    Difference VS Indifference

    By Israel Adam Shamir

    The right to be different, upheld at this conference, often is
    understood as indifference to the difference. Our civilisation proclaims
    this indifference; by the name of ‘political correctness’ it is elevated
    to the enlightenment paradigm level. We are supposed to be indifferent
    to the race, sex, physical abilities, and first of all, to the faith.
    The religion was considered the most important feature of Man, but now
    it is relegated to a question of personal choice, like the choice of a
    tie. This change was supposed to usher us into the world of no wars, for
    religion was considered a strong reason for confrontations. But wars are
    still with us, while religion is marginalised. Anti-religious leaders of
    the World War Two killed more people than all religious wars from
    Crusades upwards.

    In the Byzantine Empire the great confrontations were caused by
    differing views on the nature of Trinity or on Divine Energy, as in the
    crisis caused by St Gregory Palamas. In the West, the confrontation
    between the mainstream church and breakaway movements – Albigensians,
    Lutherans, Calvinists – caused great upheavals. Though one regrets that
    these discussions were solved by administrative or military means, still
    one can’t but feel envy towards a society that cared so much about a way
    of man to God.

    Religious indifference is a greater enemy than the fight over
    difference. If we fight over our differences – and such a fight does not
    have to lead to bloodshed – we still recognise the importance of faith;
    we recognise our communality of one people under God. When we embrace
    indifference, we slide into disintegration, into ‘each man for himself’.

    Even as a war-limiting device, religious indifference failed, for it
    brought in unmitigated wars for resources, for domination, for trade
    privileges. But its more profound failure was the promotion of crass
    materialism. A Jewish joke tells of a man who had met a wife of his
    acquaintance whom he did not see for a long time. How is he, he asked,
    and she replied: he is niftar, that is ‘rested in peace’, in high
    Hebrew. The man did not want to show he did not understand the word, and
    laughingly replied: “niftar, shmiftar, who cares? But he makes money,
    does not he?” This is what happens in our world: we are dead, but still
    make money; and some people try to convince us this is the only thing
    that matters.

    But even that is not the end of our failure. A godless world is
    impossible like an airplane without a pilot, engine or fuel. By removing
    God into the sphere of unimportant and irrelevant differences, we
    enthroned Mammon, His opponent. The priests of Mammon try to convince us
    that their god’s reign is more benevolent than that of God, but we
    witness daily it is not so. Mammon is a form of Domination Drive, and he
    is devastating our material earth as much as he devastated our spiritual
    world.

    That is why I am not sure we should promote the right to difference
    unless we promote a free discussion of the differences. We may and
    should open the grand debate stressing the difference between those who
    believe in God and those who choose Mammon.

    --

    Here we should note a special position of our Jewish brothers. As a
    highly organised world-wide religious community, or a church, they have
    a very unorthodox position on God and Mammon. While they are divided on
    the question of God for them, and some believe and some do not, both
    fractions are actively against God for others. Those who do not believe,
    their position is clear. But even the believers, for complicated
    theological reasons, doubt, or outright deny accessibility of God for
    the outsiders. “So do we”, many of you will say. But for you, every
    outsider may become insider, and you want it. In the One Thousand and
    One Night, whenever a good Muslim wins an argument with a Jew, he
    converts him into Islam. In the West, Antonio baptises the Merchant of
    Venice who tried to kill him. Even in the days of high religious
    intolerance, there were many stories of women converted, either to Islam
    or to Christianity; while in the contemporary Jewish stories, a
    righteous man preferred to die rather than to cohabit with an outsider
    woman.

    Their position was of no importance for centuries, but now, with their
    spectacular rise to prominence, this view provides a great ideological
    support for Mammon. That is why, while recognising the legal right to be
    different, we should augment this recognition by vigorous dispute, by
    stressing the difference instead of eliminating or hiding it.