Religiopaths

Last Monday, at approximately twelve noon, I did something that’s not part of my normal routine.  I went to sleep.  No, I wasn’t listening to one of my old sermons!  Actually, the anesthesiologist put me to sleep.  Then another doctor took care of some loose cartilage in my right knee.  Years ago, the same surgery would put one on crutches for a few weeks and leave a six inch scar.  In another week, I won’t be able to see where they went in.   I may not feel this way tomorrow, but I’m actually motivated to get into the kind of shape to run full marathon, all 26.2 miles. Don’t need to do it every year, once would be enough.    

In 1980, a great hoax happened at the running of the Boston Marathon. The first woman to cross the finish line was a unknown named Rosie Ruiz.  Hers was an incredible feat. Rosie’s accomplishment was so unbelievable that soon after she crossed the finish line, people were asking questions. Who was this woman?  Where did she come from?  Why wasn’t she sweating?  And who had actually seen her at any point along the way?  It was finally revealed that Rosie Ruiz, a 23-year-old New Yorker, jumped into the marathon during the last mile of the 26.2 mile course. Though she never fessed up to her fraud, they stripped her of first place finish. She vowed to run another marathon to vindicate herself; not surprisingly, she never got around to it.   

Who doesn’t want to cross a finish line without having to put in the hard work of getting there?  Maybe it’s human nature.  That’s probably why the lure of casinos and river boats is so irresistible to some; why state lotteries are still going strong.  It’s why the Cliff Notes version of works of literature sell so well on college campuses.

When I think of people who not only crossed the finish line but put in the hard work of getting there, the prophet Jeremiah comes to mind.  Once God got a hold of him, there was nothing easy about his life.  Jeremiah prays but his prayers sound more like protests.  He complains to and cajoles his God. He gets in the face of important people. He lashes out and then he laments.  He weeps then warns of dire things that are soon to befall the nation.  He becomes such an annoying pest that in the tradition of Gandhi and King and Bonhoeffer and Mandela, Jeremiah is thrown into prison.

Our attention this morning, however, is not much center on the protagonist Jeremiah, rather, I’m drawn to a character introduced in the 20^th chapter, the antagonist named Pashur.  Pashur was the chief priest in the temple.  Pashur was the corner office man.  Pashur was in charge of all things religious. 

I created a word with Pashur in mind.  The word is religiopath.  Pashur was a religiopath.  If a psychopath or a sociopath is a person deemed dangerous to self and society given to destructive behavioral inclination, a religiopath is a person deemed dangerous to self and others because of his or her beliefs about God.  Pashur was a religiopath.  And I suggest this morning, that unless we understand what makes religiopaths like Pashur so dangerous, we are bound to miss them when they show up and worse, bound to emulate them in our own ignorance.

Religiopaths like Pashur are motivated by fear, they are prone to violence, and they worship traditionalism.  Fear.  Violence.  Traditionalism.  Let’s unpack those one at a time. 

Pashur, the administrative head of the temple system, the chief officer, head honcho to all the secondary religious personnel, feared the message that was Jeremiah’s.  And what was that message?  Last week, we spent some time in the 18^th chapter where Jeremiah makes a visit to the Potter’s House.  If we were to read into the 19^th chapter, we would learn that Jeremiah actually buys a pot from the potter.  But rather than put freshly cut chrysanthemums in the pot, he gathers some of the elders and religious folks at one of the public gates leading into Jerusalem and in front of them smashes the vessel and tacks on this sermon.  Jeremiah says,   “God’s getting set to do the same to you, because you’ve whored after foreign gods, you’ve offered sacrifices to gods who never did a blessed thing in your favor, and you’ve willingly offered our sons and daughters as burnt offerings to the gods who have no power.  This place where you are standing will one day be called the Valley of Slaughter.”

When Pashur got wind of Jeremiah’s sermon, he ordered his thugs to do a number on the prophet, then they shackled him in prison stocks for twenty-four hours.  Pashur was motivated by fear.  Pashur feared that he no longer had a monopoly on the truth.  He feared that the temple system no longer was the only voice of God in town.  He also feared that Jeremiah’s gloom and doom sermon would have adverse consequences on the cash flow of the temple receipts.  Jeremiah was bad for commerce.  Religiopaths like Pashur have no room for rivals.

It’s a quality of every dictator and tyrant, whether secular or sacred, from Hitler to Stalin, from Jim Jones to David Koresh.  Fear is the chief motivator. If you haven’t seen it yet, consider renting the movie The Last King of Scotland, it’s the story of Uganda’s Idi Amin, the insecure despot who lived in fear of his detractors and would-be successors, which is why he killed 300,000 of them.  The same fear is evident by the repressive measures of the Myanmar (formerly Burma) government against the defenseless, bared-footed, democracy-seeking Buddhist monks.  The Burmese government might not think of itself as religious, but of course, religion is that to which we give our ultimate allegiance, gods come in many shapes and sizes.    

Which leads us to the second characteristic of religiopaths.  In fear, they always resort to violence, or if not violence then extreme manifestations of hated and condemnation of those deemed a threat.  Pashur beat Jeremiah and threw in jail.  Religiopaths always find a scapegoat.  They always find a people, a race, a minority, an ethnic group, an immigrant population, on which to pin the blame.  Religiopaths love to declare holy war.

In the 16^th century, French Huguenots were the scapegoats.  In early New England, the scapegoats were women thought to be witches.  There remain in our country white-hooded religiopaths who look at every oak tree as a potential gallows for the black man.  In some circles today, religiopaths never say the word “gay” without including in the same sentence the word “abomination.” Religiopaths need an enemy in order to justify their own hatred.

In the end, religiopaths seek to preserve their own traditionalism.  They want things to remain the some once and always and forever.  Pashur saw Jeremiah as a threat to the traditionalism of the

religious system managed by the institution of the temple.  A traditionalism that claimed, “Nothing is going to happen to us.  We have God on our side.  Jeremiah, how can you say that God is going to deal harshly with us?  Look around.  Religious life is flourishing.  The temple is bustling with activity.   We’ve just hired a dozen new clergy.  We’re in the midst of national revival.  Peace, peace, is everywhere.”   Maybe so, said Jeremiah, but not for long. 

Juroslav Pelikan, who for many years taught church history at Yale, was fond of saying, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”

The challenge for anyone who thinks of himself or herself as “religious” (and we all do whether we admit it or not) is to live without fear.  The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is fear.  The challenge is to live without fear, which of course implies that we live with a deep sense of trust in the One who creates and fashions and sustains us.

The challenge is also to live without hate, a hate that bends toward violence.  Whether it’s with words or looks, with body language or emotion, we are much, much too familiar with giving violence a place in our lives.  Certainly the way of Jesus has lessons to teach us.

The challenge is to keep the living faith of the dead, to keep the best of our traditions, without clinging to the dead faith of traditionalism.  The one brings revival and renewal and shapes the way we work for a better world; the other brings repetition devoid of any meaning, causing us to cluster into huddles turning our backs to the world. 

Religiopaths.  Pashur was one.  But I don’t want to leave you with the image of Pashur in your mind. He came and went and history has forgotten him.  I don’t know much about the faith of Arizona Senator John McCain.  He doesn’t wear it on his sleeve, which is just fine with me.  Anyone who was a prisoner of war for five and a half years in Vietnam gets my admiration and respect.  Senator McCain has written about that period of his life, and I leave you his account: