Heart of the Community
The North State, like many rural areas in our country, is a haven for the religious. Not necessarily spiritual people, they seem to grow a fervency about their Christian-ness. Some of these people do truly hold the Christ consciousness in their hearts. They adhere to the golden rule. They believe that we all have the godhood within. And they walk the talk. They are good and honest people whose very spirit contributes to the well-being of the community.
But a large number of self-styled Christians haven’t a clue what Christ was truly about and they use their religion as a cudgel and a shield. They go to church religiously, but incorporate none of the godhood therein revealed. They spout phrases from the Bible like they were spitting out answers on a cheesy game show, but they haven’t embraced the essential -ity concepts like dignity, generosity, humility, and integrity.
This is not to say that the folks here are any different from anywhere else, for the most part. Though living out here in ruraldom, one tends to be exposed to a limited range of ideas. People have their coteries of local friends and associates, and their conversations tend to revolve around local issues. Many feel relief not to be swimming in a bigger pond, and that feeling tends to define everything outside of their realm as a potential threat.
A couple years ago, two young men, brothers, allegedly shot to death two men, probably for the men had been in a relationship for sixteen years. The trial has been postponed until next year, but much of the evidence against the brothers has come out, and it will be tough for them to escape conviction. Facing trial by the feds for setting fire to several synagogues in Sacramento, the brothers recently pleaded guilty to various counts and received substantial sentences.
The brothers were reared locally, by a seemingly-wigged out couple who took their Christianity well past what normal folks would consider devout. While the parents seem sad that their sons are in this pickle, they haven’t clearly expressed that they think what their boys did was wrong. In a recorded jailhouse, the mother is quoted as having told one of her sons that they were accused of "killing a couple of homos".
The larger problem is that while there was a public outcry against the malignantly-hateful crimes, and many of the local preachers joined in, any honest observer would have to note that the community evinced mixed feelings about the murders. Not that they think murders are a good thing, but that maybe this was a case of God showing he didn’t like homosexuality. Of course, if you ask people about the murders, they will frown and regret them, but many, privately among like if limited minds, you will hear that they got what they deserved.
Some of those feelings will likely shift to a truly moral deploration of the killings, once the details come out at the trial, but it’s unfortunate that the feelings aren’t already universal about the assassination of two well-respected men whose only "crime" was loving each other. There may be places in the Bible that opprobriate homosexuality, but the over-riding law of the Christian god is to love the sinner and hate the sin. And certainly not to shoot people because they are different.
It is in rural places like the North State, where inbreeding and too much television tend to favor the more primitive. People up here fear change. They hold shallow beliefs tightly, and they adhere to a code that skirts the flaws in their own behavior. They shun people outside of their own tightly-knit nooses, and lavish terror-stained hatred upon those who challenge their empiricism.
That can work as long as you keep out those of alien thinking, but it ain’t gonna work in Redding. The natural beauty of the area is too great. The prices are a fraction of what they are in the urban areas, and there’s relatively little traffic. Such circumstances, compounded by falling property values in the coming recession, will move people of broader experience up to this area. Perhaps, then, the fearful will be assuaged or driven into denial, and the heart of the community can expand.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.