Family

"But you're too cool to have been in a cult" my good friend Pam said to me one afternoon in the cool darkness of O'Rourke's Tavern. Nice thought, but no, I'm not too cool to have been in a cult. (Some of you who know me really well might say that I'm not cool either, but that's another essay now isn't it?) - I'll spare you the details, at least for today, but about ten years ago I was was kicked out of a small insignificant group that had ruled many aspects of my life since 1978. The doctrinal and many of the practical minutia are for the most part not germane, but the founder of this group had a saying, referring to the Bible: "I have no friends when it comes to God's Word" - which, if you are a believer in a literal interpretation of the Bible doesn't sound too bad, but in this particular group, "God's Word" came to be understood as one man's spin on the Bible and by extension, an unquestioning obedience to the man himself.

One of the side effects of this teaching was that "the household", i.e. the core group of people committed to this leader and his group, was more important than anything or anyone, including friends and family. During my time in this group I saw many, many friendships and even marriages broken up due to this thinking. I saw families shattered and fragmented as a result of this insidiousness. Including my own.

Now for all of you bible fans out there, all of you who have a "personal relationship" with Jesus, I have absolutely no problem with people who take their religion seriously, and by "seriously" I mean those who make an effort to line up the talk and the walk, not those who attempt to make over every other human being in their own image. If you're going to claim that a leather bound book of sayings, letters, treatises, mythology, folk history and legends is the infallible, without error word of your god, at least put in the time to live it.

Over the years I have had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of many people who strove to live their faith, men and women who took all the good things from their "holy book" and put them into living breathing action. I'm related to many of those people. But when a fanatical ideology, even if it is a religious fanatical ideology, becomes your basis for interacting with the general public, that's bad enough; when extreme judgementalism over ones adherence to dogma is applied to family, then it just becomes hurtful.

Every family has the proverbial black sheep. If you don't know who it is in your family, then in all likelihood it's you. But we all, every single one of us do stupid things, do things that we regret, even do things that might have serious consequences. Who among us wants to be judged for all time for a period of life or even a single day, an isolated incident that we regret, that we would take back, change if we could? Then why are we so quick to do it to others? How eager are we to apply our own personal dogma to the lives of those around us, our friends, our family?

For many years I applied a dogmatic intolerance to my views and relationships with others. About ten years ago it came back to bite me in the ass as I found myself alone and living in "The Hovel" after being judged unworthy. But my family, whom I had been judgmental and intolerant to welcomed me with open arms, putting the past behind them, as if nothing untoward had happened... because that's what family does.