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When Push comes to Shove, God Changes Sides

When push comes to shove, God changes sides.

Ethics come from our communities, not from our religions.  What we call right and wrong is a consensus of our group.  We lend weight to our opinions by saying they come from God.  Obviously, they don't, because if they did, God would not be offered as evidence for just about everything.

For instance, during the American Civil War, almost every American denomination divided itself, north and south, along the Mason-Dixon line; pro-slavery and anti-slavery.  After the Union was saved, most of those same denominations gradually goth back together, again.  Most of them.

To the credit of the Quakers, they stoutly resisted supporting slavery, but they had the advantage of not being significantly large.  Roman Catholics were not as indigenously involved, with strong control from outside the country.

Almost nobody, today, from any of those denominations would be sympathetic to slavery, or segregation, as their denominational ancestors were, whether north or south.

Mormons used to support polygamy, and declared so openly in 1852.  After all, many other religions in the world also practiced polygamy, and some still do.  However, in 1890, the LDS Church officially abandoned polygamy under great pressure to become a part of this culture.  God is used to support both sides, as God supported both slave owners and emancipators.

God is called on to support people who drink alcohol, and those who don't.  God supports male domination  and human equality, both.  God is used to argue for a male clergy only, and a sexually inclusive clergy.  God is very handy, where ethics are concerned.  God is on everyone's side.  God even supports the home town football team, and political parties, and America.  Every time we have a war, God is on both sides.  God has Chosen People everywhere, on every side.

But when push comes to shove, God changes sides.

In the traditional Islamic world, God supports polygamy, and male superiority, political authoritarianism, and clerical control of society.  Christians should know all about that.  For centuries, in Europe, the Pope and the Emperor fought each other for political control, espoused male-dominated households, male-only priesthood, and rule by kings and emperors.  Today, the Islamic world is heaving itself, anxiously, into the contemporary world, where men and women are equal, where government is chosen by the people, not by traditional authority, and where more than one religious and ethical opinion exists.

From Morocco to Iran and beyond, Islamic peoples themselves, are stirring.  Of course they think God is on their side!  Everyone does!  But is it not plain that what is happening is the stirring of democracy, in several forms?  Is it not obvious that Islamic women increasingly know that they are not second-class human beings?  Are the Councils of Wise Men not crumbling under the pressure of the young, and females?

We will probably have Orthodox Jews for generations, declaring what God thinks women should do and not do.  We will have Orthodox Catholics, and traditional Roman Catholics, doing the same thing.  There will be fundamentalist Protestants telling us exactly what God thinks and wants us to do, and there are Mormons in Utah and Arizona still practicing polygamy, telling themselves it is God's will.  And there will be both traditional and modern Muslims, too.

God isn't proof that we are right.
God is just our claim to be right.

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