The Mote in God's Eye

As I write this, the Pope seems to be in a bit of trouble. Remarks he made about Islam during a speech at a German University have raised the ire of many Muslims across the world. The Vatican, according to a recent BBC report, said that "it certainly wasn't the intention of the Pope...to offend the sensibility of Muslim believers." If this is meant to be an apology, this one is securely planted within the "extremely lame" category, along with "I'm sorry that you're upset." Rather, it adds insult to injury as it implies that you shouldn't be upset in the first place, because I didn't do anything wrong.

But to be fair to the Pope, it's worth examining whether what he said was really so bad. It's worth examining because the Pope, whatever our individual feelings about him, could have an important role to play in the dialog between faith traditions if he so chose.

The speech was, admittedly, mostly not about Islam, which makes this particular section all the more peculiar and striking. Pope Benedict XVI quotes 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus in a conversation regarding Christianity and Islam, saying, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Now the Vatican is sidestepping this provocative statement by saying it was not the Pope's words, but simply a quote...which begs the question: why did he choose to quote this Paleologus guy anyway?

From my reading of the speech, the Pope seems to be primarily concerned with faith and reason and uses the emperor's quotation, apparently, to put forth the idea that "spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable." Interesting that, if that was his point, he would have to reach out to Islam in order to find an example of the tragic mixture of violence and faith. If he wanted to hearken back to the 14th century, he might have noted that the Spanish Inquisition was really beginning to heat up. Where was Paleologus when that went down?

The Pope goes on to quote the Byzantine emperor as saying, "God is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ... is contrary to God's nature." Really? Is that the same God who has Samuel order King Saul to "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" (I Sam. 15:3)? Is that the same God who grows so weary of his creation that He sends a flood to murder all but one family? Is that the same God who purportedly has his Son teach us to love our enemies, while His plan is to sentence some individuals to eternal damnation?

Should any religion be above criticism? Of course not. But if the Pope is going to call people of other religions to examine their own histories and purge the violence and intolerance that may be contained there, it is only fair that he starts at home.

In the main text of the speech, he assails "the subjective conscience" of secularism as being an inadequate basis for ethics. The loss of a Divine standard leaves everything up for grabs, he says. What he doesn't point out is that those who claim Divine approval for their particular religion may see dialog and compromise as useless at best and sinful at worst. What he doesn't say is that while religion may be a basis for building morality, it can also be used as an irrefutable justification for ignoring morality. What he doesn't say is that in a struggle of one Absolute Truth against another, there can be only one winner (at most).

The problems in the world today do not stem from the fact that we don't recognize what is moral; they arise from our desire to avoid the responsibility of doing what is right. While we quibble about the nature or names of God, the status of this or that Prophet, the merit of one Scripture over another, people are dying. I think it's time we stop using God to explain away our behavior, and start helping one another. No God worth worshiping could argue with that.