Adam Felber is not feeling the Christmas spirit.
And I started thinking about Christmas, and I realized that somehow I no longer thought highly of Jesus. Examining it, I realize that it’s because of a lot of very recent things. It’s because of Bill O’Reilly and his Fox News cronies yelling about the “War on Christmas.” It’s because of an increasingly loud and angry bunch of Jesus fans who seem to have jettisoned the whole tolerance-and-peace thing in favor of getting Jesus into as many public places as possible as though there was little difference between a cross and a Nike swoosh. It’s because of a President who clearly sees our current war as the struggle between the Friends of Jesus and the Friends of Mohammed, as though there were no other teams and as though that conflict was the same as one between God and Satan or Good and Evil. When presidents go to war for Jesus, when preachers call for political assassinations, when America’s undisputed top-dog religion starts acting like a bat-worshipping cult lobbying for its first tax exemption… well, it gets harder and harder to feel any affection for the team mascot.
I’m very much anti-religion in the sense that I think it’s a mistake; it’s just not a correct way of thinking about our universe. But for the most part I’m pretty neutral on whether or not religion’s overall impact is good or bad. It’s obviously extremely influential (which is why it’s worth explaining over and over why it’s not right), but the influences for good and the influences for bad are both so dramatic that it’s hard to do an accuate accounting. I like the music and the art, and I am sincerely appreciative of the community-building and charitable aspects of religion. I’m not so fond of the twisted sexual morality and warlike fanaticism that is often part of the package.
But Felber’s right that the obnoxious aspects of religion, or at least of Christianity, are momentarily ascendant. I’ve never been sympathetic to claims along the lines of “Jesus was a wonderful guy, even if his followers are occasionally problematic.” Jesus died two thousand years ago, without leaving any writings of his own or even any first-person account of his teachings, and claims about who truly understands him have been going on ever since. Jesus is nothing but the actions of his followers, and they’ve been quite a turn-off lately.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.
Or:
I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say: you helped this [Sept. 11th] happen.
Or:
“Did God have anything to do with Katrina?,” people ask. My answer is, he allowed it and perhaps he allowed it to get our attention so that we don’t delude ourselves into thinking that all we have to do is put things back the way they were and life will be normal again.
[I]f you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel.
O’Really never fails to amuse. Of course he thinks being a good american means spreading the message “if you don’t like it, you can get out” instead of “if you don’t like it, vote or run for office”.
In other words, you might get along with Jesus, but his alleged followers intrude. The cross that Jesus bears is his church.
Jesus died two thousand years ago, without leaving any writings of his own or even any first-person account of his teachings, and claims about who truly understands him have been going on ever since. Jesus is nothing but the actions of his followers….
That’s the crux of it, really. I have a lot of sympathy for those who practice a tolerant and loving version of Christianity, but when liberal theologians try to claim that the religious right has “got it wrong,” they lose me. If it were easy to agree on what Christianity is and how to practice it, then why do we have 2000 years of schisms, persecution of heretics, and religious wars?
Exactly! Especially when you couple this to the fact that much of the bible is of dubious moral quality, to put it mildly. At some point it becomes simply arbitrary to declare that the passages about peace and love are what Christianity is really all about and that all the abhorrent parts are “metaphorical” (for some unspecified reason).
“There was only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
But for the most part I’m pretty neutral on whether or not religion’s overall impact is good or bad. It’s obviously extremely influential (which is why it’s worth explaining over and over why it’s not right), but the influences for good and the influences for bad are both so dramatic that it’s hard to do an accurate accounting.
I think this says it all–and it’s so true. I was frankly surprised recently to find the current Pope in essence agree with that statement. In this sense: He was asked why be a Catholic. What’s the benefit? What recommends it over other denominations or faiths? Now, bearing in mind that the current pontiff was the head of what used to be the office of the Inquisition, I was expecting a really long-winded response laced with the sort of theological terms that no one outside a seminary would get.
Instead, his response was, basically, “I can think of two reasons: the example of the lives of the saints, and the art.”
It struck me as an extremely humble answer. And one that perhaps should be forwarded to Bill O’Reilly. How about instead of whining about the war on Christmas, you just show people some B-Roll of the Vatican’s artwork, some Da Vinci or Michelangelo, and wish everyone everywhere a Merry Christmas and be done with it.
“I’m very much anti-religion in the sense that I think it’s a mistake; it’s just not a correct way of thinking about our universe.”
What do you mean with this? You seem to speak about religious thinking in general, and in my opinion there are questions to which religious thinking is highly relevant. These questions are not usually subject to the categories of correct and wrong either.
Religious thinking and scientific thinking are complementary elements, if they come into conflict it is because one has overstepped it’s bounds. Science by itself tells naught about human life. About the world we inhabitate which is very different from the world that we meassure.
And I think if we want to soundly critizise those christians who run rampant in our territory, we should watch our own steps as well.
On those questions I prefer a-religious answers as well, I find my guidance in the words of Nietzsche and Camus, instead of the Apostles, but in these questions I couldn’t claim there was a clear cut wrong way to think about things.
This is quite seperate from the specific religious thinking that is running the US at the moment. On these issues I couldn’t agree more, including the problematic (nonsense) claim that there is a true religion somewhere that is different from the actions of the religious.
fh – perhaps the term “religious thinking” means something different to you than it does to me. To me, it means “thinking” that is based on faith and doctrines. Here faith means extinguishing completely your critical faculties and fully believing the doctrines of some authority figure as being the absolute truth, without any concern for whether the evidence supports this belief. I have no problem with spirituality in general, but faith and religion is a separate issue.
Christianity isn’t about a way of looking at the universe, it’s about people,
and how they can get along. The parts about how the universe works and
how it was created are inherited from previous writings. The writings
of the apostles deal almost entirely with the relationships of people and
how to make them more harmonious, and how to live a happy meaningful
life. These have been interpreted in various ways, with more or less success.
Almost as important as the actual writings is the community that develops
within the system. These connections through time are what make the lives
of people meaningful, and these connections are maintained not only
through personal relationships, but through the common thread and
teachings over time. This is true of any community.
For people who follow such a system, it is very diffucult to live in the modern
world. For them the system works, especially in small communities. They
see their children influenced by outside elements from the media and other
cultures. They see that sometimes these influences do not incorporate well
into their system, and they react strongly. This is not unique to Christianity,
it is pretty much universal to any community. A way of living that is healthy
and harmonious in one system may not be in another. Certainly Muslims
have made similar claims recently.
Some balance needs to be struck. Cultural relativism is important for
maintaining respect between cultures, but there are aspects of culture
that do not transfer. How does a people maintain their cultural identity
(and this includes the majority religions such as Catholocism, not just
minority religions and cultures) while still respecting the culture of others?
This all in the environment of increasing globalism and transfer of ideas
via the internet. Are we moving toward a global culture and if so what will
it be like? Or are we moving toward strict isolation and insulation of cultures
in order to maintain individual identities?
Erin
Erin, I appreciate where you are coming from, but can’t agree on your characterization of Christianity. Most versions of Christianity claim that Jesus was crucified and then resurrected three days later. And it’s perfectly clear from the Gospels that a lot of people will be sent to hell and burn for all of eternity. These are claims about how the universe works, and ones that are important to the religion, and ones that I can’t possibly accept. Claiming that Christianity is just about how people get along is stretching the definition beyond its useful boundaries.
You are correct, Sean, I shouldn’t have glossed over that. My discussion point
was about the purpose of these writings, which is purely cultural from
my external point of view, and how cultures will evolve as we enter the
age of information and globalization.
Religion is capable of transforming itself to be compatible with these things. I have for a while, as an expressed atheist, studied philosophy at a jesuit college. The natural philosophy course was tought by a jesuit who had a PhD in theoretical physics and who had acquired the title of Zen master during his studies in India.
They would eloquently qnd forcefully disagree with just about everything in the american religious right.
Perhaps this is easier in Europe, where the major battles between the secularand the religious have already been fought, then in the US where they appear to be ongoing.
Sean,
Claiming that Christianity is just about the resurrection, the afterlife and other details of its supernatural world view is also stretching the definition. I don’t think that is what you are trying to do; you want to see the whole picture.
However, the Christian community is very split and trying to represent it as having one accepted definition is not accurate. For many Christians the final judgement is the only thing that matters, and rotten behavior is acceptable if you can bring one more soul to Christ. Others strive to follow the radical teachings of compassion and selflessness, and figure that what happens after death will happen (or not), and don’t worry about it. Since the former view is much more in line with our natural tendency toward arrogance and self-indulgence, it is hardly a surprise that it has garnered a large and loud-mouthed following.
It is unfortunate that these two groups do not have clearly different names. I’d suggest “believing Christians” and “following Christians,” but no one asks me. They are generally referred to as conservative and liberal.
You are clearly frustrated with the conservative Christians that you quote, but I doubt you have much argument with the large population of liberal Christians. You will disagree with liberal Christians about the supernatural, but since liberal Christians aren’t focused on that, its not a very serious disagreement.
Since liberal Christians have no means of reigning in their obnoxious brethren, you might do them a favor by not lumping them all together when you are only criticizing one faction.
Gavin
Gavin– I think that my disagreement with liberal Christians about the supernatural is extremely important. If you’re not going to be “focused” on the divinity of Christ, then you’re just a bunch of people trying to do the best you can like the rest of us, so why confuse the issue with superstitious baggage? Either your belief in God affects how you behave, in which case we have a serious disagreement, or it doesn’t, in which case calling yourself “religious” is an abuse of language.
Sean,
There is a large population of people who do not really care if there is an afterlife, if Christ literally rose from the dead, etc. They are, however, quite interested in following Jesus’s moral teachings. What do you suggest they call themselves if not Christian?
Gavin
N.B. The word I was discussing was “Christian” not “religious.”
They can call themselves whatever they want. But they should understand that when they call themselves “Christian,” the rest of the world will presume that they believe that Jesus is the son of God, rose from the dead, etc. And that those beliefs explain why they would ever be interested in Jesus’s moral teachings rather than the teachings of countless other people whose ideas were much more systematic, well-documented, non-contradictory, and justified. Without the son-of-God business, the choice to be very interested in Jesus is rather hard to understand.
Sean,
It is a fact that the rest of the world does not presume this. Many people, including most who call themselves Christian, are aware of the rift in the Christian community. As a result Christians distinguish themselves with additional labels (Covenant Presbyterians, bible believing, etc.) The conservatives often argue that anyone who doesn’t believe everything they believe is not a real Christian. It appears that you are their ally in this?
Since I don’t feel that it is my job to tell self described Christians if they are really Christian or not, I instead take them at their word. Christians are people who say they are Christians. This population has some things in common, and many disagreements. Some significant subset Christians do not believe in the literal resurrection. Sorry if that messes up your definition.
As for why they would chose to follow Jesus rather than someone else, it is not so hard to understand. It is what they were brought up with, they are comfortable with it, it makes sense to them. The son-of-God business doesn’t need to have anything to do with it. They could certainly do a lot worse.
Gavin