Recently, my best friend and I had our weekly face-to-face conversation at a neighborhood coffee shop in a city in the deep red Bible Belt. The young woman who waited on us was almost in tears. 

I asked if she was okay. She replied, “Not at all. I am suspicious of everyone who calls themselves ‘Christian.’ Did they vote to limit my rights further?” 

I understand why millions of my fellow Americans don’t feel heard.

In my sixty-eight years of life, I have not felt heard. Throughout human history, women have not been valued, listened to, and certainly not heard. Neither have Black and brown people, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, people of different religious beliefs, or those who experience poverty.
   

Our voices are drowned out by millions who have been manipulated into screaming their rights are the right rights. This may seem a harsh judgment of many who call themselves “Christian.”

But is it? 

While Jesus taught love and radical inclusion, Christianity has been bastardized from the beginning by those who seek to divide, persecute and control anyone who threatens their perceived God-given right to rule over everyone who doesn’t believe as they do.

But did God give them that right, or did they create it themselves?

The Bible was written thousands of years ago, yet what seemed true for societies back then is too often taken as absolute for our society today. We need to consider the cultural context of the ancient societies that produced religious texts to avoid taking what is written literally.

We will not discuss our beliefs rationally if we consider ancient religious texts infallible and beyond debate. This belief in the Bible’s infallibility is the reason many Christians avidly fight against the human rights of so many people they consider “less than.”

From decades of experience, I know many Christians believe they speak for God and that they are doing God’s will. Since they are already convinced they “know” what God wants from all of us, they refuse to have respectful and meaningful conversations about who we are and our rights as human beings who are equal in the eyes of God. 

From the very beginning, there has been confusion in Christianity about the desire to control the definition of God, the word of God, and the exclusive claim to what body of belief is most valuable to God. The natural result of this confusion is an oppressive and illogical dogma that excludes rather than includes. 

It loves the Bible more than our neighbor. It defends judgmental beliefs rather than the oppressed. It is comfortable abusing, in Christ’s name, anyone considered “other.”

A compassionate Jesus asks, “If we don’t listen to the stories of the outcasts or care about how our beliefs made them outcasts in the first place, isn’t this living in a consequence-free ivory tower of self-righteousness.”

Jesus would tell us being a representative of his love means we value and fight for the rights of others as we value and fight for our own rights.

For my young female friend in the coffee shop and all my fellow citizens who feel unheard, Jesus is listening. He reminds us that expressing our faith is not about winning souls by dictating belief or demanding who we can love or what we can do with our bodies.

Jesus respected women. He knows it’s not his love, but rather fear, that dwells in the hearts of those who desire to keep women subservient to men.

The solution to our feeling abandoned is not further divisions.

Battles for control and power are not battles we, the citizens, will win. Partisan politics do not contribute to the flourishing of our citizens. One-sidedness is void of the honesty and self-regulation necessary to overpower the egocentric motivation to rule and dominate.

We must realize that those driven by the quest for power and dominance are not working for God or us, but for themselves and their donors. We are now all victims of media that spew disinformation, division, alternate realities, false equivalencies and manufactured lies.

We must return to fact-based reporting to protect ourselves from those who readily abuse their power over us. 

The most crucial overhaul, however, is that of our Christian faith. We must agree on what it means to love Jesus and loudly rebuke those who give Christianity a bad name. 

Judgment day is not some time in the future. It is now.

There is no savior coming to our rescue. Even if Jesus descended from the heavens, we’d fight over what he “should” be or do. In one way or another, he wouldn’t tick off all the boxes we’ve put him in, so we would most likely ignore his message and shoot him as the messenger.

Again.

That is why those of us who claim to genuinely love Jesus must drop what we think we know about him to open ourselves to what is actually known.

Jesus fought against evil.
He didn’t seek to control other people.
He didn’t want to rule over others.
He didn’t lie or value people who did. 
He was Jewish, not Christian.
He didn’t write the Bible and was not alive when it was written.
Jesus did not crave attention or power. 

He was a true servant leader who valued women, fed the hungry and protected the marginalized. 

To fuel a much-needed spiritual evolution, we must stop using Jesus to abuse one another and truly live what he stood for.

Peace.
Cooperation.
Justice.
Honesty.
Equity.
Responsibility.
Respect.

God is patiently (though I don’t see how) waiting for us to rise above and be the positive change we want to see in the world. We don’t need an election, a savior or a strong man or woman for us to begin having a positive influence within our communities. 

Jesus would remind us we are right to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are not like us. We are right that God loves everyone equally. 

We are right to defend and protect our neighbors, nurture them, and support their desire to live in a safe and just society.

We are right to secure the bodily autonomy of women, the freedom to vote, and to expect safety from slander, abuse and hate.

We are right to demand a living wage and health care for everyone, as well as clean air and water.

We are right to dismantle misogyny and male domination.

We are right to stand up against those who are abusing the human rights of anyone.

That makes our rights the right rights.