I really enjoy when I read something that gives me a different insight on what causes other people to act the way they do. It is difficult to burrow down into their inner thoughts to see what causes their outer actions. Often, it seems, people assume that everyone feels and believes the same things; then, when people act differently than we would, they assume it is because there is something “evil” about people that don’t see things their way.
Recently P. Z. Myers desecrated a communion wafer taken from the Catholic church after it was consecrated. While Mr. Myers doesn’t seem to be a member of any minority (other than being an Atheist), the recent incident he was involved in served as an example to me of ways to be a better person.
Let me back up a little for the people that might not be familiar with the story:
It seems that Webster Cook took one of the communion wafers from a Catholic service. (Description of incident here) He was able to liberate the wafer from the service despite other people trying to prevent the wafer from leaving the premises. What followed was accusations, complaints, and counter complaints — at least officially. On an unofficial level, e-mails were written to Mr. Cook threatening his life over what many of us outside the Catholic faith believe to be just a cracker.
This is the point where P. Z. Myers entered the picture. Mr. Myers anguished about the absurdity of actually threatening a human being’s life over a cracker. He decided that, if he could get his hands on one of the consecrated communion wafers, he would draw the ire of the people away from Mr. Cook by desecrating the wafer. (full Pharyngula entry here)
(snippet from the entry):
So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.
I’m not sure exactly who sent him the communion wafer, but he did get his hands on one and followed through with his threatened actions. As you might imagine, there were people that weren’t happy at all about Mr. Myers “desecrating” something they held sacred.
While some might hold the communion wafer sacred, I wasn’t among them. Actually, until I researched into this story, I didn’t even know what a Eucharistic miracle was. Being raised in a Protestant church, I was familiar with communion, but no one ever even eluded to me that it was anything other than symbolic: and if it was symbolic, then it was just a cracker. Other people didn’t agree, and they weren’t interested in keeping silent about their dissatisfaction.
Mr. Myers received a flood of e-mail, most apparently containing either death threats or telling him what a godless, anarchist he is and how he would surely burn in hell. Over time, however, even the hottest temper begins to cool. But even as the flood of e-mails became a trickle, there were still some people deeply wounded and willing to write.
Mr. Reich was one of the people that wrote to P. Z. Myers after the the majority of people had moved on to other things. (fulll Pharyngula entry here)
(snippet from the entry):
Scott Reich has been writing repeatedly.
… (two hateful e-mails omitted)
But then he apologizes. Sort of.
I wrote you a letter in anger, and I need to apologize for my rudeness and ask your forgiveness. I am sorry that I called you a hillbilly and said that you must live in a trailer park. While I hate what you did, I don’t hate you. In fact, when you did that, I realized that I was seeing Jesus’ sufferings all over again: the mocking, the contempt,the diabolical hatred, the torture and awful death. I know he didn’t die again, but I could witness his sufferings again in what you did. I also learned that I don’t comprehend his love for us. He really does love his enemies. I didn’t respond to you like he does. I responded like a disciple who does not comprehend his teacher. I got an eye opener about how to love as Jesus does in the way he responded to you. He let you handle him and hurt him, but he didn’t resist. A lesson for me. I hope you will let him in one day. He exists.
Mr. Reich is the one that changed my mind. While I still can’t believe that the communion wafer was anything other than a cracker, he was able to open my eyes to the feelings underneath the hatred. He was able to do this, not by threats or telling other people how “evil” they were, but by explaining how someone else’s actions were effecting him. He was able to put his innermost thoughts and feelings to the public, risking ridicule from people he might see as monsters, in the hopes of being true to his own sense of inner self. He was able to use something that he saw as almost a personal attack on him through his religion, yet he used that to learn something about himself and grow in the way that he wanted to grow as a person.
How many times have I faced prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination and let them turn me bitter? I have lost count of the times I have watched a television program and felt hurt by the filth spewed forth at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered community. But was I able to use these events to learn something? In most cases, no. I was falling into the same trap that they found themselves in. I couldn’t see their point of view, and it was beginning to poison my soul. While I was never much of a religious person as an adult, the hatred I saw emanating from organized religion pushed me about as far away from church as one could become. It’s ironic: the people that professed a desire to save me were actually driving me away from their view by their hostility.
But the important question to ask is: are we any better? Have we become as jaded as the preachers on television? I hope not. The people that can’t get hatred out of their minds are doomed to an existence dictated by their hatred of other people. Their moments of peace are stolen by their passionate hate, destroying family and pushing friends away. The only kind of people attracted to hatred are other people that hate, each feeding on the other and reinforcing their own bigotry.
I hope I am better than that. I hope we all are.
On, and as for Mr. Cook, (read here)
