Down with the Ego! (and Jerry Falwell)

During the Cathedral Heritage Foundation's Festival of Faiths (my employer and main programatic responsibility) there was an event at which the film Acting on Faith: Women's New Religious Activism in America was shown. All in all it was a great film. I very much appreciated the fact that the film maker chose to profile three women who were not Christian, and were not of European descent.

One of the women was Mushim Ikeda-Nash, a Zen Buddhist. During the film she made a statement that makes a lot of sense if you know Zen, but all the white, Christian, American ears in attendance that night heard something else. She said:

My interpretation of being a Buddhist mother is to try and avoid forcing my beliefs and my values on my child, because, after all, those beliefs and values have come from my experience. I want him to have his own experience.

Be honest - Didn't you hear "I don't want to force my son to be a Buddhist. I want him to choose." I did. After grabbing the quote from the video I went back and checked my brainstorming notes for this post to see what I had written. Here it is: "I do not want to force my Buddhist religion on my son." I'm even against this concept and this is the sphere I'm reacting in.

Jimmy Carter just came out with a book called Our Endangered Values, Jerry Falwell and his church have just started the "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" (even folks at my new favorite website CrossLeft.org have been reacting to him).

Many so called "progressive Christians" and many people who hate progressive christianity seem to think that being a "progressive Christian" means that we think anything goes. In fact, many progressive Christians, it seems, are ashamed of their religion. As a result many folks, in good fashion don't want to force religion down their kids throats, but "expose them to everything and let them come to it on their own."

Friends, we are foolish to not give our children religion. Have we not learned anything from developmental studies, not to mention just a casual survey of human behavior? If we just "expose" them and let them choose the path of their own we all know what will happen, don't we? By and large they will pick a form of religiosity that suits their egocentric needs. Aren't we being irresponsible if we do not model and teach them an authentic and legitimate form of an intentional life? One that serves to dismantle the ego in all it's forms?

Most of the 60 or so people that heard Ikeda-Nash think that she's being a good postmodern Mom, allowing the her child to be whomever he wants to be. But that's not the case at all. Buddhism, especially Zen, is extremely rigid and expects a lot from its practitioners. Listen to what she said: "my beliefs," "my values," "my experience." She never said "Buddhism" because she knows better. If Zen is about anything it is about direct experience. It would be unethical (not to mention impossible, but there's the rub) from her vantage point to force her direct experience on her child and prevent him from having his own.

Her child will be better off than a lot of children I know. Her child will grow up know the practices of dismantling his ego and all other forms of power. Every tradition has these practices, but our fun loving, subjective ridden, postmodern (especially progressive Christian) culture is starting to keep them hidden from our kids. That's postmodernism at its worst.

I believe that Jesus was about dismantling the ego and all other forms of power. Progressive Christians better get with the program, because, as the man said "You're either for me or against me."

landon whitsitt's daily blog "evolution of awareness" can be found at landonville.com.