people say about never discussing religion or politics? My parents never really taught me that. OK they would say not to discuss it with people you don't know well, but among friends and family it's usually game the hell on, right? I think we're friends, don't you? First let me tell you, I Googled "politics" for synonyms, there aren't really any without the actual word "politics" in it. Seriously. Googling "religion" however produced a plethora. Do with that bit of information what you will.
My parents felt that a conversation, even if it led to a "debate" {cough heated argument cough} about those topics was almost mandatory with people you cared about. My dad was the politics guy and my mom was all over the religion. My mother rarely, when I was young, talked about her political beliefs except in the context of her religion and my dad rarely talked about religion except when it somehow bled directly into his political beliefs. I believe my mother's religion directly chooses her political path, but the opposite was true with my father. His politics had no relation to his lapsed Catholicism.
They both felt passionately about their respective taboo topic, oddly for the same reason considering one was spiritual and the other political. They believed that it was their duty to share what they thought in order to bring awareness and save people.
My mother, like most Christians, feels that if she fails to reach people and bring them to her Savior, they will be lost for eternity. She feels the need to convert the unbelieving. I'm not judging that. I've seen how Mom's desperate need to do what she believes IS her sacred duty. I don't doubt her pure intentions for a second. I never have. I can't imagine how hard and often frightening it is to have me as a daughter, because most of the time I'm not sure exactly what I believe.
My dad did not try to convert you to his political beliefs. Most of my life I had no idea whom he voted for or what his actual political platform looked like. His "duty", I believe, was to simply remind us that regardless of the decision we made, it needed to be an informed one. He didn't think you should just blindly follow a party, he felt you needed to understand exactly what each candidate stood for and how he or she planned to act on those beliefs. He felt that, topic specifically, one should find one's own firm position, yet be willing to move if a better, clearer spot became available. He believed that even if you didn't know the "why" of what you felt, you should have a wide open view of the "how". He didn't necessarily belittle a reply of "I don't know WHY, I just think that!", but he did expect that at some point you'd at least accidentally stumble upon your "why" if you just stumbled hard enough.
My mother's political beliefs are most often based, I think, on what she perceives as right and wrong. Mine are too. Her right and wrong are generally derived from her intensive studies of her Bible. That's where she seeks her wisdom, guidance and solace. My mother's husband died when she was 48. She took care of him when he was sick. Her husband was my father. No matter how CRAZY that woman can make me with her direct, unyielding approach to her life which she lives based on her faith, she took care of my dad when he was sick, and if she did that because her Bible told her so, I have no place to argue.
My mother believes that whomever is leading our country needs to be a person of faith. Her faith in particular. This is hard for me to swallow, because I am my father's daughter and I think "church" should have little to do with "state". I don't pick a candidate because he/she attends prayer luncheons or leads his staff in a prayer to my mother's God on National Prayer Day. I've been turned off by candidates of various faiths who seem to wield it like a weapon saying "vote for me because I love Jesus more". Like my friends Kelley, Sarah, Holly and Kate, I want them to believe in something because that has to be the hardest job in the world, but I don't want them to expect me to believe in the same things. And I certainly don't want them to run the government in a fashion that begins to mandate that I believe the way they do. If you want a bully pulpit, write a freaking blog, don't run for President.
You know I've talked about the slippery slope before. About how if we start changing laws that keep religion out of government at some point perhaps you're not going to like the religion that is running the government. In other words, we want less separation of Church and State as long as it's OUR church. Welcome to America folks, where we don't have a national religion and I for one like it that way. But I've come to realize to folks like my mom, they have no choice. They feel to the center of their beings that it is a spiritual calling to bring all of us to their beliefs, because they wholly believe they have been commanded to save us by any means necessary, including making sure whomever is in charge in this country feels the same conviction.
Sometimes I hear it in my mom's voice when we're talking. Her fear for my soul, her almost panic that I'm not going to get it right and end up separated from her for eternity. And while I'm hearing that, I don't feel that about myself. I don't feel concern for my eternal soul. That probably makes it even worse for her.
I say that last sentence without an ounce of sarcasm and without an eye roll. Because I see my mom. I know how often tortured she feels when she thinks someone's soul has been lost. For my mother and people who believe as she does, not telling someone the way to salvation is like watching someone burn to death when you have the means and mentality to stop it. Asking people who have a conviction from their God to stay out of a political debate is akin, to them, to letting a family member starve. It is that visceral. And it has taken me a long time to understand that.
Understanding and agreement, however, are different critters. But let's all get real here, our beliefs impact our politics. If you believe the death penalty is wrong, (regardless of what brought you to your belief) you're likely to lean a certain way. If you believe the ten commandments should be hanging in every courtroom, you're likely to lean a certain way. Who we are determines how we vote. All of it. Our life experiences move us a little left or right or center all the time. My mom may look at a candidate's church and that's the strongest indicator of how she'll vote and I may not even retain whether someone is Mormon or Catholic.
That's one of the shiny things about our Democracy; we get to decide what matters to us and vote accordingly. The most important thing to me is mine and the most important to my mom is hers. It's not my business to take that away from her. I could say that it isn't her business to take mine, but her core value based on her relationship with God says it is. And that's all right. Because when you come right down to it, both of my parents taught me that hanging on to our beliefs can save us. My dad was concerned with saving us from the hell on Earth and my mom is concerned with saving us from the hell in the hereafter. What they both taught me as a unit is that as long as I bend but don't break, as long as I continue to steadfastly hold on to what I believe, even if it doesn't match theirs (sorry Mommy) then I'm right with myself. And hell here or there will have kept itself fresh.
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