On Monday, President Obama asked Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson about her faith:
Robinson replied that those “turning in on themselves — and God knows, arming themselves” against an “imagined other,” are not “taking their Christianity seriously.”
President Obama’s question, however, could be alternately stated, “How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you with the fact that religious people are human?”
It isn’t just the religious who can be suspicious of those who disagree with them—atheists, too, can be suspicious of the religious. There’s no shortage of comedy based on the belief that the divine is absurd.
This isn’t limited to religious discourse, either. Republicans are suspicious of Democrats, and Democrats of Republicans. Independents are suspicious of both. The same goes for vegetarians and omnivores—are you team kale or bacon?
Believing strongly in something—or being against it, or believing it doesn’t exist—often clouds one’s view. That is human nature. It is by no means exclusive to Christians or other “folks who take religion the most seriously.”
It is human and natural to be suspicious of those who challenge the views we hold because of our tradition, upbringing, or research, and it is human to position one’s self as an “us” versus a “them.” President Obama’s implication that the behavior is limited to the devout is ridiculous.
