One of my favorite parables in the New Testament is the story of the prodigal son. Jesus told of a farmer with two sons. One day, the eldest son decided he'd had enough of farm life and demanded his inheritance from his father, so that he might go to the city to make his way. The father agreed to do so with no demands, which enraged the younger son, who stayed on the farm. The eldest went to the city, but was unprepared for it. He lost all of his father's money on gambling, women, and drink. Beaten, and with no other options, the son returned home, fully prepared to grovel at his father's feet for forgiveness. The father, however, was overjoyed that the son returned home, and threw a giant welcoming party in his honor. This infuriated the younger son even further, but when he asked his father why they threw a party the father responded that he was just happy to have his son home, and that he didn't care what had happened in the city.
I've always interpreted this passage to be Jesus's way of telling us not to be afraid to question his gospel. That even should you go out and sin, or investigate other paths to the truth, he loves you regardless, and even more so if you return to him. Christ implores his followers to question their faith, because the questioning of faith strengthens it.
So, it has always been a mystery to me why some of Christ's most ardent self-professed followers are so resistant to anything that might challenge their faith. They demand abstinence be the only method of sex education in public schools because the simple knowledge of safe sex practices might lead to the act itself, and therefore sin. They rail against the teaching of evolution because it does not conform to their narrow, rigidly constructed faith apparatus. They see threats and assaults to their faith in every atheist, every secular declaration that faith should be a personal matter, and not subject to the will of the state. They view their faith as something to be protected; to be kept in a hermetically sealed room, lest a contagion arrive to swiftly kill it.
To quote another of Jesus's parables, they have built their house on sand. Despite their loud protestations to the contrary, a true fundamentalist has little to no faith at all.
I arrived at this conclusion through a conversation with one of my conservative friends. It started with me pointing out that Sarah Palin's stance on abstinence-only education most likely led to her impending grand-motherhood. This eventually led, as political discussions often do, to more philosophical questions, mostly regarding intelligent design. I told him that I had no problem with the question of the prime mover being brought up in schools, so long as it was in the philosophy classroom, a subject undertaught at the high school level anyway. I also told him I would have no problem with comparative religion being taught in school, so long as the question of which was the true answer was left up to the students.
Then it occurred to me why such a class would never find its way into the curriculum; the fundamentalist right-wing would never allow it. Imagine if little, sheltered, God-fearing Susie were to learn about the tenets of Islam. Why she might decide that Islam makes more sense to her than Christianity, and then her parents have a little, heathen Muslim on their hands. Or what if Johnny decides he's really a Wicca? Can you imagine how that would affect a family that doesn't even allow their children to read Harry Potter books? To these people, every new bit of knowledge is another trap door to hell.
But why should the fundamentalist parents really be so worried? If their faith, and the faith of their children, is really as strong as they announce it to be, the knowledge of Jewish, or even Atheist thought would not affect them in the least. Their house would be built upon rock.
After all, ask any fundamentalist of any religion, and they'll tell you that they know their way is the true path to God, not that they believe it to be so. They don't seem to understand how empty knowledge really is. Think of all the things we knew to be true throughout history. We knew the Earth was flat. We knew that maggots magically sprung up from spoiled meat. We knew phrenology was an accepted science. Almost every time humans have claimed that they know something, our ignorance has come up to slap us in our arrogant faces. Next to true faith, knowledge is a weak gruel.
True faith should help a person make sense of a world that may in fact make no sense at all. It should come after rigorous self-reflection, and be able to stand up to the challenges of others. It should also be flexible, and open to the possibility that other faiths may have different avenues to the same destination. A person of faith must understand that other faiths do not negate or affirm the path that they have chosen, and that they might even compliment it. Faith should assuage fears, not add to them.
But traders in hard-line religious thought will have no part of this. Turn on the TV and you can find scores of televangelists, the people who claim to have the most faith, raving about the sins of the secular world and how to walk in that company is a sure ticket to eternal suffering and damnation. How frightening a thought that must be. If these are the leaders of the fundamentalist movement, I have to believe that their followers don't declare unswervig fealty to God because of faith in Its love, or even Its existence, but because they are terrified of the consequences their leaders have inserted into their brains.
Perhaps this is why Jesus exhorted his followers to pray quietly to themselves in their closets. He was trying to tell them that the path to true faith, and therefore true peace of mind, was by silently coming to it on their own terms. Jesus came down on the side of the prodigal son. If only his most impassioned followers felt the same way.