Let’s let it
be said that too much of Christian religious talk and action today is a wild
distortion of what we have traditionally understood Christianity to be.
This fear
driven, hostile, endlessly close-minded Christianity of today is a vulgar
mishandling of faith. It is a treacherous attack not on liberalism, socialism,
atheism. Its target is humanity. And with unscrupulous ferocity it is deadening
the spirits of its followers, and, it is literally destroying any possibility of
cooperative problem solving in this country.
The
institutional Church, whatever Christian form it currently takes—Protestant or
Catholic, Liberal or Fundamentalist, Strip Mall setting or giant Multiplex
Citadel—is in danger of total irrelevance simply because of the
grotesque arrogance of today’s far right radical, strident, offensive
Christians and their pervasive attacks on people they dislike. They’re not
picky. They’re after anyone who does not walk in lock step with their
extremism.
This rowdy,
headline producing, media loved crowd is frighteningly inescapable. They have
gobbled up our political system and left us a Congress so damaged by
divisiveness that it no longer functions in any useful way. And they now use
politics and attempt to use the law to promote their cruel withering prejudice
against gays, their loathing of the undocumented, their disrespect for women, their
cold hearted indifference to national health care, and their maniacal berserk
revenge against Democrats. They have taken over the media and though they once
were being exploited by the Fox network, now they run the show; now Fox has to
do their bidding in order to keep the cash flow streaming. They have ruined our
educational system with their home schooling nonsense, their hatred of public
education, their disdain for teachers, and their total disregard for not just
poor children, disabled children, at risk children, but all children who do not
belong to families in complete agreement with their deviant angry Christian
authoritarianism. And their sick romance with the gun industry, with the fanatics
in the NRA, has now married Christianity to weapons, has given God’s blessing
on gun toting believers ready to kill in the name of Christ, in the name of
freedom, in the name of patriotism, anyone who has even the appearance of
threat to their pure ideology, their demand for the unlimited rule of society.
This is not
exaggeration. This is not hype. This stuff is real. This pestilence is growing.
And it ought to trouble every living one of us because it concerns all of us in
this country.
Of course
there are exceptions. Yes, there are wonderful Christian individuals,
ministers, congregations, organizations who are doing good work and attempting
with courage and determination to live out the teachings of Jesus in authentic
and transformative ways. But we don’t hear about these people. And their
influence is being completely overshadowed by the gang of Christian bullies who
with no denial or veto from anyone, rudely trounce upon and distort the
historical mysteries and virtues and teachings of Christianity and its basic
message of love, redemption, grace, and healing.
Where is the
outrage of good hearts today?
I think of
the famous agnostic Robert Ingersoll’s comment about Christians, “With their
backs to the sunrise they worship the night.” Is this what Christianity has
come to?
Camus, the
brilliant French philosopher said, “The struggle itself towards the heights is
enough to fill a man’s heart.” There was a time when Christianity guided us in
that struggle. But today’s twisted version that gallops out of control across
the land has no interest in the higher ground. They grab whomever they can and
drag them into a terrible darkness of anger, indifference and contempt.
Putting some
abysmal religious interpretation ahead of humanity and its fundamental needs ought
to be an obvious and grievous error for thinking people and certainly
Christians. If Jesus never taught us anything else he surely taught there is
nothing more sacred than individual human beings. Despite its noisy protests of
abortion and liberalism and so forth, today’s radical Christianity has clearly
abandoned this truth. Belief is now plainly more important than people. And
what unsettling consequences that brings to all of us, believer or not.
© 2014
Timothy Moody
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