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. 

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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.