GOD = Go Overseas and Deceive

In Uganda, the people say that the cross came before the flag. Meaning, Christianity came first to convert people, and then the British colonizers followed later. The link between Christianity and colonization is tempered according to this view point. However, upon further inquiry, we learn that the Christian missionaries were the ones who invited the British colonizers to come to Uganda. Therefore, the statement should correctly read: the cross brought the flag.

The acronym for GOD as seen above is the interpretation of the spread of Christianity according to some Africans. This, by all means, is not a widely spread view (but, of course, there’s always a current of dissension in every culture against the dominant paradigm). Yet, it encompasses in a quite blatant message, a startling and uncomfortable truth.

More than often, as we already know, colonization enters a country with a mask of aid and development. In the past, like here in Uganda, missionaries have preceded the colonizers. Their attitudes have lead to demonization of indigenous religions – and once you attack the foundation of a culture (its Gods and Goddesses, creation myths, and explanations of life) you threaten that culture’s very reason for existence. Those who came bringing God paved the way for the eventual destruction of indigenous cultures and death of native peoples from war and disease. This is not only true in Uganda; this is true for all indigenous peoples everywhere who have experienced colonization. In my personal collective history, I can cite the Philippines – the Spanish missionaries brought Catholicism and 350 years of Spanish colonization. And Catholicism, for example, brought a male God – Dios (a masculine noun in Spanish), which replaced the then existing word for God – Bathala (a gender neutral word in Tagalog and a word whose translation means male and female unification). This change led to the social and spiritual demotion of Filipino women in society when women had originally, before Spanish dominion, owned land, had decision making power in the family, and were respected priestesses and warriors. In the history of the US, Columbus might not have brought Christianity, but the Pilgrims did, and the Native Americans suffered (are still suffering) from the destruction of their lands and traditions, social ills from spiritual disempowerment, and historical trauma.

In Uganda (and this is the trend in developing countries worldwide), white people have historically either brought: A) Religion, B) Colonization, or C) Charity. It’s sort of ironic that the race that initially imposed their religion and culture on Africa and elsewhere is now the race that is trying to “fix” things. Tell me – can you identify the running theme here? Oppression comes in many forms whether it is in the form of saving souls (religion), bringing “civilization” to “uncivilized people” (colonization), or dispensing aid to poor people (charity). Who is in control here? Who has the power?

Religion is an interesting beast. All religions have their own dark pasts. They have conquered, converted and controlled people in the name of all-loving and all-powerful Gods whom I highly doubt would accept the carnage (physically, culturally, and spiritually) that has resulted due to the various religious missions and crusades. For example, the current Palestinian and Israeli conflict has always seen bloodshed. And for what? Surely not for competing Gods because Jews and Muslims (and Christians for that matter) worship the same God of Abraham! So then for what? For land? For ethnic pride? For vengeance for past wrong doings? For boundaries that we have created, boundaries of land, culture, and religion – that are manmade – are we suffering. And in this example, we fight each other in the name of the same God, which makes even less sense. In history and in the present time, we separate ourselves from each other over different religions, different Gods, because we believe our God delivers a different, if not superior message from the others. My own knowledge of religion has been academic by training, but motivated by a personal search for truth and meaning because religion’s vicious reality of persecution never made sense to me. And I say, from my own ongoing investigation (for which I do not claim to preach from authority but encourage everyone to seek their own truth) that the core of all religions deliver a similar message, one that has evolved from the oldest religion (Hinduism) to the newest (Baha’i), and that message is not one of separation or oppression or ethno-centric superiority of one God or people over another.

Ultimately, when we strip religion of its institutions, corrupt leaders, and misinterpreted texts, we find this running theme: unity, compassion, and transcendence. The great sages and mystics from all the major world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.) spoke the same message and expounded the same wisdom: We are all manifestations of Spirit. We have no boundaries between ourselves, each other, and God. The message is as simple as that.

Unfortunately, the message gets lost and warped, filtered through different cultural lens, distorted by corrupt leaders, and truncated by narrow minds. Religion then fails to be what it is meant to be: a cultural vessel containing this message, a safe place to individually better yourself (which in turn betters the community), and a community of morally and spiritually-minded, grounded individuals joined together by a mutual feeling of connectivity, responsibility for others, and dedication to service. Religion instead becomes a regimented set of rituals and obligations, a way to control and exert power over people. We see this in various examples throughout history – from Christianity’s support of slavery to the current cults in Idaho. We find examples in our everyday life – Catholic views of women to be chaste, virgin, pure have shaped society’s conservative views on women’s bodies, suppressed female sexuality, and presented a double standard regarding women’s promiscuity compared to men – men are glorified for their sexual prowess and women are condemned. So, I ask, how is institutionalized religion exerting its control over you? How has it shaped your childhood? The values of your parents? The values of the society that you were raised in? How have those values influenced the way you view yourself, the world, and how you live your life? I left religion because I thought it disempowered people, not only through the original missionary trips, but through modern day blind faith. Now, my search and my studies have given me another lens on religion, and I see it is as a powerful vessel, a tool for cultivating and tapping into each person’s greatest potential.

Religion feeds our need to transcend isolation and alienation. Humans crave meaning, we crave connection to others, our deepest selves, and to something greater than ourselves. Science may have explained our existence through the Big Bang and Darwinism, but it has not explained the why. We may know how we came to be here, but we still and will never know the why, and this question will plague humans no matter how far science and technology advances. What is the meaning of life? Here, we need God, we need connection to a higher power, to each other, to feel as if our lives matter and have meaning. This is the human condition. This is the beauty and tragedy of the human experience. This fundamental question either separates us or unites us depending on how we look at things. This either becomes a motivator for violent reaction in the name of religion or humble action in the name of compassion. This either makes or breaks us as a global community.

With all this knowledge, what do we do about religion?

First, to back track, we cannot erase or fix the past. There is no way to turn back time to convince the missionaries that their plight to save souls rather condemns cultures or to plead with colonizers that their aim to bring civilization really brings destruction to ancient traditions instead. While these historical truths are real and apparent, there is another blatant reality facing all of us: We would not be here if it was not for what came before us. No matter how far removed we feel from historical events – we must remember that history reverberates in all of us. As much as I disagree with mission trips and colonization, I am resigned to the fact that had not America colonized the Philippines for 50 years bringing American education and Western medicine, training Filipino nurses to serve the nursing shortage in the US, my own aunts would not have immigrated to work as nurses in NJ, eventually bringing my father here, who in turn met my American mother. Historical events trickle down to the family and individual level no matter where you are from, and in the face of this truth, I am acutely aware that I would not exist.

And what about you?

How did you come to be here? Don’t stop reflecting back to merely your parents’ journey because you know that how you came to be here reaches farther back than that. Your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents faced circumstances and made decisions. Their life story is your history. Their blood is your blood. Your ancestors (or parents or grandparents – dare I say – YOU) were either oppressed or your ancestors (parents, grandparents, YOU) were the oppressor. Can you face that truth? Your existence rests on that reality. Can you accept that truth? Now tell me: what do you do with that knowledge? What do you do with that self-realization? What about the realization that today, in your current life, you are either facing, dodging, or actively participating in some form of oppression? It might not be the same oppression that your parents or grandparents faced – it might be subtler, it might be just as blatant, or it might have taken a different form. It might be by not speaking about race because you think racism is a null topic. It might be by not questioning your own religion because your religion is the right religion for everyone, right? All these are forms of oppression. Now that you see this, what do you do?

This is our great responsibility. I challenge all the angry activists to stop being angry at the past, at religion, at each other. Transform that energy and passion to create the reality you wish to see in the world. It is our responsibility to go forward with the knowledge that builds upon the lessons of the past lest we run mankind around in circles – can we really afford to waste time reinventing the wheel? Can we really afford to stay silent during another genocide? Can we really say we’ve made progress since the Civil Rights Movement or Brown vs. Board of Education when minorities in the US are disproportionately living below the poverty line, dropping out of school, and getting incarcerated? Can we really say our religious institutions have evolved when instead of burning witches, we are condemning gays? Can we really afford to dehumanize and exploit each other over land or oil when our global community is undergoing preventable climate change?

Tell me: What do you and I tell each other – and I’m not talking about what we tell our children or our grandchildren – I’m asking, what do we tell each other, when in 10 years, 5 years, next week, tomorrow – we have failed to do our part in saving ourselves? The environmental activists claim that the ramifications of climate change are just upon the horizon. They also say that all this racism, sexism, classism, religious animosity bullshit is second priority if we don’t have a planet to live on. I say they are right. Our constructions of race, sex, class, politics, and religion are just that: social constructions that are only divisive. Man made. Therefore, what is done cannot be undone, but it can be transformed.

Why I ask this question of you and I, of my peers in this generation, is because we are the generation, regardless of color (especially those of color!), who are equipped with the education and the knowledge to change the course of humanity as we know it. And we will only have each other to answer to, to hold accountable for what happens in the near future because we are seeing the future unfold at a rapid rate. Things happening right now. Genocide in the Congo (just recently in Northern Uganda!), human trafficking in Southeast Asia, religious persecution in Israel/Palestine, US colonization in Iraq, the first black man (biracial too) to be elected president of the United States (not all current events reflect lack of progress!). Like I said in one of my other blogs, we are in a strategic position to dramatically and dynamically propel the future of our global community into a reality that transcends the social ills that plague us. But guess what? Most of us are getting comfortable. I can’t even say that we’ve forgotten the struggles that came before us because most of us don’t even know! Dare I say it – there are those amongst us who are aware of all I speak of, who know their personal and collective histories, and still chose to ignore their role. I say that you are more dangerous than those who are still ignorant.

That is why I pose my question to my peers because this is not a battle for our children. In 10 years, 5 years, next year, tomorrow – will you, can you, live comfortably in your house with your flat screen TV, 2.5 kids, dog in the yard, looking forward to your holiday bonus and the next family vacation, knowing that you failed to act, failed to look critically at how your own privilege gives you the opportunity to lift others, failed to live a life where you felt yourself important enough to be an agent of positive change? Will you sit, shifting slightly in your chair at the thought of all this, somewhat uncomfortable in your upper middle class lifestyle because you know you had the power to act accordingly? You might not feel the weight upon you now, but I guarantee we will all see in the current events of the near future proof of how we failed to act. We all know that we cannot erase awareness – once we are aware of injustice in any form, you cannot erase that knowledge – you can only chose to ignore it. And I tell you, this responsibility is not a weight if we all carry it together. I also tell you that we lie to ourselves every time we tell ourselves and each other that we are unimportant, that our actions don’t matter, and our fates are out of our hands. As individuals, we cannot “save the world.” However, collectively, if we act together and build a global community that is interdependent, shares resources, and cares for everyone regardless of race, religion, gender, socio-economic status – then I say there will be no need to save a world that does not need saving because we have carried each other not just to avoid annihilation, but because we all deeply felt and deeply knew we are a planet and a people worth saving. The power to do this does not come from being white. The power to do this does not come from privilege. The power to do this does not come from oppressing or helping people. The power to do this does not come from converting everyone to one religion, your religion or mine. The power does not come from God. It comes from the feeling of interconnectivity that transcends and moves us into our own power. (And I would say, to be even more radical -- that that feeling is God, is sacred, is divine, is the simple message all religions carry. God is not a person, a thing, an object, a noun existing outside of ourselves. God is but a feeling, a propulsion, an inspiration, a motivation that permeates all things and connects us to something greater than ourselves. And this feeling is just that – this mission is just that.) Let us, I say, wake up to who really has the power now. You. I. We.

We are, in fact, more powerful than we realize.