An Open Letter to People of Faith

Dear Friends,

I credit my parents.  If you disagree with me, you will likely replace "credit" with "blame."  I can handle that.  I believe my parents can as well.

It's not as if somewhere in my childhood my parents sat me down and laid this out for me.  I picked this up through the way they lived.  Their lifestyle personified their beliefs and their faith through the actions they took.  For this, I have the utmost respect for them.

It comes down to this:  If you are a person of faith, if you have chosen to state you are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Hindu, if people know you as someone who holds a set of faith-based beliefs you are responsible for your actions.  More so than those who do not openly state their faith.  This is even truer for people of the cloth.  If by looking at you I know you are a priest, nun, monk, rabbi, or if I know you as a pastor, I get to hold you to a higher standard.  I just do.  Your choice to openly, publicly, and formally announce your faith through your profession or clothing gives me permission to raise the bar in how I look at you.  I do.  You asked for it.

Which is why crimes committed by people of faith like the sexual assaults on children by some of the Catholic "cloth" infuriate me.  The same goes for people of faith who are nasty, unkind, passive-aggressive, and rude. You know better.  Knock it off.  Shame. 

Faith is not like poker.  You don't get to "fold" or call "all in" when it suits you.  Faith is like parenthood.  Once a parent always a parent.  This is what I learned from my parents.  You're either always "all in" or you're not.  My choice to live a life based on faith was not something I undertook lightly.  Here in Japan where I stick out as it is my actions are noted, and my moves observed.  I take this very, very seriously.  People have made assumptions I'm here to spread the gospel, teach and preach, or convert.  I'm not.  I'm here because there's a need to find ways to put food on the table.  My "mission" here is not about the after-life.  It's about the day-to-day life.

A recent e-mail brought up in me this feeling of living an "all in" life.  My job, now and for the foreseeable future is to spread the word about what's going on in Tohoku, post the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011.  I understand there will come a point where people are tired of hearing of this.  Some are already tired of news about Tohoku.  I've heard, "Japan can take care of itself," and "Move on," and "Japan is rich," and "Japan is not a third-world country, so we don't need to help."  If you can live with these statements, more power to you.  Not being here, not seeing what happened, not living among those whose pain is still very, very real, it's probably easy to arrive at those conclusions.  I can't force you to help.

But, I can cry foul, especially for those whose faith teaches them to help people in need regardless of how well-off that country or region might be.  The e-mail I received this morning told me a faith-based publication "didn't have space" to print a feature article on Tohoku.  How do I respond to a statement like that?  Where do I begin?  If it weren't a faith-based group, I would have let it go.  I would have judged them as small and petty people, but I would have let it go.  My reply, a nasty one I'm afraid, said "MAKE space."  I'm guessing that probably didn't go over well.

Pick a spot on the map preferably along the ocean and now draw a line extending 300 miles.  It doesn't matter whether you go north, south, east, or west.  Now, imagine EVERY SINGLE city, village, and town on that line has lost people, sometimes thousands at a time.  Buildings and homes are destroyed.  If it wasn't made of concrete, it's gone.  Imagine some towns are almost entirely wiped off the map.  Now, tell me how (first-world country aside) you "don't have space" to print an article about the millions of people whose lives have been turned upside down.  Really? 

Today, I'm disappointed in these believers who don't know how to make space in a publication to tell an important story.  Tomorrow, I will disappoint someone.  The difference is, I'm trying.