Thanks, Paul and Stephen, for your comments on my Zoroastrian post, it helps me to imagine I’m not such a total weirdo to get interested in these things! Regarding the issue of faith vs. works, there’s a lot about that whole deal I really don’t understand, but for me it’s hard to separate the two. What I mean is, faith itself generates new ways of thinking, talking, acting in the world, and the deeper faith one has, the more deeply that gets acted out in the world. Monks praying and studying and working in a monastery are, by their faith, changing the world. And war-mongering (or suicide-bombing) zealots have something defective or broken in their faith which is why their works are so destructive. So I think I’m agreeing with Stephen when I say that I think our job is to work at becoming a channel through which more God can flow. And it’s likely that the more God we get flowing through us, the more good works we do. So it’s not about doing good works so God will reward us, it’s about developing a relationship with God that radiates God outwards in ways we can’t even imagine.

All very warm and fuzzy, except for the suicide bombers and crusaders, of course.

That’s what really messes me up. I believe that most people regard themselves as trying to be good guys, even folks whose behavior I find monstrous and horrifying. Even the worst people don’t think of themselves as manifestly evil. Both George Bush and Osama bin Laden really do imagine themselves as good guys, working hard to bring on the Kingdom of God. Just like I do. And how do I know that I’m not as deluded and corrupt and evil as they are, in my own small way?

(And I’m not saying this to get into a whole political discussion. Substitute Truman and Hirohito or Tutsis and Hutus if that will keep us better focused!)

So the tricky part, or one of the tricky parts, is to try to sort out what it means to be authentically faithful to God. I feel like I know it when I see it, (sort of like Potter Stewart’s standard for pornography?), both in myself and in others, but that’s a pretty unsatisfying and perhaps dangerous standard, because it leaves me open to all sorts of opportunity to justify selfish or evil behavior. But slavishly adhering to Leviticus or the Sharia or whatever doesn’t make sense either, since I know those laws are manifestations of a particular human culture and are not universal laws.

So I come back again to Jesus’ two commandments -- to love God with my whole heart and to love my neighbor as myself -- and I figure that continuing to grapple with those two instructions will bring me closer to the answers I am looking for.

My wise friend Zoe said to me that she is learning that the real deal is not trying to fight the bad guys, but to try to BE a good guy.