When I was writing about my interactions with a Christian priest named Alex, a man on the Internet told me that I should not allow some asshole to tell me how to live. Alex was definitely not an asshole. He was a wonderful man. He had a full understanding of Christianity, especially of Christian love. And he was a loving husband and father.

In some places in American liberal culture, Christianity is associated with thuggery. The response to that is that thug types take the hard line of whatever ideology they are living under. Thus, thug types in Germany are Neo-Nazis and thug types in Soviet Union were Communist hardliners. In places where Christianity is the dominant ideology, thug types become Christian fundamentalists. For that matter the same kind of people who in America are into football in England are into soccer, and they become soccer hooligans when such would be unthinkable among the “metrosexual” soccer-players in the United States.

So there are thugs in the Christian culture; but I have also seen thugs in the sex culture. What Alex told me was that we as Christians were instructed to love the people “of the flesh.” The way God loves us is seeing us for all our wrongs but choosing to love us anyway. So it becomes incumbent on us to drop our judgments of these people and see them for who they are.

Julia, who has been a hippie, was telling me just this. She said that it was very easy to see these people as bigots or hypocrites, but more stood to be gained by trying to understand them. This – compassion and understanding – is the essence of Christian love. She made the effort to extend the same to all sorts of people, including people who were vicious to her. I have been learning to do the same thing, and the results have been great. I am in much better disposition now than I used to be in, and I am never lonely.

I was raised in materialism, but I’ve had spiritual experiences, and for me not being religious or spiritual is not an option. The real task is figuring out who is right and about what. I want to make the best of everything that I encounter. I do not want to see the world damned or seen as being of sin, especially when I am enjoying the benefits of both nature and civilization. At the same time I do not want to see the wisdom I’ve experienced denied or portrayed as stupidity or insanity. For me, neither materialist fundamentalism nor religious fundamentalism is an option. The first denies the reality of spirituality and religion. The second denies that there is any wisdom or goodness in anything except itself. In both cases we see vast bodies of wisdom being ignored; and that impoverishes the worldview of people who do that.

When I was 16, as a student at a Christian school I was having a conversation with my mother about what I called the common human nature. She said that there was no such thing, and that she herself never wanted to hurt anyone.. She has done spiritual questing of her own, and she has taken an interest in Christianity shortly after I did. She did not live by “traditional” Christian values; but she was a hard worker and a loving, responsible mother. Here is someone who was not a Christian fundamentalist, who had goodness and wisdom; which refutes their claim that they own goodness and wisdom and that everyone else is of the Satan.

What is the way to make the best of all this? It is to learn who is right and about what. Christians are right to affirm the spiritual nature; scientific types are right to affirm the physical nature. I want to see people being able to make the most of both worlds. While one is enjoying the benefits of living on Earth in a civilization, damning the world is not being righteous, it is being a pig. At the same time pathologizing or infantilizing spirituality is just as wrong, and completely fails to account for the things that I have experienced.

As for thugs, we can see them living under any ideology. American thugs become Christian fundamentalist. German thugs become neo-Nazis. Soviet thugs became hard-line Communist. It appears that there is no getting rid of such people; which means that one must find workable ways to deal with them and love them as we as Christians are meant to do.