Can you hear that whistle?

I live in what is quite literally the edge of the Bible belt. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the community where I live is dominantly conservative, protestant, and for lack of a better term; narrow minded. I often think of it as a literal belt cinched tightly around the general public’s windpipe to make sure that they don’t get any strange ideas about freedom of thought. Don’t get me wrong, I love living here and will always think of this as home. The climate, the mountains, the rivers and lakes, and the red clay itself are deeply attached to my very core. I have breathed this air and pulled nourishment from the earth itself since I was very small and it is so ingrained in me that I miss it when I am gone for very long. I feel it when I dig in the earth and smell it in the vegetables in my garden. There is a connection… deep, innate, and unbreakable. I love the generosity of the people, the kindness to strangers, and the general feeling of hospitality that is so much a part of people’s character here in the south. Unfortunately, all of this is offset by a dogmatic attachment to fundamental religion and cultural bias that is stark and ignorant at the same time. It takes a while to see it if you live here; it isn’t necessarily obvious or easy to detect. It is just below the surface and carefully out of sight, like an ugly wart carefully disguised or a rumor of a crazy brother that the family keeps hidden in the root cellar to avoid embarrassment.

I stumble on it every so often in conversations with locals who recognize me as an insider, a local product of this environment. There isn’t a secret handshake or any concrete methodology for this recognition. It is more of a nuance of dialect that the practiced ear can hear or a recognition of phrasing configured in just such a way in normal conversation but we locals usually recognize each other after a few moments of conversation. I dread those moments at times because the flash of open honesty that it often inspires uncovers the ugly ignorance that is at bottom of what I detest most about religion; the idea that there are unspoken truths in the world that we can never get past.

These are the truths of the inherited chosen people, the indelible imprint of an undeserved superiority complex based upon race, or sexual preference, and a dogmatic belief in a set of books written by a nomadic tribe thousands of years ago. These books tell us how it will all turn out in the end and how we are supposed to get from here to there. They are necessarily biased and based upon the ignorance of their authors so many years ago no matter how we try to dress them up and explain this away with convoluted justifications. They were the chosen people. Chosen by the greatest God as his favorites and the inheritors of his bounty provided they follow the rules he set down. We are their progeny, the rightful heirs to this same bounty and we KNOW this is true because the Bible tells us so. This is the ugly truth at bottom of our belief system here in the Bible belt. We don’t spread it around like cordial candy; it isn’t fit consumption for everyone else and will only cause discontent and problems. However, amongst the chosen people, comfortably ensconced with our own kind, it flows effortlessly and freely amongst us. Don’t throw pearls before the swine…. they will only get indigestion from trying to eat them. It is always there, always in the background guiding our path like a dog whistle that only we can hear or a light beam in a frequency spectrum that only we can see.

I can’t begin to describe how disgusting this point of view is to me. In point of fact it is only preserved by keeping it hidden. It can’t stand the light of open scrutiny or logical conversation so we keep it buried in the basement of our silence; a crippling mental deformity that we convince ourselves is a badge of honor. Our belief in it is inversely related to our understanding of the world around us; the less we know the tighter we hold to its tenets. The more we read and understand about the world around us the weaker its hold upon us. It has been this way since the first religion’s inception in human society and it will remain this way until we throw the idea behind it out like the rotting cancer that it is. Religion is a mortal enemy of human knowledge and understanding because its power over us is based upon and rooted in our own ignorance.

Suppose we woke up tomorrow and realized we are all one people, that there are no “chosen” ones. Suppose we understood we are not meant to all be the same; that it might be a good thing that we are all different. Suppose we understood there is no Armageddon coming; that the forces of “good” and “evil” are simply different aspects of our own personalities. Would the world be on the same path it is today? Is it possible that we could get past this exceedingly silly and simple minded notion that there is a God somewhere ready to destroy the earth over who lives in Jerusalem? Could we begin to understand that we are all the same? Occasionally, I have these thoughts. I think we might actually be able to overcome the biased ignorant notions of a wandering tribe thousands of years ago and then I wake up to reality and remember I am in Alabama.

I recently heard a campaign commercial for one of our gubernatorial candidates wherein he was ridiculing the fact that the other candidate might have suggested that “there are parts of the Bible that aren’t true”. Imagine that if you will. It was a carefully targeted and accurate slam against the reasonableness of such a statement. Inherent in this commercial was the same knowing smile, the same flash of recognition that I was describing earlier. Obviously, anyone that could make such a statement can’t be “one of us” and can’t be fit to represent us in office. Some people don’t understand that this is a state wherein people born outside of the county they live in are considered foreigners. The ad was effective enough to draw a rebuttal from the candidate accused of making the statement. He recognized he was in danger of being cast out as a member and nothing is quite so important to the members as the ability to decide who doesn’t belong.