I listened to a couple books by Pope Francis recently and I feel like they’ve sparked another spiritual awakening within me, (which has happened maybe 20 or 30 times in my life).
It’s a good feeling.
Like I’m no longer alone.
I always saw the catholic religion as an enemy. I mean, I’ve seen some seriously messed up stuff come out of extreme religion, so to hear the freaking pope saying things that make me shout “A-fucking-men”, it’s really quite a shock. I’m still just as much an atheist as I was before listening to these two books (Hope and Life) but it feels like that difference is just surface level. Underneath the religion and traditions, Pope Francis really seems to get it. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever connected with another human being like this through a book.
I mentioned this to a friend and he was like “Oh yeah, they have a good pope right now. He likes our people” (meaning he likes LGBTQ people) — but after thinking about it, I think I disagree. He doesn’t like our people any more than any other people. That’s what I like about him, or at least what I like about the person he presents in his books. He sees everyone as equals. He puts himself on the same level spiritually as prostitutes and drug addicts.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own mission in life. It’s been almost a year since I moved into my dream home and it’s feeling more and more like my life is just so perfect now that the only way I can move forward is to do something big and positive for the world. I think the things I really want to express, well, they are so similar to the things that Pope Francis expressed in his books, but of course I’m coming from an atheist perspective instead of a religious one. I am polyamorous and kinky while he can’t even look at some nude photos. I’m all about eating healthy and he loves street pizza and gives candy to children. But the important points we both agree on: that we are all of one consciousness experiencing ourself subjectively in other words we are all god’s children, we’re all in this together. Violence is not the answer, even in the face of what seems like overwhelming evil. Building weapons of any kind is a crime against humanity and against God (but those people deserve forgiveness like everyone else). Criminals and other “enemies” are human beings. We are all human beings.
And he gets that these things are not naive. That’s what people always say when I talk about peace and equality on the largest of scales, they say I’m naive, that violence is human nature and by not having a strong offense, you just put yourself at risk. But Francis and I get the fallacy of that, that when you invest so much time and energy and money in defending against threats, you neglect all the things you could be doing to build a better world. And you stroke your own fears and insecurities, sometimes until they control you. Your fears can become “self-referential” (a term I learned from these books when he describes problems with churches referring back to themselves for justification instead of looking toward the community). Fears justifying fears, afraid of this afraid of that, getting your neighbors afraid too. Everyone referring back to more scary things instead of looking at what’s actually literally harmful in your actual life.
And you also make yourself a target. When you buy into this us-vs-them mentality that nearly everyone except me and the Pope seem to have embraced, well you start seeing everyone as an enemy, well people pick up on that. You think of them as an enemy, they’ll think of you as an enemy.
Instead, if you think of everyone as a friend, like automatically–you just have faith in that, whether you’re calling that Jesus or Allah or the science of human interaction, whatever your faith is, if you can just have faith that everyone, absolutely everyone is a friend, then they will pick up on that and they will want to at least put down their weapons if not embrace you as a friend.
I know I’m not naive about this because I’ve been increasingly using these tactics for decades and I can clearly see that they work for me, but I can’t prove that to anyone else–I guess unless you took a long hard look at my life and choices, but that’s not really practical.
Maybe that’s a big part of the message I’m trying to create: it’s not about pleasing God or getting into heaven. I believe in this mission that Pope Francis is selling because I’ve tried it and it works. It makes my life better and it can do the same for others.
People say to me “well you’ll be sorry when you meet some psycho in a dark alley” but I don’t believe that because first of all, what’s most likely to kill me is some perfectly decent reasonable human being who is driving a little too fast and takes their eyes off the road. That’s what’s most likely to really do harm to me, not some psycho hopped up on bath salts. The same people who give me that “psycho in a dark alley” line are often the same ones who tailgate and cut people off on the freeway so I know they’re not saying it because they genuinely want to be safe. They’re saying it because that’s the story they want to tell. Dark alley psychos are thrilling. We want to be afraid of them.
Or maybe we just want them to be real, want them to be lurking around every corner so that we can justify our distrust of other humans.
I feel like I’m getting into the negative and judgemental with this entry, like pointing out everything that’s wrong with the us-vs-them mentality instead of talking about the positives of the alternatives. I think that’s also what I liked about Pope Francis. He had this way of talking about serious issues and people doing awful things without that air of condemnation that far too often seeps into my own writing. He is able to condemn the actions while still seeing the people as equals and as children of God. That’s what I strive to do. Condemning people because they don’t think like me sort of defeats the entire point of what I’m trying to say.
So coming back to the psycho in the dark alley, well, if they are such a risk that we need to change the whole way that we look at the world and at human interactions, if they’re such a risk that we basically say “Jesus was wrong about humanity”, then why aren’t we taking self-defense classes or even better, de-escalation classes? Why do so few people actually take steps to make themselves safer from these types? No one prepares, either emotionally or physically, but we’re all so convinced it’s a constant threat.
It’s a way for the media, government, police and the economy, to control us.
But being scared, helpless and submissive is not the way to be safe from a psycho. That’s how they get power over you. On the opposite end, being violent yourself only gives you a fifty fifty chance, assuming you have some training, assuming you aren’t injured or carrying a baby or any number of other assumptions.
My strategy is far safer in the long run. It’s far safer to be a strong and confident believer in peace and friendship than it is to be a terrified believer in evil around every corner. People pick up on quiet, peaceful confidence and it has far more power in the long run.
My faith in peace and the idea that we are all god’s children/all of one consciousness, well that mentality makes me safer and more confident walking down dark alleys than any amount of martial arts or weapons training ever could.
There’s a famous story from some psychology books I listened to, from I think the 70’s of a white a college student studying racial inequality in low-income neighborhoods. He goes alone into a black community asking people to fill out this rather offensive and ridiculous survey. Some gangsters run into him and think he’s full of shit so they take him hostage and hold him overnight, then the next day their leader determines he’s not a threat and lets him go. The next day the kid goes back and tries to talk to them again but now they trust him so these ruthless gang members sit down and take his survey and talk to him and wind up giving him a lot of good information about how gangs form and why, about the struggles of their community and how they view the world. I guess it was an important piece of research because it’s mentioned in a few books I’ve listened to. Then this kid starts pulling these guys out of their gang lifestyle. He wasn’t even trying to do that. He was just trying to learn from them for his research project, but they started asking for his help to get them out of the gang life. His choice to see these gang members who were clearly willing to murder, as friends and equals–that very likely saved his life and wound up helping countless more people in the long run.
There’s another story of a woman who claims that Ted Bundy of all people once picked her up while hitchhiking. He casually told her that he was going to rape and murder her but instead of screaming or begging for her life–I think she also may have been a psychology student–she started talking to him, learning about him, asking about his childhood, about how he views the world and trying as best as she can under the circumstances, to treat him as an equal and to be respectful. To learn about him. She may have had an advantage because she assumed he was just messing with her, but that’s one common way that we turn enemies into allies, assuming they have good intentions even when they clearly don’t.
Then eventually he pulls over and tells her that she didn’t act like the others and that earned his respect so he was going to let her go.
Of course, people assume she made this up. She didn’t report it when it happened so people assume she made it up even though the vast majority of crimes like this go unreported. But I believe it really did happen. If she made it up, why didn’t she make it exciting, involving some daring escape?
But people don’t want to believe this type of behavior is an option when meeting violence face to face. We’ve seen too many movies, read too many horror novels where there’s a clear line between good and evil and evil can never be reasoned with and must be destroyed.
That’s not how evil works. Evil is most effectively destroyed by the people who have faith in peace, inclusion, and empathy.
Maybe part of it is that recognizing this somehow feels like victim blaming–like “if you’d just been nicer to your murderer, you’d still be alive.” I totally get that feeling. I’m also not saying that I could never do violence myself. I mean, if someone is trying to stab me, I would be willing to stab him back to save myself or someone else. But for me, it’s just that that type of behavior can only be an absolute last resort when there’s actual immediate danger. Not just because you feel unsafe.
To be fair, the things I’m saying aren’t some magic pill that can instantly change human nature. But over the long term, I know Pope Francis is right about peace and right about our ability to overcome.
World peace absolutely is possible. It will no doubt take a long time. I don’t expect to see world peace in my lifetime, but it’s something we must have faith in. Pope Francis seems to get this. It’s not about Jesus or the power of the church or choosing the right religion. It’s about peace. It’s about constantly moving toward that goal and never giving up. But also that the movement toward peace has massive, measurable benefits, right here that you can actually see in your daily life if you just give it a chance.