On Religion

I read several interesting religious and political viewpoints recently, and I’d like to thread them together. The positive spin is the presentation of Judaism as eternally an ally of LGBT rights. In America, Judaism (excepting orthodox Judaism) has been a leader in socially, politically, and financially advocating for oppressed minorities for as long as I know.

I vaguely [mis]remember a story that my great uncle told of the 1960s when he was close friends with black families in the area. He was a handyman, and he would stop by to offer assistance fixing or moving, or just a kind ear. They had a kinship of oppressed ethnic identities at the height of antisemitism and segregation. One day, they told him he was not welcome. He didn’t understand: he had been nothing but friendly! They told him that he was “white”, and that they wouldn’t associate with white people.

The story taught me one thing that I will never forget: Judaism is a friend to all minorities.

Radical Defiance

In our Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) group session today, we discussed the concept of “Radical Acceptance“. To massively oversimplify, radical acceptance is about accepting that reality is what it is. It’s not about judging a situation as “good” or even “okay“, but merely, wholly, and comprehensively accepting that reality simply is. From there, we can decide what to do next, and potentially change the future of the situation.

Marsha Linehan (psychologist who developed DBT) described a metaphor for radical acceptance: buying a purple house. You agree to buy a purple house under the condition that they paint it a different color. When you move in, the house is still purple. Radical acceptance marks the difference between dwelling in an emotional reaction and accepting both the reality that the house is currently purple and that you are upset because of that. In the state of radical acceptance, you can use your acceptance of reality and emotion to initiate change: paint the house.

I objected to this oversimplification as ignoring the major issue that it is not so simple to decide whether effective change is possible. Radical acceptance of death and past events and clearly identifiable facts of reality is inarguably powerful, even when you cannot decide what to do about physical or mental illness, overwhelming realities of personal struggles, or interlocking tangles of interpersonal strife. I think the larger concern in my objection is when the nature of reality is itself in question. If you believe your partner was dishonest, you might reach radical acceptance of that before deciding what to do next–but is it always clear that your beliefs reflect reality? I suggested that painting a house is well and good, but what if state law proscribes painting a purple house? Pigs can’t fly, but…can they? Are you certain?

Believing in the potential for change has its own pitfalls: what attitudes prevented these changes from happening in past years? We often find that state law encourage teal houses to be repainted aqua, or beige houses to be repainted burgundy–but let’s now allow purple houses any leeway. Sometimes state laws allow that we who own purple houses may repaint our mailbox, our shutters, our roofs, and even our bedrooms. The front door, and the porch, however, must remain a byzantine shade of imperial purple.

I don’t accept state law as some untouchable bulwark of reality. But that means this situation was caused by something that is even harder to accept: someone made this happen. I don’t accept that we cannot change society’s current habits of ignorance. I must believe that we can educate people to understand, to be openminded, to be mindful. People will always make mistakes, and we can’t reach everyone, but I have to believe that we can do better than we have.

I’m angry, and I’m upset, and I’m hateful because I’ve been hurt. Because I cannot believe that people are as inalterably evil as they seem to be. Because people cause immense harm despite their best intentions. Because no man considers himself a traitor. Because the world is broken, and we have to fix it, and I don’t know how.