Compartmentalizing Morality

I recently had a conversation with my mother about how I speak and conduct myself on social media, and how some of our family members do not approve of my language or tone. One of them said, "Juli has such a potty-mouth, and I know you didn't raise her that way."          - That's right, my mom did not raise me to use profanity...but many years have passed in between the time when my mother was responsible for my behavior and now, and those years were full of experiences no one in my family could ever even BEGIN to understand. Thankfully, I stopped caring about what my family thinks about me a LONG time ago. Also, thankfully, my mother and father raised me to be a strong, independent thinker, and I have yet to disappoint them in that regard. Which brings me to the topic of my post tonight...

I have noticed over the past several years that there are many exceptions being made to the high moral standards I was once taught to uphold. I was raised Catholic for most of my childhood, but also attended Lutheran and Evangelical churches as a teenager. In my adult life I have experienced a great deal of adversity, and through my struggles I have read the Bible three times and read several other religious and spiritual texts. At this point in my life, I do not identify with any religion, and my reasons are many. For starters, it is difficult to label myself as anything when the ideals of religion are so loosely practiced within our society. It is difficult to examine the history of all religions and then excuse the horrific acts each of them has perpetrated on my fellow man. But what is most difficult is choosing to subscribe to a set of beliefs that requires me to proclaim their superiority when I am a creature of limited understanding and cannot possibly know for certain which beliefs are the "right" ones. That is why I am not a religious person. I am a spiritual person. I do not presume to know all of the answers, nor do I presume that my way and my beliefs are better than anyone else's. I believe in God, but that God is not defined by any religious text. A friend of mine once sent me a card with a quote in it that sums up my feelings on the matter. The quote said, "I bow to God, who lives among us. Whosoever calls upon Him, by any name, in that name does He come." I don't believe there is a "right" God, there is only God. Whoever I pray to, no matter what I call Him/Her/It, is the same God that hears ALL prayers. That is what I believe, and that is why I do not restrict myself to the label of any religion. I also believe that organized religion has actually created far more problems than it has solved, and since I am a born problem-solver, I cannot support it on those grounds as well.

This is not to say that I don't think there is any value in the teachings of religion. In fact, after studying the many religions of the world, I learned that they all embrace many of the same concepts and teachings. The directive to "love thy neighbor" is essentially universal in every religion (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.), and yet it appears that very few people in the world have the capacity to live by this directive. Everywhere I look, I see hatred and ill-intent. I am told that I live in a nation founded on Christian values, and yet those values are nowhere to be found, particularly not in our nation's leadership. The main tenets of Christianity are this: love thy neighbor (Matthew 22:39 - "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"), forgive those who do wrong (Colossians 3:13 - "Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive"), care for the sick and the poor and welcome the interloper (Matthew 26:35-36 - "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."). These are the lessons I was taught as a child, and although those are the most important ones, they are not the only ones. I was also taught the Beatitudes and the Ten Commandments, as I am sure many of you were. I will be the first to admit that I have not successfully acknowledged or adhered to these teachings throughout the course of my lifetime. I don't know many people who have, in fact. BUT, I do try to live my life in a way that reflects the moral code I have established through those teachings and my own life experiences. And that includes how I decide which political platform I want to support.

This brings us to the meat of the issue, the real reason I felt inclined to speak my truth tonight in the midst of all of the turmoil that is plaguing the daily narrative in our country and our world. And that reason is that although I am far from a perfect human being, I refuse to compartmentalize my morality for ANY reason. I have spent the majority of my life being judged by people who claim to be Christians. These same people are supposed to follow the teachings of a book that says, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Those same people identify themselves by the term "Christian," which means they are supposed to be "Christ-like." And yet, those people champion capitalism, an economic construct built on exploiting the poor to benefit the rich. Those people demonize strangers by calling them "illegal aliens" and supporting policies that ostracize them and allow their children to be locked in cages. Those people justify the murder of the less fortunate by those in power by keeping score of every mistake a person made in their lifetime (referring to someone's CCAP as a valid reason for why they deserve to be hurt or killed.) Those people idolize and intend to vote for a man who steals from charitable organizations, lies to them and everyone in our country on repeat, shamelessly commits acts of adultery, makes sexual comments about his own daughter, has over 25 sexual assault allegations against him, mocks disabled people, and incites violence against anyone who does not agree with him. They have chosen to compartmentalize their morality in the name of politics, and if that choice is not completely lacking of integrity, then I don't know what is. 

Here is what I choose: I choose to love my neighbor. I choose to forgive those who do me wrong. I choose to fight for the sick and the poor and the prisoner and the stranger. And I will do those things no matter what it costs me in the end.

I would like to go back in time for a moment and be a Catholic again and make a confession. Here it is: Sometimes I swear at God. Yep, it's true, I said it. Sometimes I SCREAM obscenities at God because I am ANGRY. I want to know where He is when children are raped, when women speak out against sexual violence and are not believed, when poor people die because they can't afford health insurance, when addicted and mentally ill people commit suicide because the only place they can go for help is jail and that always makes them worse, when cops kill black people because they have been trained to shoot first and figure it out later, when elected officials break the law on repeat and no one holds them accountable, when oil companies perpetrate mass extinctions in the name of the almighty dollar and no one even blinks, and when I have to tell my child not to speak Spanish in public because some redneck piece of trash who hears him might decide to hurt him for being different. 

There is my confession. Yes, I swear at God, because WHERE IS HIS JUSTICE?????????

I hope my conservative family members read this, because I want them to know and understand a few things. Number one on that list, is I am not like them. I did not live my whole life in a little bubble in rural Wisconsin. I was NEVER at home in that bubble. NEVER. I went out and created a different life than the one I lived as a child, and I adjusted my views accordingly. And yes, I may have been a drug addict, but my addiction was never a MORAL failing, it was a disease caused by genetics and environmental factors, a disease I have battled and overcome. I pray none of my young cousins, nieces, or nephews, or my son, ever experience what I did as a child. I survived childhood sexual abuse and incest, domestic abuse and drug addiction, the horrors of incarceration, and I AM STILL HERE, I am SOBER, and I am FIGHTING EVERY SINGLE DAY TO BE A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS. And I may drop an f-bomb here or there, but I will NEVER compromise or compartmentalize my morality for my own convenience. 

Judge me all you want, but your judgment does not define me. It defines YOU.