October 16: God Only Knows

I ate the same sandwich I always eat. I drank the same drink I always drink. I sat in the same seat I always sit in. But everything was most definitely not the same.

As I was eating lunch in one of the University cafeterias on campus, I noticed a pair of girls sit down at a table just next to mine. As they sat down, I couldn’t help but hear one say to the other “hey, do you wanna pray before we eat?” The other girl thought about it for a moment and agreed.

The prayer was pretty basic. The girl who was giving the prayer thanked Jesus for giving them food to eat and for making the two of them friends. She thanked him for the beautiful day outside and prayed that she would do ok on her upcoming math class. She finished with a simple “Thank you.”

I was struck by two emotions that hit back-to-back. First, I was uncomfortable. Almost immediately after, I was disappointed in myself for being uncomfortable. As someone who is deeply religious myself, why would a pair of girls thanking their god for the food they were eating make me disconcerted?

The problem is that religion has been demonized in far too much of our culture and our society. There are two options: you are either a crazy Christian or a godless atheist. There is almost no middle ground.

My experience with extremely religious Christianity has, disappointingly, been dominated by preachers promising my damnation and that of my friends and family, young men and women trying to sway me from my own faith, and the ignorant believers who read a certain Book a little too literally. Those who are rationally religious are all-too-often shrugged out of the picture, forced to either go to an extreme or be quiet about things.

This is not all that different from what is happening to Islam. We are afraid of anything “Muslim” because the only images we have in our minds of religious Islam are the images we see from the Jihadist Middle East. We underestimate the fact that Islam is no different from any other faith: it is attempting to give practitioners a way to find meaning in the world.

I don’t want people to view my Judaism as crazy or hostile. I don’t want them to think of me as narrow-minded like the depiction of ultra-orthodoxy. I don’t want the assumption to be that, because I am religious, I am incapable of having a logical or scientific discussion.

Sitting at that lunch table, I couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed for being so initially judgmental. Jesus was a smart guy when he said that we should treat others the way we wish to be treated. If I want my religion to be viewed as valid by others, I have to return the favor.

Religion is the moral compass we use to view the world around us. We look at what is right and wrong, and we use the doctrine of a certain faith to help us find meaning. It doesn’t really matter what those teachings are, so long as they provide meaning to the life of the practitioner. We could all use a dose of understanding.

I pray that I can better understand others, and I pray that everyone who calls out to a god, any god, can find peace.