What We Have Forgotten

In 2008, and during the last presidential election, while working as a temporary legal secretary on assignment at a law firm, one of its partners, who was Jewish, commented during a discussion about Sarah Palin that “All Christians are lunatics”; laughter followed from the other lawyers – and then they all looked at me.

Since I was an employee for an agency and represented that agency, I did not respond; rather, I pretended at first not to hear. But I can say with confidence that they looked at me because I look “Christian” or “Catholic” evidenced by, I guess, my blonde hair, my countenance perhaps, or that I looked rich, if you will (since others before them had thought I was rich too until they got to know me.) How I looked then is close to the picture I have here posted on my hubpages (look now).

Before I go into what happened next, I would like to respond to this obviously disdainful comment:

To a secularist, the belief in God at all, for both the Christian and Jew, is “lunacy.” This is a known fact. So, as relating to the tenets of “lunacy” in religion, the Christian and Jew share much in common, it all depending from what perspective one stands on theology in general.

For example, while some aspects of lunacy can be ascribed to the Christian for his or her belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah (from a secularists view, not mine), some aspects of lunacy can be equally ascribed to the Jew for his or her belief that one wins God’s favor by following hundreds of laws (from a secularists view, not mine). In fact, to the secularist in particular, and to the Christian, the piling on of statutes begins to lose meaning for the inward man when one constantly fails to keep them all, and loss of meaning is loss of hope, which inevitably leads to loss of God’s purpose and feelings of guilt. So, while the Jewish people may regard the Christian religion “lunatic," so too a Christian people may find the Jewish religion “lunatic” as well, even though both seek a closer relationship with God.

As we embark on this millennium, I think it is wiser to consider and grant the individual his or her due in whatever they want to believe. As I see it, whether Christians believe Christ is the Messiah and the provision and only means for redemption, or whether Jews believe it is the laws of the Torah that are the path to redemption, is something that should be left for the individual to decide, or individuals to decide, if you catch my drift.

Which is why capitalism provides a venue for this to occur and socialism does not. Eighty percent (80%) of the people in this country hold a monotheistic view, whether they are Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist or Jewish. As for myself being Christian, I believe we can be united in the beliefs we share, like when I once had a conversation – and shared laughter - on line at the bank with an Hasidic Jewish man about how the bank could function more efficiently if it did not spend so much money on its state-of-art electronic board advertising (that the newspapers reported cost over a million dollars to make) and instead hired more bank tellers (so we would not have to stand in line so long thus wasting our precious little time we have in a day).

The abuse that followed me at the firm ended with my departure. And I rather think political passions at the time were responsible for the “lunatic” remark, given that mostly all Christians but only a handful of Jews prefer individual freedom and stand together against socialistic political policies. However, if the issue with my attorneys were a matter of morale in an office, and if they had instead considered me as contributor to the goal of getting their projects completed on time, which I had done, the overriding disdain of me would not have made it to consciousness.

I think it would help squelch animosities if our focus is on the amount of work to be done if we are ever going to survive this millennium and rebuild this country. But if it helps the Jewish attorneys who did not like me, I would like to tell them here: It is also the Christian belief that the Jews are God’s chosen people, and without them we Christians would not have our Messiah.