Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews

This morning, I read the New York Times’ curiously puffy piece on everyone’s favourite frothy mixture. And, usually, I would respond by pointing out that Santorum is not merely reactionary, but medieval. That he opposes any and all forms of “unnatural” birth control. That he is comfortable equating gay sex to bestiality. That his own son’s story - a dying fetus putting his wife’s life in danger, delivered at 20 weeks - gives the lie to the oft-repeated claim among pro-lifers that a woman’s life could never be incompatible with pregnancy. Or, of course, that the question of termination, which he reports having struggled with, is a question he wishes to spare the rest of us from facing. (Thanks, Rick!)

What I actually thought, however, was how similar the faith of Rick Santorum is to the faith of Shalom Auslander, the no-longer-observant but hopelessly religious Jew whose excellent memoir, Foreskin’s Lament, I recently re-read. Both of them, right, are believers. And most people aren’t. Of course they aren’t. Who among us would be happily putzing around on Tumblr, or bitching about the long wait for brunch at Prune, if we actually thought there was an active interventionist deity at work in the world? It seems unlikely. Why would we cry at funerals? Who would own a second home? Who would own a new car?

The nostrum of faith being a comfort is largely misunderstood. True faith is not a comfort, it is a burden. Auslander has described his life as a Grand Guignol spectacle of watching God ruin and rain terror on the innocent. Most of us are very lucky to be spared it. What can reasonably be described as a comfort is a half-assed faith that hasn’t faced a lot of scrutiny. The God of Rick Santorum (who is almost certainly the only true believer on the GOP ticket) and Shalom Auslander is a tremendous asshole. A vicious, twisted, evil torturer. And that’s the only one there could really be, if one thinks he intervenes at all. It’s actually offensive to live in the developed world and enjoy a reasonably nice life and claim that God gives a shit about humanity. Don’t get me started on the suggestion that he might care about organized sports. Anyone who suggests such a thing might as well go kick a raped Congolese woman in the tits. Honestly. 

Now, me, I think there’s the slightest chance of a deist worldview being accurate, even though slapping the word “God” into the question of WHAT IS THIS THING WE ARE LIVING IN CALLED THE UNIVERSE is clearly no answer, just putting up a particle board partition between us and the Void and carefully avoiding hanging heavy posters on it.

But if you do have true faith, there are really only two choices. You can be an appeaser, like Santorum, who genuinely wants us all to vainly attempt to ward off the capricious and angry wrath of the Lord God, or you can rail back against him, like Auslander, who once shoved a note telling God to go fuck himself into the Wailing Wall, only to panic and try to remove it.

Nothing could be more frightening than having a true believer in the White House. It’s probably never happened before.