While the idea of “race” can be understood as a human invention, the need to be able to identify individuals and groups of individuals who are part of ones tribe would seem to be a fundamental survival trait. Even before we understand the idea of individuals, it would seem that we are born with some need to be able to figure out “friend or foe.” That would seem to be a natural survival trait. But that is far different than the idea that European Christians can claim any land not occupied by other European Christians, essentially, that non-Europeans have no rights to the lands that they may be living on. But, it would seem that I am a citizen of a nation that was founded with this doctrine being fully exercised right into the previous century. That doesn’t seem right. And at the same time, one might wonder what any of this has to do with religion, except that the basis for this principle is the assumption that Christians are entitled to things that others who follow different religious traditions are not entitled to, and that idea was codified by a Roman Catholic pope a year after Columbus sailed off to find a better way to reach the East Indies.1 

There is so much about this story that is troubling. If you really think about it, it can make one really question the legitimacy of the whole endeavor. But it would seem that the “powerful” have a consistent tendency of pushing the less powerful aside, figuratively and literally, and all of that gets “lost” over time. And, as imperfect as our understanding is of our national past, the current administration only wants a history to be presented that makes citizens “happy” about the past. That’s terrifying. 

For the past month I’ve been working on a Journal Project where I’m pulling together a collection of my writings and journals going all the way back to the 1970s and I can tell you that I wrote some stuff and did a lot of stuff that is horribly painful to resurface. There have already been several occasions when I had to take a break from the project because I got very emotional about what I was reading. There is a genuine reason that human memory is so selective. But at the same time, if I have any desire to be a better person, while at the same time believing that I am a worthwhile person to know, than on some level I have to own my past failings and travesties and the failures of others who were or are part of that journey. You can’t learn from a past that you deny ever existed. I am not that guy any longer, but he is still part of me and the only way that I can move on to better things is to bring that poor bastard along with me and find a way to answer his anxieties and fears and let the better parts of him continue to exist. 

We can’t undo the stupid things we did in the past. And we can’t undo the horrible crimes that were visited on the indigenous peoples (whose blood I also share in), or those who were brought here against their wills. But we can undo the systems that would make the traits and bloodlines that were behind these crimes an ongoing part of our current world. 

While we need to find and interact with those from our own tribe, whether that’s based on ethnicity or religion, it is wrong headed and ultimately destructive to forbid ourselves from interacting and learning from those from other tribes and traditions. It’s right in our own biology that if we don’t intermix with “others” than we will become susceptible to any one illness or other biological challenge that would eliminate us. We need those we can identify with, but we also need to learn and work with those who are different from us. Failure to do so will be the end of us. 

Sources:

Tags: crash course religions, in bad faith, learning from history, past mistakes, video Mondays 

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FOOTNOTES:
  1. I can’t help but also notice that this was a Roman Catholic Pope granting this privilege on Spanish and Portuguese explorers and somehow, centuries later Thomas Jefferson, not known for following Catholic doctrine, uses this principle to justify westward expansion of the newly formed United States… that seems rather selective.[↩]