Kim Davis. Pope Francis. Spirituality. Religion. Compare and contrast. I humbly speak of God to you as you may define him, or her, or them, or it… the way you, as an individual human being making important life decisions define what is good and what is bad… the way you, in your heart, define that force, that energy, that life-giving PRESENCE we have all, at some point in our lives, experienced with joy, or with wonder, or with fear, or with feeling all three of those things simultaneously. No religion carries with it a monopoly on definitions of ethical and unethical behavior!
Kim Davis, professedly a “Christian,” is literally crying with joy over unilaterally discriminating against LGBT people. While at the same time she professes to love “God’s people” with all her heart & soul! Who is Kim Davis to tell anyone, anywhere, whether they are one of “God’s people??” Tell me, what is the difference between Kim Davis & any other extreme religious fundamentalist — whether Zoroastrian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, Christian, Muslim, or Baha’i, et cetera? In my opinion, each and every religion spawns its own internal sets of believers who proclaim their personal religion to be the “true,” and therefore the “only,” religion!
For example, extremely fundamentalist Buddhists sometimes enclose themselves into a tomb to starve themselves to death, after spending the previous two years eating only the most rudimentary plant matter — I’m talking bark & leaves! While they are enclosed in that living tomb, they ring a bell every morning to communicate to the world they are still alive. When the bell does not sound, the remaining monks wait a specified number of days, before opening the tomb. Then the naturally mummified (from self-imposed starvation!) human bodies are exhibited as the bodies of saints, or whatever “saints” are called by Buddhists.
It is this sort of practice which has formed my opinion that extreme, literal fundamentalist religion is almost always horrible. It brings out the worst in people, not the best. “Zero tolerance” rules and judgments and penalties, when robotically applied to the human condition, create the opposite of love, the opposite of peace, the opposite of compassion. Extreme, literal, fundamentalist religion is, in essence, a form of necrophilia — summarily dictating to others that religion is dead, carved in stone, that religion cannot evolve, cannot change, when it must. And religion MUST change when faced with new, and undeniable, scientific discoveries, rapidly evolving technology, and physical, planetary changes — all three of which result in “earthquakes.”
These scientific and cultural and literal “earthquakes” bring with them frightening shifts in the primary causes of human suffering. Shifts which must now be dealt with using something more than ancient, beautifully written, but now outdated, and therefore “mummified,” religious, doctrinal texts.
Pope Francis is a good example of someone who is at the opposite end of the spectrum from an extreme, literal fundamentalist. He seems to be actually speaking out against the largest, most pressing, environmental and social evils we currently face. Kim Davis is an equally good example at the fundamentalist end of the spectrum — someone who is not, in any real sense of the word, a spiritual person. She seems to me to be simply an authoritarian, judging person who understands little about love, the human condition, our planet, the vastness of the universe, or the mysterious, ultimately unknowable nature of God.
And I, for one, am already heartily sick of hearing about her.
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 