Some days I overwhelmingly feel the kind of sorrow I imagine God feels. One of my professors in seminary described God as “weeping” and the image has been with me ever since. When I heard yesterday about the 16 year old Pakistani girl who was killed by her parents for looking at a boy and when I heard this morning about 6 billion dollars being spent on the election in the US, all I could do was think about our weeping God and how things have gone so awry.
The news report I heard yesterday about the 16 year old girl in the Pakistani part of Kashmir was that a boy passed by the girl’s house. The girl’s father had warned her not to look at boys and when the boy passed by the house, the girl looked. The father grabbed the girl and beat her for the shame she might eventually bring on the family. Apparently, the beating wasn’t enough. Some combination of mother and father then grabbed acid and poured it all over the girl literally melting her hair and head down to her skull bones. The mother’s response when asked about it was “It was her time to die. It was her destiny.” This is as stark an example as I can imagine of religion gone wrong. There is no God who would direct parents to so violently harm and kill their child over any kind of “truth.” What is particularly egregious in this case is that they were abusing and killing her because of what she “might do” in the future. They were afraid she might bring dishnour on the family eventually. And this event doesn’t bring dishonour? The mother and father have both been jailed and we can only hope that they will receive the harshest punishment possible. These Muslim parents have not understood the essence of Islam if they think they are justified in their abuse. Neither do Christian parents understand the essence of Christianity if they abuse their children in order to get obedience from them. My heart aches this day for all the ways in which terrible people use religion to justify their own cruelty and abuse.
When a different news report this morning said that estimates are finally out regarding how much money has been spent on this year’s election, I wanted to weep. Six billion dollars. Billion. Six. A true democracy is not built upon wealth and so we can be fairly certain we are no longer enjoying a democracy. We have staggering numbers of people right here in the US who are homeless and hungry and yet we are going to accept six billion dollars being spent on the spread of misinformation and malicious lies? How much of the six billion was spent on “attack ads”? Here we are one day before the election and there are still significant numbers of people who are confused about what is fact and what is fiction. There are still significant numbers of people who feel as though there is an attempt to prevent them from voting. There are still significant numbers of people for whom English is not a first language, who have lived in the US for years, who are hard-working and good citizens, and who find it too difficult to read a ballot in English. The deepest concern, however, is the idea that corporations are treated like individual people in regard to free speech. This election was the first we have seen since the passage of Citizens United. Even more troublesome than the amount of money spent on misinformation and malicious lies is the question about who owes what to whom now that so much money has been spent trying to elect “them.” Money is rarely given freely so now we are in a situation where those elected owe those who paid to have them elected. So much for democracy.
If we have not learned anything else in this horrific election cycle, I hope to God we have learned that we must overturn Citizens United and restore our democracy.
If we have not learned anything else in the history of religions, I hope to God we have learned that we must protect all children from the fanaticism of their parents.
As God weeps this day, I weep with her.