SOME THOUGHTS ON LOVE, PERSUASIONS AND CONSTRICTS

The crucial test of ethical values is whether they apply to strangers, and those afar, not just in our midst. — Bernard Crick, Essays on Citizenship, 2000

A lot of religions, if not all, teach love. But the problem I have found is that the idea of love is usually within the constricts of the religion. I’ve seen nice Christians write about homosexuals with unconcealed hatred informed by or disguised as religious righteousness. Many hate feminists because they challenge the arrangement of men-women relations as they think it should be. So you see the problem with loving out of religious persuasion?

Imagine for a minute that the New Testament asked Christians to kill homosexuals or stone fornicators? You know you’ll do it, even if it negates natural laws and human rights. Isn’t that why you think gays don’t have the right to love and marry who they want? Or why Razak will blow up himself along with hundred people, because he loves Allah?

So what’s the better way to love, you ask?

To me, it’s not even about love. You don’t owe the world love. Even though being a loving and kind person is noble, it is unrealistic. You’ll meet annoying people, and forcing yourself or making yourself love them even when it doesn’t come naturally to you, is performative and pretentious. That’s why a lot of us live pretentiously, projecting an outward warmth while we’re full of bile inside. And that’s why, as soon as we find a religious principle to justify our hate or hateful action, we do it, even if it’s violent and it violates human rights.

Rather, what you owe people is a duty to their humanity. For all its righteousness, religion didn’t stop slavery; Paul the apostle didn’t write that a man shouldn’t own another man, he instead sent Onesimus back to his master.

I think there’s another way to understand the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan had no reason, both from a religious perspective and a cultural one, to love or help that man he helped. But the Priest and Levite did. However, the priest and the Levite might have justified not helping the man because they’re not to touch an impure thing by religious and cultural law. And that man might have appeared to them as dead at the time, making him impure.

Yes, they could have gone close to confirm. But looking at it from that religious and cultural context, one can almost justify why they crossed to the other side instead.

That’s what happens when your relationship with humanity is within the constrict of religion or even culture. Your duty and allegiance become first to your dogma instead of humanity, and your acts of love become performative. You can harm people if your religion requires you to.

Unlike the priest and Levite, the Samaritan displayed duty to the man’s humanity. At that point, the differences between Samaritans and Jews didn’t matter to him, what mattered was the man’s humanity.

This is the beauty of living life outside of constricts. You’re not bound to subjective beliefs. It helps you break from the yoke of culture and dogma that limits the expressions of your personhood. Your relationship with humanity then becomes improved, free from prejudices.

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Another misconception is that we owe a duty to our conscience. But if we think about this, we’ll see that being persuaded by conscience isn’t good enough, and it can justify the perpetuation of evil too.

The conscience can be socialized and influenced by knowledge and prejudice. It functions and judges based on the information and data it’s fed with. It’s therefore, not an objective instrument of judgement, not when good and bad, moral and immoral are subjective concepts influenced by time, socio-cultural and religious contexts. Abdullah will blow up all of us without thinking because his conscience, influenced by dogma, agrees with him.

I believe the only thing we should be fully committed to is the human cause. Humanity comes first above all else. Humanity drowns every other thing. This is what has brought peace and progress to human civilization. Every religion, almost every culture, has a history of bloodshed. There are the Jihads, the Crusades. They’re both holy wars but they’re the darkest times of human history. Don’t forget the Spanish Inquisition.

If Paul was a religious martyr, Galileo was a martyr of science — the Church killed him.

Human rights, on the other hand, are not a result of any religious or even cultural convictions. Nor are they subject to them.

Of course, this — owing a duty to people’s humanity and not to religion or conscience — is limited because there’s the spirit of the law and there’s the letter of the law, and almost every human interaction is subject to context, I still think it’s still the best and proper way to relate with the world.

Imagine once again that the New Testament asked Christians to stone gays to death?

While people can and have been evil because of religion, I believe and humanity has shown that we can be good without religion.