Holy Anthropomorphism

It’s a concept we can all agree on. We recognize it readily in others but are blind to it in ourselves. It’s one of the most dangerous failings in human nature. We assign human characteristics and failings to a God who transcends human understanding, a God who has no frailty or base motives. When we do that we invite disaster. Throughout history the habit has been responsible for much of our greatest inhumanity. We don’t recognize it when we are guilty. We don’t believe it when it is pointed out. We confuse avarice with entitlement and blame our brother for our theft of his inheritance, secure in the belief that we are in the right. God meant for us to have it. That alone has been the ruin of more families than there are birds in the sky. We are at our worst when we go to war believing God is on our side. Our enemies are God’s enemies, undeserving of the most basic obligations of human kindness or consideration. That’s how Joshua justified exterminating the original inhabitants as Hebrews occupied the Promised Land. It’s how Christians justified slaughter of every Jew and Muslim man woman or child as Crusaders entered Jerusalem in triumph. It’s how American zealots justified wanton massacres in the Indian Wars. It’s how modern Muslim extremists justify the murder of innocents with their mad suicide assassins. It is the reason I am uncomfortable with our own characterization of the War on Terror as a contest between good and evil, as though an omnipotent God could have enemies among mortal man. This week I attended the first in a series of five introductory classes on Islam at our local Mosque. I’ve been before in an ongoing effort to understand why so many Muslims are so angry, and what on earth their anger has to do with us. The Mosque offers the classes as part of a sort of community outreach program. They think if we understood Islam better we would be less apprehensive of Muslims. I’m not sure they are right about that but it is certainly worth the effort. They are most hospitable in these meetings and are anxious to make non-Muslims feel welcome, not at all the image we have of them. This latest meeting was moderately well attended with people who learned about it from ads in the paper, from a banner posted outside the Mosque, but mostly from their own church bulletins. There was a beautiful introductory recital from the Koran in Arabic by an adolescent boy, a short lecture from an Imam, and a Q&A. One question was “If we all worship the same God why are there so many religious wars?” I liked the Imam’s answer. He thinks many of these wars have been based less on religion than is advertised. Extraneous motives are often cloaked in religious guise. The question and the answer could have referred to any number of the wars we’ve had over the last two thousand years. I think many of the worst offenders are sincere in their religious conviction. They are just wrong and I wish we talked more about that. Sir Walter Scott in his classic Ivanhoe has a Knight Templar telling a hapless Jew he only touches Jews with the point of a sword. It was a common sentiment of the day and St. Louis would have approved. My church has moved past that sort of religious bigotry but I’m not sure we have really addressed the underlying issue. If we consider something evil does that give us license to disregard all common decency in dealing with it? So stated I think most of us would say not. But we don’t usually state the issue in such stark terms. We should. When we invoke religious imagery in our battles we run the risk of confusing God’s will with our own prejudices. Muslims ought to be careful about that. So should we. Maybe we all ought to tone down the rhetoric a bit.