unhappy then you married the wrong person, and there's a right one out there that you missed. And usually, if you get a divorce to try to find that right person, the next one isn't going to be the right one either.
That's because there isn't one right person who will magically make a good marriage. In a sense there is a "the one" because I believe that God has prescribed who each of us will marry, but from our limited perspective that's not how it works. We are not being asked to search until we find that one person. We are being asked to find a person and make a commitment. That doesn't mean that there aren't "wrong" people and that we shouldn't be wise in choosing who to marry, but it does mean that you don't have to fret over whether or not you've found your right person. That can only lead to unhappiness, because it turns out, there's no such thing as a perfectly happy marriage. The only way to be close is to fully and completely commit yourself to the one you're with and work at it with all you've got.
This is not intended to be a critique on individual marriages, but I want us to really reconsider the idea that our culture promotes of a "soul mate", a "the one", a "happily ever after". There is no happily ever after, but I think there's something better. Let's call it "love".
I will go ahead and admit from the start: I'm not married. I have no idea what it's like to be married; I cannot speak to this from experience. But I get that it's hard. I understand that there are many things that cause marriages to fail, and I know that there is much pain involved in these situations. That is not something I want to make light of at all.
That said, I was watching the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love the other day, and as I thought about it there was something that began to bother me. (Aside from the title's ridiculous punctuation.) At first glance the main point of the film seems rather inspiring: the two main characters have a marriage that is falling apart and decide to get a divorce, but by the end of the movie they come to believe their marriage is worth fighting for. It's honest about the difficulty of marriage but hopeful about the possibility of working it out. How nice; let's all go home and have some ice cream.
But what their change in outlook comes from is the rather creepier storyline involving their son. He's a thirteen year-old boy who is "in love" with his seventeen year-old babysitter. She does not return his affections because, well, he's a thirteen year-old boy, but also because she's "in love" with his father. Creeped out yet? Yeah, me too. Creepy details aside, however, at one point our little thirteen year-old boy tells his father that said babysitter is his soul mate, and when it's your soul mate, you don't give up. Adorable, right? Oh, except that babysitter has asked him to stop bothering her, and she doesn't seen to be appreciating his repeated advances. More creepy.
Of course, in the end, thirteen year-old boy gets worn out by endless rejection and is about to give up, when his dad gets up at his 8th grade graduation ceremony (creepy?) and reaffirms that when you find "the one" you don't give up. Nice for him to say, because he's married to his "the one", less nice for his son. But of course, babysitter comes around--not just yet, but she'll reconsider when they're older. Adorable.
But why do dad and son keep trying to work out their relationships with their respective women? What is the driving force? The fact that they've found their soul mate. And how do they know that they've found their soul mate? It's unclear. What do they do in their given situations if they decide that the woman is not their soul mate?
And that's where we have the problem. We seem to have an idea as a culture that if you find the right person, your marriage will work out, and that if you're unhappy then you married the wrong person, and there's a right one out there that you missed. And usually, if you get a divorce to try to find that right person, the next one isn't going to be the right one either.
That's because there isn't one right person who will magically make a good marriage. In a sense there is a "the one" because I believe that God has prescribed who each of us will marry, but from our limited perspective that's not how it works. We are not being asked to search until we find that one person. We are being asked to find a person and make a commitment. That doesn't mean that there aren't "wrong" people and that we shouldn't be wise in choosing who to marry, but it does mean that you don't have to fret over whether or not you've found your right person. That can only lead to unhappiness, because it turns out, there's no such thing as a perfectly happy marriage. The only way to be close is to fully and completely commit yourself to the one you're with and work at it with all you've got.
This is not intended to be a critique on individual marriages, but I want us to really reconsider the idea that our culture promotes of a "soul mate", a "the one", a "happily ever after". There is no happily ever after, but I think there's something better. Let's call it "love".
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