Birthers and Faith

Yesterday's news was chock full of crazy, but perhaps the craziest event of all was the release of the President's birth certificate.  Not the short form legal document, which has been out there for a while, but the original full length long form.

The reason for this is simple:  there's a significant sub-set of the American right wing that just can't bring itself to believe that Barack Hussein Obama is actually a citizen.  They're called the "Birthers," because they're utterly convinced that Obama was born in Kenya.  It's the name, of course, coupled the fact that he's kinda not Caucasian, which just doesn't process.

After years of suffering through these accusations, most recently stirred by potential Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump...gah...did I really say that...yes, I did, God help us all...the "long form" that has been demanded as proof of Obama's citizenship was finally released by the state of Hawaii.

Which, of course, isn't going to do a single thing to change the minds of Birthers.   Not a thing.  Why would it?  In this era of choose-your-own-reality, those who fervently believe Obama is not American will find places that affirm that belief.  Nothing, not no way, not no-how, is going to get the folks over at WorldNetDaily to admit that Obama has the right to be president.  Ever.

There's no amount of evidence you can produce, no carefully supported tack of argumentation, no appeal to reason, nothing that will change their perspective.  Honestly, these folks will still be going on about this issue well after Obama has finished his second term...just like the leftist "Truthers" can't seem to just freakin' let Occam's Razor deal with 9/11 already, or how some folks still can't bring themselves to believe that human beings on the moon, no matter how hard you hit 'em.

Why?  Because that belief...odd though it may be...defines them.  It provides them with their sense of identity.  It's not peripheral to their sense of self, but is, instead, central.  They orient and structure their lives around it.  And as such, it is akin to faith.

Which leads, conceptually, to something every person of faith needs to think honestly about.   My faith in God, and in the life/teachings/death/resurrection of Jesus, and in the transforming power of the Spirit, that faith is a bulwark.  It's a backstop when all other defining features are dashed against the unpleasant realities of being.  It's a defining and central characteristic of my adult identity.  It is, as existentialist theologian Paul Tillich would put it, my "ultimate concern," meaning that which defines the entirety of my being.  It is the narrative lens through which I understand existence, and from which I derive my purpose and sense of self.

But what faith isn't is negotiable.  Real and robust faith shifts, lives, and breathes, and integrates new concepts into itself.  It grows, and changes, but the essence, purpose, and direction of it does not.

Which is why having faith in things that are not...well...ultimate...leads to a delusional and/or destructive sense of self.  And a delusional and destructive sense of what is real, true, and meaningful.  But really, that's not faith at all.  It's idolatry.

And idolatry is perhaps the most robust and pernicious of human failings.

Faith and the "Birthers"

On a whim today, I started taking a look at the "birther" movement. In the event that you've been intentionally hiding from CNN frothmeister Lou Dobbs, this is the group of right wing folk who are absolutely certain that Obama is not actually an American citizen. He's actually Kenyan. That his citizenship has been confirmed and reconfirmed is meaningless to the birthers, because all of those confirmations must be 1) fabricated or 2) evasions.

They have to be, because the "birthers" are completely convinced that they have discovered a great secret truth that has been suppressed since Obama was a baby by...well...someone. Most likely the Commie Fifth Columnists, working collaboratively with the Illuminati. It's also possible that both the K'taal Hive Mind and the surprisingly crafty Boise, Idaho chapter of the Kiwanis may be significant players.

One of the most interesting subthreads of this collective psychosis I've found...and there appear to be plenty of folks in the blogosphere who believe this...is that the birth certificate is being hidden because Obama is actually the son of Frank Marshall Davis, an influential African American progressive. According to this theory, his Kenyan father was a "beard," selected so that Davis wouldn't have to divorce his wife.

Of course, if this is true, then Obama would still be an American citizen, rendering this whole drama completely moot. Sure, but to birthers, that doesn't matter. Nothing matters. The folks who have grasped these "truths" are clinging to them with a presuppositional ferocity. Everything and anything they hear will be bent to validate what they already believe.

So...how is that different from faith? There are many folks of the neoatheist persuasion who would argue that belief in God is similar to being a "birther" or any other conspiracy theorist. If you believe in something, you'll fight to prove it's truth, bending the way you perceive reality so that reality accommodates that belief. For critics of religion like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, that willingness to disregard empirical evidence in favor of defending doctrine is the greatest danger of faith.

There, I think, it helps if we understand faith not as the desperate defense of a rigid system of closely-held thought, but as something that orients us outside of the frameworks in which we find ourselves. Faith in God, if it is authentic, does not harden us against truth. It causes us to realize that truth with a Capital Tee is something that transcends us. To come closer to that truth, we must allow it to shatter our preconceptions, not just once, but over and over again.