I’ve been fighting hard for or against one ideology or the other most of my life.
When I was a Christian, I fought hard for people to be saved. When I became an agnostic ex-Christian I fought for the dignity of other people who Christendom defined as “unsaved sinners.” When I declared myself an atheist, I fought against the concept of God and its consequences. And as a liberal atheist who often gets labeled as a social justice warrior (sjw), I am very concerned about the most marginalized people in the world. I desperately, fervently want them to have better lives in this world, and to this end I frequently write my heart out to fight for those who have been unjustly forced on the margins based on their lack of religious affiliation, their color, their gender, or their socioeconomic background. This passion has given me many enemies, it has given me friends I disagree with frequently, and it has also, at times, led to a lot of discouragement when it seems that advances are too rare and hard to come by. The battle to make the world a better place is very difficult. As my favorite author, Zora Neale Hurston, once said, “If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.”
But again, I’ve been doing this for most of my life, this fighting. Although I’m only 32 years old, I’ve fought and struggled more than many I know — when I was a Christian, and later as an atheist, I often spent all-nighters on message boards or other online arenas trying to talk to people about their points of view, along with hours of reading to try to sharpen or further inform my arguments, as well as in-person discussions hours long, and a lot of crushing angst has filled me when influential people seemed to abuse others due to harmful misunderstandings I keep uncovering. I am not naive; I know I can’t change the entire world. I’ve just been too restless, oftentimes, for a better world to really enjoy the world here and now, and that has led me to spend a lot of time “out riding fences” that represent the boundaries of my ideals.
I still think that one of the most valuable things I can do in my life is fight for a better world for myself and others as well as I can and with all the knowledge I have. But…I don’t want to die as one who desperately fought all his life, complaining for the entirety of it, and never stopped to enjoy or appreciate the people around him. Yes, many people are very wrong, but in contrast to the constant arguments there is also plenty of delight to be found in letting go sometimes and laughing with people, sharing lives with people, and loving people, whether I agree with them or not. Increasingly, I’ve wondered: What is the value of life in which I fight all the time and never stop to enjoy the world I’m fighting for, a world that consists of people from thousands of different perspectives and passions?
More and more I’m finding that the pleasure of loving people comes, largely, in loving people in addition, and perhaps over and above, ideals. I can’t embrace an ideal; I can’t be a shoulder to cry on for mere ideals; I can’t ask an ideal how its day gave it joy or pain. For this, I need to love people. And yes, this care for people can give rise to ideals…but I want to live a life dedicated to embodied ideals as opposed to abstractions. Ideals that arise from love and care for people that I can see — people who agree with me and people who don’t.
What’s bringing these thoughts to my mind today is the news that Glenn Frey of the Eagles died. My favorite song of his is “Desperado” — a song he co-wrote with Don Henley (Don Henley sings it).
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCdjvTTnzDU[/youtube]
And in that song I heard a good portion of my life. I’m not going to stop fighting for what seems to be justice…but I want to smile with more people. I want to shake more hands. I want to give more hugs. I want to embrace people on my side of the lines and across them, even if we have differences in the ways we feel we can make the world a better place. I’m beginning to think it’s possible to love and enjoy friendship with people on the other sides of my viewpoints without agreeing with their opinions. Yes, there are truly toxic people that do not improve my experience of life…but I am also increasingly finding that letting people see the care in my heart dissolves the caricatures boundaries often create in ways that, perhaps, can melt the harmful dividing lines that cause oppression. When I talk about loving people, of course, I’m not talking about weakness — more like a passionate, unapologetic being in the world, with opinions that are connected to a real flesh and blood person who genuinely shows and feels care for other people.
When I was a Christian I came across something like this way of thinking in what was called “incarnational evangelism” or “relational evangelism.” At the time I thought it disingenuous, because it didn’t convince people through arguments and reasoning, but through social engineering. When I first became an atheist I rejected it as manipulative and resolved to stick to reasoning and arguments. Over time, however, I’ve wondered if focusing on relationships more than religion is a key to making religion increasingly irrelevant. I still thinking reasoning and arguments carry a lot of importance, but I also think that if God doesn’t exist, and humans do…maybe the concept of God isn’t as important as human beings. Maybe a focus on human relationships is powerful in itself, and instead of merely basing relationships on whether someone believes in God we atheists can just ignore the concept of God and care about people in our day-to-day interactions.
In other words, I’m wondering if one of the ways to move past the question of whether God exists, in everyday human relationships with people across ideological lines, is often to simply ignore it and focus on loving and being loved by the human beings who do exist, letting God fade into the background, overtaken by the beauty of human relationships.
And I’m starting to do that a little more in my personal life. I am still an anti-theist; I don’t think the concept of God is a good idea, and I don’t hide this position. I also think that on a public level we need to talk about the harm of religions, and that when it comes up in day-to-day discussion it’s part of a relationship to be honest about my stance. At the same time, in my everyday, walking-eating-breathing life, I am finding more freedom to just enjoy caring about other people and being cared about by other people, and have found that decisions to ignore the whole God bit often show that the concept of God is irrelevant in many of the areas within my relationships with the human beings in my life that I love. In my day-to-day real world life I don’t have to be a constant crusader, respecting the divisions of religion by focusing on them more than seeing through them to the people behind them. I can simply ignore the divisions until they overtly come up, while focusing on the common humanity that transcends them.
I’m not embracing this possibility because it’s inherently morally superior; I think that claim nonsense, and such moralism honestly makes me a bit nauseous. I am beginning to embrace it simply because I want to.
I only have one life, I’m a social person, and I want to enjoy my time here, so my discovery that there can be a love of fellow human beings due to a common humanity that transcends religious lines makes my life more beautiful to live. I can see the possibilities of the future without missing out all my life on the beauty of the present; I can look for ways to improve relationships without ignoring the healthy elements to be found in the relationships I share; I can fight for ideals that are not fulfilled while laughing and embracing the beauty of the moment.
I don’t have to live my whole life yearning for a utopia so much that I can’t enjoy the “fine things laid upon [my] table,” as Glenn Frey put it.
And it’s also not lost on me that other people — some who agree with me, some who do not — only have one life in which to receive the care I have for them. I don’t need to spend it all as a “desperado” cordoning those who don’t agree with me off; I can “let somebody [love me]” and love others in return in my day-to-day life, so that even if the world never breaks down its harmful barriers, I’ll be somewhat of a vessel of love and care in specific on-the-ground relationships, breaking barriers in the way I care about humanity beyond the man-made mythical lines. In short, I’m wondering if the most satisfying part of changing this world into a more humanistic, secular, loving one is embodying that change in a boundary-defying love I have within myself.
That’s what, after listening to it again today, I’ve gathered from the song…
RIP, Glenn Frey, and thank you.
[Featured Image By Airwolfhound under CCL 2.0]