Bill Moyers and Noah

People who know me, even moderately well, sense the bitterness I feel toward the church I grew up with, and toward similar intolerances I hear echoed in larger fundamentalist institutions.

I fully admit that my feelings of bitterness and betrayal speak to my own issues of intolerance.

I am working on this. I constantly look for the "middle ground" and for thoughtful people who try to see multiple perspectives on subjects that tend to be seen as black and white. One of these people is Bill Moyers. I've mentioned it before: he's a hero of mine. And a recent speech of his reaffirms it to me. Featured on Tom Paine, in the speech Moyers asks:

"Is it possible to be pro-life while also being anti-earth? If you believe uncompromisingly in the right of every baby to be born safely into this world, can you at the same time abandon the future of that child, allowing its health and safety to be compromised by a president who gives big corporations license to poison our bodies and destroy our climate?"

but doesn't shove any answers down our throat. He invites us to reach our own conclusions. Further down, he considers Old Testament Noah as an earlier preservationist:

The parallels of this parable are wonderful to behold. Both scientists and Noah possess knowledge of a potentially impending global catastrophe. They try to spread the word, to warn the world, but are laughed at, ridiculed. You can almost hear some philistine telling old Noah he is nothing but a “gloom and doom” environmentalist,” spreading his tale of abrupt climate change, of a great flood that will drown the world, of the impending extinction of humanity and animals, if no one acts.

But no one does act, and Noah continues hearing the word of God: “You are to bring into the Ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.” Noah does as God commands. He agrees to save not only his own family but to take on the daunting task of rescuing all the biodiversity of the earth. He builds the Ark and is ridiculed as mad. He gathers two of every species, the climate does change, the deluge comes as predicted. Everyone not safely aboard drowns. But Noah and the complete complement of Earth’s animals live on. You’ve seen depictions of them disembarking the Ark beneath a rainbow, two by two, the giraffes and hippos, horses and zebras. Noah, then, can be seen as the first great preservationist, preventing the first great extinction. He did exactly what wildlife biologists and climatologists are trying to do today: to act on their moral convictions to conserve diversity, to protect God’s creation in the face of a flood of consumerism and indifference by a materialistic world.

It's a curious and unsettling thing to put ourselves in the shoes of those who disagree with us on the deepest of levels -- some would say it's impossible, and I think I'd agree, but even the most banal attempts to do so, like one of the latest reality shows Wife Swap, offers a glimpse into the lives and ideologies of others, and lets us come away with a bit more (albeit, heavily edited) understanding.

But we all have so much further to go...