God moments, part 1

God talks to me.

Now, before you dismiss me as just another Joan of Arc wannabe, let me explain.

As my devoted readers know, I’m a cataloger, and part of my job requirement is checking page numbers, making sure the book is not defective, assigning subject headings, noting additional authors, editors, illustrators, etc. Sometimes I get caught by a paragraph, and skim part of the book. It's impossible to read every book, although that’s the stereotype that most librarians hear each time we introduce ourselves and mention our occupations.

“Oh, you’re a librarian? I’d love to have a job where I could just sit around and read all day!”

Anyway, back to my original assertion. God talks to me.

I’ve never heard a voice, never felt the ground shake, or seen a burning bush. But when I’ve needed to hear from God most, I’ve experienced what I like to call “God moments.” Call it coincidence, serendipity, fate or destiny -- it’s happened so many times I refuse to believe it's a random event.

So lately, I'm sick and tired of fundamentalists. From any religion. During the early part of the Iraq War, I was traumatized by images of kidnapped victims, held by Islamic fundamentalists and then beheaded. When Margaret Hassan, a charity work at Care International, was executed, I couldn’t sleep. I kept having nightmares. I stopped listening to the news, even to NPR. I tried, as my pastor has said, to view these people, the “other”, as human beings, people just like me. But I truly could not imagine myself in their blood-soaked shoes. How could I understand their motivations? How could I stop myself from hating them?

Now, it’s the fundies on the Religious Right who are on my last nerve, demanding a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, pulling the puppet strings of elected officials, cramming their intolerant agenda down the throats of a relatively moderate public. And check out the latest video game to be backed by these guys in the name of sharing the Good News of Christ. I don't get these people. What motivates all their fear and loathing?

The answer came in a book I cataloged by Jim Marion: The Death of the Mythic God: the rise of evolutionary spirtuality. In it, Marion discusses how the consciousness of human beings evolves upward from one level to the next, beginning with the archaic consciousness of infants all the way up to the Christ Consciousness and nondual consciousness demonstrated by Jesus.

There’s a lot to this book, but here’s what struck me (and what I call my latest “God moment”) was a paragraph in which Marion detailed the mythic level of conscious.

People who function at this level, such as religious fundamentalists, believe their religion, scripture, ethnic group, nation, morality, and values are supreme. They see themselves as good, the “other” as evil. God is on their side. They “see their intrinsic self-worth in terms of external rules and roles. They assume that everything in their immediate cultural environment is the only true way to do things, and the only true way to think. Tolerance and understanding for other points of view and behaviors, and compassion for people who hold these views and practice these behaviors, are simply not possible. They can’t see any good reason for even attempting such tolerance because, for them, this would be a betrayal of their external God, the God whose rules and roles define their entire self-worth.”

I like to group myself with people functioning at the rational level of consciousness. We “see the world as one, believe all people are created equal and have the inalienable right to practice their own religion, see the world as governed by universal scientific and spiritual laws that apply to everyone no matter what their politics or religion.” As Marion says, “Thus they usually tolerate fundamentalists even though the favor is normally not returned.”

I feel like my faith has been hijacked. So what can I do to let others know that not all Christians are fundamentalists? Stay tuned for God Moments, Part 2.