Maybe Jesus wants you for a sunbeam
Alibi, alibi
-Elvis Costello
As we've had drilled into our heads for the past year, religious fanaticism is a terrible, destructive thing. Sometimes. When it's not our god they're ranting/dying/killing for.
What has me riled up this week is this quote from Lisa Beamer, National Icon (hey, the author calls her that right there in the Newsweek article):
"[Y]ou are a sinner and deserve only death. The fact that God has offered you hope of eternal life is amazing! You should be overwhelmed with joy and gratitude."
Ms. Beamer is an icon, you see, because her husband died on Flight 93 a year ago. That quote comes from her new book, titled Let's Roll!. I'll only briefly mention that I find that sickening (but, hey, if car companies can profit from 9/11, why not her?), and am unconvinced by her protests that she really doesn't like all the publicity (in which case she would have agreed to write/have someone else write her memoirs). My concern is that she's being honored for her "courage," and "bravery," and "conviction," when she's spouting beliefs that would make Billy Graham blush.
I honestly do not mean to belittle Ms. Beamer's hardships; after all, her husband was killed, and in a very traumatic way. But holding her up as an "icon" is wrong. She's raising her kids; good for her. But she's advocating the type of fanaticism that leads people to kill each other for their gods.
If I'm a sinner and deserve only death, then wouldn't it be to my eternal benefit to die in the name of God, perhaps killing a few dozen heathens while I'm at it?
Am I reading too much into that quote? Probably. But when we've had a year of people saying, "Hey, those Muslim fanatics are crazy! They blow themselves up for their god!" how can we possibly condone any religious fanaticism? Any brand of fanaticism scares me, but at least Star Wars fanatics are more likely to bore you with details of Boba Fett's armor than kill you because you don't acknowledge Obi Wan as your spiritual leader.
If we're going to posit that religious fanatics are potentially very dangerous, then we can't differentiate between their religious fanatics and our fanatics; or the "deeply religious", as the article describes Beamer. We can't just blithely accept statements like that without criticism.
How accepting would we be of a widowed Palestinian woman telling us that we are sinners, and deserved only death? Probably not with joy and gratitude.