The Wicked are Not as Dangerous as Those Who Pretend to be Righteous

A fundamental truth in the teachings of Jesus was that the wicked are not as dangerous as those who pretend to be righteous.

In fact, the only group that Jesus ever publically rebuked, and he did it more than once, was the Pharisees. Their self-righteousness and religious intolerance of anyone breaking their rules angered Jesus because he saw it as a mockery of the love God had sent him to live and share.

The recent vote at the global United Methodist Church conference, which affirmed and tightened its ban on same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian clergy, is, in my opinion, a sad continuation of the Pharisees of old who used their faith to exclude and judge others.

Let’s not forget that Roman emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity and hailed himself as bringing it to Rome, was a more than compromised leader. He had his own son killed and boiled his wife in hot water. And yet he remains in history an icon of Christianity.

The Crusades, which lasted 200 years, were horrific battles between Christians and Muslims, primarily because Christians wanted a claim on the Holy Land and believed the Muslims were heathen and unworthy of living in the places where Christianity was born. It was an immoral time of unrelenting bigotry and hatred initiated by Christians.

The Spanish Inquisition, a profane and barbaric period, was instituted by a group within the Catholic Church hierarchy in order to root out religious decent and what those leaders considered was heresy. It was little more than cruel prejudice and intolerance against others. And though historians disagree on the exact number, most believe somewhere near a million people were killed in those bloody acts of moralistic arrogance.

The wicked are not as dangerous as those who pretend to be righteous.

One would hope that Christian denominations today like the United Methodist Church, would have learned the hard lessons of Christians persecuting people in the past. We should expect Christian churches in this day and time to remember the vast betrayal of the life of Jesus that religious bigotry causes.

And yet, today, a major Christian denomination has decided that intolerance is more justified than grace or simple human acceptance.

I understand how complex the issue of allowing gay marriages and gay clergy is for Christian leaders. There is a built-in prejudice within a large group of Christians whose faith consists of uncompromising ideas about God, the Bible, and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But there comes a time when Christians leaders must remain true to the love of God, which always cancels out rigid rules, and illogical dogma. 

When I was an active minister, I dealt with these people from time to time. I have seen the heartbreaking trauma and ruin of families whose rejection of a gay son or daughter ended in disaster. They often used selected Scriptures, mostly out of context, to support their beliefs opposing those who are gay.

When I attempted to remind them of the clear teaching of Jesus in Scripture regarding acceptance and love, understanding and tolerance, they simply dismissed it as irrelevant. Nothing could transcend their disgust, not even the love of Jesus Christ.

The idea that religious leaders tell anyone, whatever their gender, their race, or their sexual orientation, that they cannot serve the church as an ordained minister, or that as an active minister they are banned from marrying a gay couple, is the height of Christian pretension, religious vanity, and yes, abuse.

The fact that Christianity survived the horrors of Constantine, the Crusades, and the Inquisition, is not that it bullied its way forward, that through aggression and rightness it won the day. The only reason it survived is because of a robust and spiritual love of others, whatever their life circumstance, from those who truly, genuinely attempted to follow the life of Jesus.

And it will be those kinds of Christians—not the established religious leaders, frozen in rules and regulations—who will survive this current crisis and embrace gays and transgender individuals and give them the freedom they deserve to serve the Church and minister in the name of the one who went to his death loving and accepting the whole world.

© 2019 Timothy Moody