We are Sorry

A week ago Saturday, Martine and I were walking through Union Square in New York when we saw a small group of people holding signs that proclaimed “We are Sorry.” Sorry about what, I wondered, so I went over to find out. They didn’t look very rueful, in fact they seemed to be having a rather good time, smiling and enjoying the fine spring weather.

I couldn’t resist. “Sorry about what?” I demanded. One sprightly young blonde sprang forward and said “we’re sorry that so many Christians have behaved so badly. That wasn’t Jesus, that was people getting the message wrong.” She then thrust a card bearing the words “We are Sorry” into my hand.

Christian apology

Well. How about that? Although I am not among the faithful, I do think that Christians tend to get a bad rap, their image spoiled by the words and deeds of the radicals and extremists. (Such is the lot of all of the children of Abraham.) It was nice to see people making a point of distancing themselves from their insane counterparts and planting a standard for the simply misinformed.

“Apology accepted” I replied with a smile, and moved on. Given that this is New York, where few people apologize and fewer still will acknowledge one, she seemed a little surprised. “Gee… uh… Thanks!” she said, with a big grin.

As I made my way across the square towards the Saturday market stalls, I turned the card over. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. It turns out those nicely washed kids are from “The Awakening Church,” a Greenwich Village based Christian center “bringing spiritual Truth through cultural relevance.” They bill themselves as “spiritually messy people following a perfect Savior.”

we're sorry

While I like the idea of spiritually messy people, these folks are establishing bulkheads against true messiness (and thus, I think, true knowledge and awareness) by proclaiming things like “spiritual Truth” and “a perfect Savior.”

Because, really, there is no single truth, and nobody — not even a savior — is perfect. Truth, perfection, and reality are slippery and shape-shifting. Nobody has it wholly right, and that includes Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and even the radical atheists like Dawkins and Harris.

The only “truth” I understand is this: the more you are convinced you have it figured out (in matters of God and spiritually) the more I distrust your opinion. I value the doubters and the questioners, not the ones who think they’ve got it.

On the other hand, it’s a nice try. All of the Abrahamic faiths follow the same basic principles, and much of what we in the West think of as morals and ethics spring from that foundation, so I’m not willing to throw the whole thing aside. But don’t get all doctrinaire about it. Be flexible. Have more questions than answers. It’s OK to run MS Word on your Mac and to use iTunes in Windows. Heck, the backbone of OS X is Unix for Pete’s sake! There’s no single right answer, and if there is any such thing as truth you find it by looking in all directions.