Pope Francis and El Gran Carnicero/caption
Rather than swinging the vote rightward on critical issues self-styled Christians are increasingly opting for secular utopia.
Does it make sense to practice the Christian faith? Is it right to do so?
These are two distinct questions and the answers to both in combination would probably define so wide a range of beliefs within the group of those calling themselves Christians that an onlooking third party would be taxed to view them as co-religionists.
Does it make sense when a man asks for your coat to give him your shirt as well? Not in worldly terms. Does it make sense even that you are expected to resist the natural impulse of self-defense and present your right cheek when a man strikes your left? Also not very realistic. The Pauline epistles are full of warnings (or celebrations) that the active Christian will appear a fool a naf or a lunatic to all those who live by and for the things of this world. Impractical this regimen of behavior surely is: yet the believer attempts to stay the course because he is convinced of its rightness.
Right" must necessarily mean sustained by objective moral principle" and not in conformity with received wisdom" for the latter is a formula merely for adhering to cultural conditioning. An unclad islander who practices cannibalism may also be living in conformity with received wisdom. The willing surrender of ones selfish promotion then must have a ground in human rationality which serves transcending and enduring interests; and these must be metaphysical for in material terms there can be no interest greater than physical survival and pecuniary advancement.
If we surrender our possessions and even ourselves to abuse it can only be because we anticipate a reward in an unearthly dimension. What constitutes merit in that dimension furthermore must be the disdain of these present dimensionsof their every man for himself" creed. The concept of a higher truth and an unending life of blessedness requires that we picture a soul not constrained or defined by a body its individuality expressed paradoxically by its eagerness to labor for harmony and unity over discord and contention. That soul is most itself as soul which best reflects the purity of God.
Well and good: now take a hammer a crude saw and a pair of pliers and apply all of this elegant metaphysical reasoning to current social and political circumstances as our most vocal Christians" do. If a drunkard starts following you around the park in search of a handout you are to empty your wallet to him. If he should pull a gun on you and demand credit cards be sure to give him your Nike walking shoes as well. If another man rushes in behind you as you open the door of your home dont protest or put up a fight: let him ransack the place and take your wifes grandmothers bracelet.
This is the new Christian doctrine apparently courtesy of a new pope and a host of new ministers reared on a new theology in old seminaries. Such an empty your pockets" faith is of course insane in that it is wholly unsustainable. One cannot be expected to carry a different fully laden wallet into the park every morning. The glass that constantly refills itself as one drinks belongs to fairy tale. Yet since the first exemplars of the Christian lifeincluding Christ himselfforesaw that their teaching would be thought folly we cannot instantly dismiss the new orthodoxy on the ground of impracticality. There is such a thing as a holy fool"; in fact thats a good working definition of a saint.
We dont really know by direct example what Christ or his followers would have done if held up at gunpoint or ordered by government to share their house with an unscreened stranger. I am confident however that the quietism of the complete pushover would radically differ from their conduct in at least two ways. First of all is the givers motive. In all biblical examples the objective is a soul not attached to things of this world. We are also to give up vengeance and even little vanities like being addressed by the proper title. Our hearts and minds are to be fixed on matters spiritual and eternal. In the new theology faith appears to be all about works". Giving is important because the things given are important. Others who have less stuff must be given some of our stuff. By giving of our stuff we prove that we are superior people; and if we do not give enough stuff according to our stuff-earning potential then we should get busy raking in more stuff so that it may be transferred to the stuff-deprived.
I dont recognize my faith in these latter doctrines. I believe I recognize much that is antithetical to my faith. I see the motive of vainglory as one applauds oneself for writing a fat check: I do not see the poverty of spirit" that is supposed to characterize true blessedness.
The second distinction has to do with logical consequences. If it is so preemptively urgent for me to give of my material possessions then why is it urgent? Because so many have less? But wherein is that an urgency? Because having materially little is a great evil apparently. It follows that the life of material abundance must be the good life. Ultimately the reason we all must give full-throttle is to achieve a secular utopia where everyone swims in material plenty. The Christian faith in this new design that is becomes a blueprint for a perfect here-and-now of comfort and leisure.
I do not recognize my faith in this revisionist doctrine either. Again what I perceive is a belief-system diametrically opposed to mine in significant ways. I do not believe in the pure possibility of secular utopia both because material resources are insufficient andeven morebecause the perversity embedded in the human heart will always find a way to spin misery from abundance. Furthermore I believe strongly in the value of self-denial. I do not struggle to make a higher wage so that I may wallow in more luxury and I admire people who have little yet are quite happy with what they possess. This new system revolts me viscerally: it nauseates me. I see simple folk being turned into a greedy rabble and wealthy people aping sainthood after parting with sums that they will never miss. What a noisome parody of faith!
Yet perhaps the most repellent behavior of the new Christian" has nothing to do with writing checks (or voting to force others to write checks): it is the new demureness in speech habits. Christians must say nothing that offends. They must not be confrontational. They must be peacemakersthey must corrupt their own principles rather than leave others feeling awkward or alienated. God is love! The purpose of faith is to draw the world into one great laughing weeping weaving embrace. Another utopia: but its core value this time is not so much that everyone should share everything as that no one should ever feel bad". The emphasis is even less practical than before even more delirious and puerile.
I hate liars. I suppose I should say that I hate lying; yet at the moment when a deliberate and malicious falsehood is uttered I hate the mouth that says it. If someone calls me a bigot or a racist because I happen not to endorse that persons political opinions I grow angry. I have been called a vile name with the preconceived intent of discrediting my entire position: such a response to my considered views is in its entirety a wicked fraud. The person who practices this kind of deception is a liar and richly deserves to be called so. He must be called so: the truth demands it and to sigh and smile is to collaborate in the lie.
But the Christian" wants me to answer in love and humility. I am to ask forgiveness if I have offended in any way; if my opinions were perceived as those of a bigot thenheaven forbid!I must have expressed them poorly. If certain words such as illegal" or literacy" are viewed as some kind of racist code then I am to abstain from ever using those words again. Though I most certainly was not speaking in any code at all I dont want another human being to believe mistakenly that I did so. Out come the scissors and away falls page after page of the standard dictionary adapted specially to me.
If the new definition of Christian behavior" is conduct repugnant in its invertebrate cowardice and its wanton infidelity to the truth as it skirts confrontation" then I renounce Christian behavior. My God stands for truth and is intolerant of falsehood. The initial stage of any right action is securing enough information to chart a responsible course. This information is useless if one does not or cannot ascertain its truth value. One cannot simply restore a disputed object to one party when two parties lay claim to itnot without first researching the merits of their claims.
Yet seekers after the truth are now routinely persecuted and the Christian" seems to feel that goodness lies along the path of not stirring the persecutor up. We shouldnt inflict on others the torment of making them bully us! And the bullies are everywhere. The advance of rigid ideology and irrational fanaticism has accelerated in our time to the point that one dare not even state the most transparent realities of the daily world. Take this one (which I lately wrote in another venue): heterosexual couples have held marriage in increasing contempt for five decades claiming that formality strangles love; the homosexual claim that marriage is necessary to gay couples as a fulfillment of their love stands in stark and suspicious contrast." And so it does. Any reasonable person would want to know why the institution of marriage is despised for its coarse venality by one community and revered for its mystical symbolism by the other both claiming that love has motivated their verdict. The situation involves deep contradictionyet one is not to delve into it to look for its truth. The new Christian smiles and shrugs and explains that while neither position was proper within his own belief systems tradition he understands that traditions evolve and that other people have other belief systems and he respects various beliefs and all beliefs... and on and on he pules.
If this is a coherent expression of any belief at all it is an expression of relativism. It is an assertion either that no truth exists or that whatever truth does exist is unknowable. The articles of my faith dont read this way.
My son is attending a Franciscan college at the moment (I doubt that he will be asked by his parents to return there after this school year). I admire much about the Franciscan tradition; but as with all of these matters yesterdays St. Francis is not todays. A comment made by a security official to the assembled parents of incoming freshmen deeply affected me. I wish I could recall it verbatim. The gist was that all security guards carried only pepper spray that guns were not allowed on campus and that... something rather prideful intended humorously to the effect that they had eliminated the evil of firearms.
Another Christian" sentiment that makes my blood boil: not that I question the right of the Franciscans to lay down their lives willingly before an armed madman. I applaud them for their readiness to die. But in opening up their grounds to young people they incurred an obligation to protect those young peoples lives. There was no form circulated for signing to the effect that every student accepted a holy obligation to die rather than to resist deadly force with deadly force. On the contrary the impression given by the idiot chief of security was that the campus was now somehow more secure than evernow that he had successfully broadcast to every lunatic in the area the presence of nothing but pepper spray to halt a killing spree.
Idiot: maybe thats the synonym for Christian" that Ive been searching for. Ive had enough of idiots for one lifetime; and if the new Christianity is nothing more than this garden-variety idiocy then Ive had enough of Christianity as well. Our idiot culture has already deprived words like racism" and compassion" and tolerance" of all useful meaning: now it seems that God" and Christ" may he added to the list. Perhaps Ill begin saying Deus" and Christus" in my thoughts where all my worship services now take place in order to retain my sanity as well as my faith. For there are fools and then fools lunatics and then lunatics: my God has no use for fools who fool themselves.
A more ample version of this post will appear (under my nom de plume) late next month in the Fall edition of Praesidium A Common-Sense Journal of Literate and Literary Analysis.