Christianity isn't a Hobby.

Many conservatives and Christians are celebrating the Supreme Court's latest decision to exempt Hobby Lobby (HL) from having to pay for some forms of birth control because the folks who own HL claim it goes against their Christian beliefs. Hooray! A win for Christians everywhere and pro-life advocates, right?

No. It isn't. If you're a pro-lifer, a Christian, a conservative, you probably have your guard up, ready to argue against whatever I say (and may not even read on), but I beg you to open your mind up a bit and think this through. This is not about abortion; it's about treating faith like a hobby and making money from it. (well, paying less money--same thing).

This decision is problematic in several ways (opening up the courts to be bombarded with requests for exemptions for "religious" reasons, which is already happening), but here's the one I find most problematic: Christianity is NOT a hobby. It isn't something you do when you have some spare time or are in the mood. It isn't something to while away the hours with or do while you watch TV. But HL treats their beliefs this way, and I don't believe they should be able to have this exemption.

If we believe in something so strongly that it pervades every aspect of life, creates hardship and sacrifice, and then a law is passed that means we have to go against our beliefs, we should not have to follow that law. That is right from the Bible. Jesus says to follow the law as long as it doesn't break God's law. So for Christians, as long as the law doesn't go against God's law, we are told to follow it. If it does violate God's law, we don't. And I believe that Christians should have the right to do just that. That is why Christians are celebrating this HL decision. But wait--there's a problem here.

What if the person who claims to want exemption from this law is only a Christian when it is easy, when there is no sacrifice? What if this person only acts like a Christian when it is for her benefit? Do we still let her off the hook? Uh, no--not on my watch. If people want to claim that a law they are supposed to follow violates their Christian beliefs, I believe they must be practicing their Christian beliefs.

But we're not even talking about the people in this case; we're talking about the business. Chances are that the Green family DOES practice their beliefs, and not like a hobby. But the BUSINESS has to "practice Christianity" because it's money from the business that pays for health benefits. The money for health care does not come directly from the Greens' pockets but from the business.

And for those who practice Christianity as a hobby, those places like Hobby Lobby that buy products from China and have investments in birth control as part of their 401K portfolios, they do not earn the right to claim exemptions for religious reasons.

If a business wants exemption, that business needs to "practice Christianity" as a deep-seated belief, not as a hobby. Anyone who has any strong religious beliefs knows that this is hard work and requires sacrifices, which in this case would mean AT MINIMUM not buying from China and being absolutely certain that their investments were not supporting the causes they claim to be against.

Jesus despised the hypocrites, the Pharisees who stood on the corner and prayed aloud to get the praise of those around but had no love in their hearts. Faith was a hobby to the Pharisees--and it's clearly a hobby to Hobby Lobby. This Supreme Court decision should infuriate Christians who make difficult choices and make sacrifices every day for what they believe. This case has already spurred a barrage of businesses looking for this same exemption, businesses with the same hobby as Hobby Lobby. But if Christianity is only your hobby, you make a mockery of those whose hearts really are in it, come what may.

Closed-Ear Syndrome or How To Always Be Right

We all love to get a pat on the back, to feel understood and corroborated. It feels good to be right, to win, to have compatriots in the fight, whatever that fight might be. I love a good confirmation as much as the next guy. Who doesn’t? As a result, though, we’ve become a nation filled with citizens who, every single day, wall themselves into our own little fortress, brick on brick of nods and yeses till we’ve built such a formidable barricade that no new idea could ever get through, happy in our self-congratulatory bliss.

And it’s killing us as a nation. We fight like old married people where words volley back and forth but have simply quit listening to one another years ago. We don’t listen anymore. We don’t care about understanding one another anymore. We believe we’re right and they’re wrong and that wall is there to protect us from the nonsense and horrific bad taste and immorality of “the other guys” on the other side.

 It’s disgusting, frankly, that we have stooped to such disrespect. And no, I don’t mean mouthy teenager disrespect. I’m talking about the lady next door who badmouths teenagers for walking across her lawn but rakes all her leaves onto my lawn because they came from my tree. I’m talking about the uncle who thinks black people are the cause of all our problems but has never actually known a black man. I’m talking about the atheist who hates Christians because the only ones he’s ever heard about are from Westboro Baptist Church. I’m talking about guy I went to high school with who posts anti-Muslim sentiments every day because the Boston bomber was Muslim. This kind of deaf world reeks with disrespect.

I teach college writing, and I tell my students that their arguments are weak, flimsy puffs of wasted air if they haven’t investigated all facets of an issue. I had a student research euthanasia, for example, and all his sources were from Catholic-affiliated publications. He even quoted the Pope. This would be fine, of course, if he had also read several non-religious publications and then made his argument, but he purposely found only those sources that supported his opinion. He felt he’d found excellent reasons against euthanasia, cited all his sources, and made some good points. I listened to him and his ideas. But he hadn’t listened to anyone else’s.

The abortion issue depicts the extreme of this closed ear syndrome we’ve taken on. Just the terms used to label the “sides” of the issue—pro-life and pro-choice—make it clear. Has anyone who has a stake in this issue ever taken the time to realize that “pro-life” advocates are not (necessarily) “anti-choice” or that “pro-choice” advocates are not “anti-life”? If the terms were simply “pro-abortion” and “anti-abortion” it would make us a little less divided, but even then we insist that this issue is two sided, there is no middle ground, and we must fight, fight, fight.

Last year in Texas we all witnessed the epitome of this deafness when the Texas court tried to tighten laws for abortion clinics. Such a hoopla! But if you watched even five minutes of the day’s proceedings, you witnessed lots and lots of talking but not a single person listening. No one listened to anyone else. At all. Lots of loud, angry, words on both sides fell on nothing but deaf ears. Watch any MSNBC or FOXNews program where they invite someone from the "other side" and listen to how little actual listening is going on. 

If we could learn to listen, open our ears and minds and practice some empathy, realize we can be too biased, and stop painting issues—and people—as them and us, right and wrong, then we may move toward a kinder, gentler society, one that strives to care for one another rather than strives to tear one another apart.

 

But we’re afraid. It’s hard to be open to new perspectives and admit we’re biased. It’s distasteful to watch MSNBC when we’re used to the 700 Club, and when we do, we have our dukes up, feathers ruffled, ready to defend ourselves and our rightness. If we always need to be right, we can simply never listen to anyone who thinks differently, who has differing opinions, and stay tightly tucked in our thick brick walls.

After all, we’re not all extremists like Al Qaeda or the Ku Klux Klan, so we feel we’re good people as long as we don’t get silly. We don’t fly planes into towers. We don’t lynch people. We’re good people with good hearts. We just want what’s right. What we don’t realize is that the “other guys” are mostly good people who want what’s right as well. We’re on the same side.

On election day of 2012, as the results were coming in, I was watching CBS news for the election coverage, and one of the reporters asked both Mitt Romney and President Obama the same question, how they felt about the divisiveness in our nation. Frankly, I don’t remember Romney’s answer (apparently it was unimpressive). But our President’s answer was poignant: he said that we really weren’t as divided as we might think, that we all cared about having good schools and safe streets and a peaceful world. We just had different ideas about how to accomplish these things, and that’s okay. It helps us make better decisions.

Our country is built on the idea that no one ideology is automatically right, that everyone needs a say, and that we as a people determine the rules. But this can’t work if no one is listening, if we live our lives ear-muffed and walled in.  We can only make good decisions if we listen to one another, if we consider all the possibilities with genuine interest before deciding a course of action—and even then admit we might be wrong. Only then will our nation be the United States of America.