I recently overheard a conversation between two friends; one an atheist, and the other a Christian. The atheist was trying to prove that religion was inherently harmful to society, and he cited the numerous examples of atrocities committed in the name of religion – terrorism, Crusades, intolerance, etc. The Christian responded by pointing out the atrocities committed in Reign of Terror era France and the Soviet Union (both of which were officially atheist regimes), to which the atheist replied that while there were indeed terrible acts committed by these two regimes, they weren’t committed for atheism’s sake, whereas those that had been committed by religious regimes (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, etc.) were for the most part for their religion’s sake, or for the betterment of “God’s society.”
I thought this was an interesting point, but after digging deeper, I realized something that my atheist friend apparently hadn’t.
It’s true that some pretty terrible deeds have been carried out by people thinking that their cause was just because they were on a mission from God. In other words, their idea of “God’s will” was more important than any notion of human rights or individual liberties in the moment of the act. While there might not have been an overt, conscious effort to further the cause of atheism itself through the atrocities of Reign of Terror France or the Soviet Union, there must have been the thought that, although these individual acts might be terrible, they were necessary to ensure order and the greater good. In other words, the well-being of the state, or the people in general, trumped the well-being of any individual person.
I think that’s what’s really going on here. Anything that can be deemed to be more important than individual rights can be manipulated and politicized by demagogues with ulterior motives in order to separate people into “Us” and “Them.” Religion has been a common tool for divisiveness, along with socioeconomic class, political affiliation, race, etc.
The Rwandan genocide is a classic example. The majority of Rwandans share the same Catholic religion, but the deep racial division between the Hutus and Tutsis sparked a genocide in 1994. In the French Revolution, members of the aristocracy were seen as the enemy because of their social status, and many were executed at the guillotine because of it. Even today, there is a tendency to look at overweight people with disdain simply because of what we assume their body shape reveals about their personal character.
The point is, any factor that can distinguish one person from another can be exploited to turn people against each other. Religion itself is not the cause of religious intolerance, any more than a person’s skin color is the cause of racial intolerance.
I will admit that religion is a tricky subject, because religion aims to establish an entire moral framework on how life is to be lived. Each religion has its own set of pet sins, and we all do things that are against someone else’s religion. However, the fact that many religious people seek to impose their own personal religious morality on others is a human error, not a flaw in the concept of religion itself.
The root of the problem is the pundits and demagogues who seek to divide us into opposing sides locked in a zero-sum game. The more we dismiss the other side as the enemy, the more likely we are to prove their instigators right and fuel their fire.
4 reasons why Pastor Jeffress doesn’t have a clue when it comes to Mormons and Christians
I know, all this business about Pastor Robert Jeffress’s claim that Mormons aren’t real Christians is old hat. But I read today about another interview he gave, where he’s still saying the same things. That got me thinking, and I came up with 4 big reasons why he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
4. Christianity is not a monolithic tradition.
Even taking into account the founding creeds of the Middle Ages that (roughly) bond Western and Eastern Orthodox Christian traditional theologies, there are other strains of Christianity- such as Nestorianism, Arianism, Ebionism, and the Assyrian, Armenian, Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Churches, to name a few – that rejected some or all of the ecumenical creeds. Some were wiped out due to the political influence of the Catholic church, while others were marginalized to areas of the world that Western culture can ignore. The result is a smattering of Western churches all ultimately deriving from a Roman Catholic tradition.
The assertion that churches that don’t derive from the Catholic Christianity aren’t Christian at all is a near-sighted affront to millions of Christians everywhere who don’t see the world through the lens of Western superiority. In fact, they would argue that Western Catholic Christianity was nothing more than “the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.” So much of what we know as iconically Christian is actually the result of syncretic mixing of Jewish tradition with other ideas such as Platonic, and Aristotelian (and other Hellenic philosophies), Mithraistic, Roman, and Estruscan ideas and archetypes.
In reality, most if not all branches of Christianity are syncretisms of Biblical teaching mixed with the regional philosophies of the region they were brought to. For a guide on how true Christianity should be properly believed, we should go to the Bible – The Source. Except we can’t because…
3. The notion of “Biblical Christianity” is erroneous.
There were many disciples and even apostles of Christ in the Bible who thought that Jesus was the Jewish political Messiah. A few might have been a little more nuanced and seen Him as a prophet and reformer sent to cleanse Jewish religious culture of its impurities that had been introduced over the years by people of all different intentions. Peter came under scrutiny when he started preaching to the Gentiles, and some still accuse Paul of corrupting “Jesuism” into “Paulinism”, and essentially co-opting the movement.
The very notion of a “Biblical” Christianity ignores the fact that the Bible is not a single book written by a single author, but rather a collection of the books that survived the Catholic approval process. It also ignores and distorts the millennia of Jewish cultural memes and metaphors that fill the Bible, from the very beginning, when the original Hebrew uses the archaic imagery of a sky-dome that holds up the Sun, stars and planets in their geocentric orbits as a “firmament separating the waters above from the waters below.”
Modern Christian interpretations differ immensely in their conceptions of the literalness, metaphor, connection, etc. of the thousands of passages contained in the modern Bible, which are oftentimes a translation of a translation of a translation. And that’s just the canonized Bible, to say nothing of the Apocrypha and the differing translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library. Anything that has been written by someone who is no longer alive to reveal its original meaning is doomed to be lost to interpretative obscurity without the existence of someone with authority to speak for the author.
Even in light of the disparities involved in Christian theological thought, a person’s theological beliefs don’t determine whether or not they are a Christian because…
2. Christian theology and Christian identity are two different things.
Some Christians believe in a literal End of the World. Some don’t. Some believe that the Bible is the literal, infallible word of God. Some don’t. Some believe in pre- and post-mortal existences, and some don’t. Some Christians have no idea what they believe beyond the basics. But all Christians believe that Jesus died for their sins and made it possible for us to receive salvation. All Christians believe in Jesus Christ as a Savior of mankind individually and collectively. All Christians believe that only through grace – the love and sacrifice of Christ that we don’t deserve, and yet He gave anyway – can we be saved. All true Christians believe that the very least they can do to show their appreciation for Christ’s sacrifice is to try to become a better person every day.
And therein lies the greatest irony of all, because as much as Pastor Jeffress thinks he knows about Christianity, he doesn’t seem to realize that…
1. Christianity is fundamentally about love and inclusiveness.
Jesus taught parable after parable about a bridegroom, landowner, wealthy man, etc. who rejected his “friends” who were never all that friendly to him in the first place, and sought after those who were never included. In practice, he eschewed the scribes and Pharisees – those who hid behind tradition – in favor of the poor, the publicans, the tax collectors, and the harlots. He showed love to those who were never shown love. Rather than shunning them for not believing as He did, or acting as He did, He led through example, and these lowest of the low became some of his closest and most loyal friends and followers.
Pastor Jeffress subscribes to a brand of Evangelical Christianity, which focuses especially on developing a personal relationship with Christ. If one’s relationship is fundamentally personal, then what right does anyone else have to tell them that their relationship with Christ isn’t “Christian” enough?
If Christianity is first and foremost trying to be like Christ, then shouldn’t we look for ways to be more loving and inclusive, by building bridges rather than burning them?
And if that’s what Christianity really boils down to, then it looks like Pastor Jeffress – or anyone else who uses hate and divisiveness instead of love and inclusiveness – isn’t really a Christian, at least, not “in the traditional sense.”
Rush Limbaugh has been up to what El Rushbo does best: pissing people off. When a Georgetown University law student testified in a Democrat-led hearing about the merits of mandating insurance coverage of contraception, Rush called her a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and demanded that she video herself having sex and post the videos on the Internet for everyone to see.
The fallout has been huge. Dozens of advertisers have announced that they have dropped their sponsorship for his show, and there have been several calls for his show to be canceled entirely. At the same time, there have been many voicing their support for Rush, denouncing the “lame-stream media” for unfairly denying Rush his freedom of speech.
This comes about a year and a half after Dr. Laura was driven to end her radio show for using the N-word several times to describe a black man in an interracial marriage with a white woman. When asked about her decision to end her show, she said that she wanted to “regain [her] First Amendment rights.”
This seems to be the M.O. of arrogant people on both sides of the aisle who make outrageous statements, and then pretend to be shocked when people have a problem with it. The first defense they offer always seems to be “Hey, it’s a free country! We have Freedom of Speech!”
This line of argument has always pissed me off. Arrogant, self-important people seem to think that their freedom of speech means that every asinine thing that comes out of their mouth is socially validated, and that we all owe them a platform from which to spew their crap, as well as a captive audience to eat it all up.
Freedom of Speech means you can’t get arrested for what you say. It dates back to the days of despots who would arrest people for saying things the despot didn’t like. The Founding Fathers, wary of giving any government power too much power over the citizens’ lives, enshrined the right to Freedom of Speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
There are limits, however. The “harm principle” basically states that freedom of speech ends when it poses a threat to another person’s well-being. You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater. And speech intended to incite violence, along with hate speech, can be legislated against.
Rush definitely has the legal right to call people “sluts” and “prostitutes.” We, on the other hand, are his target audience, and we have a right to boycott his show and ask his advertisers to drop him. Freedom of Speech means you have the right to be an ass. It doesn’t mean you are entitled to an audience. We have the right to not listen to you.
I probably missed this topic’s prime. It’s not as topical as it was a few weeks ago, but this morning I saw an article about how the family of Daniel Pearl (a Jewish journalist brutally murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002, in part because he was Jewish and American) was disturbed to discover recently that he had been posthumously baptized by members of the Mormon church. This comes on the heels of the scandalous discovery that the parents of Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, had also been baptized posthumously.
I get that survivors of these individuals feel that Mormon baptism for the dead adds insult to injury in a way. After all, many, if not all, of them were killed precisely because of their Jewish identity, a badge they wear with honor. To subsequently baptize them into an obscure American church is seen as robbing them of their very identity, and thus their honor.
While my heart goes out to those who find themselves faced with one more slap in the face added to the grief of losing their loved ones, I also feel that if the practice of Mormon baptism for the dead was properly understood in the context of its intentions, it wouldn’t seem as scandalous and insulting as it comes off in our sensationalist media culture.
I am a Mormon. I grew up Mormon. I’ve performed baptisms for the dead, both as the baptizee and the baptizer. In Mormon theology, baptism is an act of symbolically washing oneself of one’s former “natural man” and committing to follow Christ. We believe, based on biblical scripture such as John 3:5, that it’s just as much the intention that accompanies the act that makes up a baptism’s validity. One of our core tenets is the notion of “free agency” – the idea that every individual is free to choose his or her own actions. Coercion has no place in our theology. We can be whatever we want to be. But that same passage in John states that, for Christians, everyone must be baptized in order to be “saved.”
While most Christian denominations take this to mean that everyone who doesn’t accept Christ in this life will be damned to hell in the next, regardless of the quality of life they led, Mormons believe that we can cover each other’s backs by being baptized for them. In this way, Mormonism has one of the most tolerant and inclusive salvation doctrines in Christianity. While we believe we can perform the act of baptism for the deceased, we reject the notion that what we do forces them to accept our faith. We believe that in the next life, those who are posthumously baptized can choose to accept or deny the baptism.
It’s more of a “get out of ‘hell’ free” card (we don’t actually believe in hell in the traditional Christian sense). It’s not about denying someone’s identity and replacing it with Mormonism. After all, doesn’t a person’s core identity rest fundamentally on how he or she perceives and defines him or herself, not what society chooses to label him or her?
If Mormonism turns out to be right, then wouldn’t it be nice to be in on it? And if not, then what does it matter? It’s hedging on Pascal’s wager, because it takes no sacrifice on the part of the baptized deceased, and it’s not exclusive. It’s like finding out that you had inherited ownership of some financial investment. If the investment multiplied and made you rich, then great! And if it went bust, it doesn’t matter, because you didn’t stand to lose anything in the first place.
In a world where religious fanatics protest and picket military funerals, or sectarian conflicts tear apart societies, isn’t it at least kind of nice for one church to say, “hey, in case we’re right, we got you covered”? As a Mormon, if any other religion out there offered to perform the equivalent rite for me after I died, I would be grateful for the kind thought.
Now obviously, the meaning certain things hold for me is founded on the culturally conditioned paradigm I identify with, and I’m sure there are contextual aspects of the lives of the deceased and their survivors that I am overlooking. I’m not advocating for or excusing the actions of those perhaps overzealous Mormons who have performed posthumous baptisms for those whose families have requested it not be done, disregarding the official stance of the Church. I just hope that the survivors as well as the world in general can see this as a respectful act of love, rather than simply co-opting dead relatives.
Call me Zach.
Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – I tried to get into blogging. I wrote a couple of posts, then got bored with it, left it for a few months, then decided on a new angle, wrote a few posts, lather, rinse, repeat. For awhile I tried using this blog to build a personal brand for myself, in areas like business strategy, language learning, etc. They are all areas that I’m interested in, and I always had the best intentions to get settled into a solid routine, hopefully build up a following, and, who knows? maybe make some money from it or get a job or something.
Maybe it was because at some deeper level I didn’t really want to write for writing’s own sake. Maybe it was because I was trying to narrow my focus too much, to show myself as an expert in one field or another. The reality is that I am interested in a variety of topics. I’m the quintessential jack-of-all-trades,-master-of-none. When I stick with one thing for too long I get bored with it. But I’m always thinking.
This iteration of the blog is a “screw you” to blogging for ulterior motives. I might post ten times a day, or I might go months between posts. I don’t really care if anyone is reading. This is for me to get my thoughts out and translate them into (hopefully) cogent narrative. I’ll write about random ideas that I have or come across, maybe try to tie together some kind of philosophical paradigm here and there. Sometimes I’ll probably talk about personal issues, and sometimes it will be impersonal and abstract. In short, this is my forum to think out loud.
If anyone does end up reading this, feel free to chime in. I would love for some of these posts to turn into insightful conversations. No dirty fighting though. I’m an open-minded guy, and I can keep a debate respectful even if I disagree, so trolls won’t be tolerated.
So that’s that.
