The Christian Paradox (Harpers.org)
The Christian Paradox (Harpers.org)
The above article was sent to me with the heading: "pretty interesting". My initial response was, "not really." To successfully attack a person's religious beliefs you have to know a lot about the religion to begin with. I'm sure the email I replied with was a little stronger than it needed to be, but I've developed a low tolerance for people pretending to be smarter than you in order to shame you into submission to their ideas. It's easy to ignore the Right-wing version because they generally don't try to convert you unless you come to them... the Left is far more evangelical in their approach, saturating the media and public discourse with their beliefs. So, I'm much more likely to lose my temper with them than the guy who asks me if I've accepted Jesus as my lord and savior out of the blue.
Not terribly interesting. They are pretty far off base on almost everything they said. God does help those who help themselves. It's a central tenant of Christian philosophy. While not in those words, God gives mankind free will for exactly that reason. Because humanity must make the choice to come to Him on their own. He isn't going to just "save you" You have to make the first move and then God aids you. Ben Franklin is paraphrasing a basic canon of Christ's teachings... the underlying theme of all his lessons. Simply sitting around waiting for God's aid is not the lesson of Christianity. In every instance in the Gospels that Jesus helps a poor and unfortunate person, that person has made the first step toward him.
The US is a wildly protestant nation as well. While Harpers has a habit of lumping all Christians into the same pot, there are huge differences between the denominations. "Being Christian," says as much about Americans' political and social beliefs as "being white" does. I'd agree that a large number of those professing Christianity as their creed haven't a clue about what that means, but I would argue that the theologists at Harpers are not in the know either.
The beauty of the misrepresentation of facts in the article is that a staggering number of Christian preachers have indicated that Americans should vote a certain way and that way is usually Democrat. The exceptions are easy to find because they are raised up by the media. I've never once in the last 6 years had any priest tell me that GWB is who I ought to vote for. With the exception of the various Baptist denominations (which are a minority in the Christian world, though a vast amjority here in Lexington) the political bent of Christian clergy is decidedly left, not right. That is if you except abortion, which Christianity cannot uphold any more than Buddhism can in light of there doctrine.
The statistics are interesting but not surprising, there are tons of people without a shred of interest in the religion they profess to follow wandering around... I find the statistics less shocking than those indicating how few German students know who Hitler was... Harpers has a long tradition of very provocative writing which skirts close enough to the facts to be plausible and to twist them to a particular view. They are of the exact same ilk as the insidious Campus Crusade for Christ booklets. On the surface it looks true, but as you dig deeper you realize they are bending each fact ever so slightly to a cumulative end all their own. It reminds me of an algebra brain teaser I had in high school... the premise that there is mathematical proof that 1+1=1.
We live in an information age. Information is the weapon of choice. I'm convinced that it's not the guns or money that perpetuate misery in the world; it's misinformation and ignorance. People accept false information way too easily. Whether it's from reading the editorial pages of the NY Times or by reading a website like this one. You have to accept that there is a war of ideas raging in the world, Each side has their own way of delivering psychological ordinance. Whether it's from the pulpit, the mosque, the Network TV studio, or the corner news stand; some even go so far as to accost you on the street and try to cram a booklet in your hand, or put "witty" bumper stickers on their cars. There is so much information available, that we crave to have it filtered and organized for us. That leaves us profoundly vulnerable. You can see the evidence for this in Milgram's Obedience Study from the 60s, or from Jonestown... The more confusing and overwhelming the amount of information we deal with on a daily basis is, the more we want to believe anything that looks plausible and does the work for us -- something with authority. Harpers's article appears factual, the Jesus-is-Savior website has Biblical references for its opinions, but does that make either of them legitimate? Not really. The anti-Christian horde in America is as ignorant or Christianity as they claim Christians are of everything else.
