Modern day abecedarianism

Just before Easter, my pastor concluded a great sermon series on the Ten Commandments and their practicality in our lives.  (In fact, it was some of the messages in this series that prompted the creation of this blog).  One of the more recent messages, of course, was the one delivered on the ninth commandment, the one prohibiting “bearing false witness against your neighbour”.  (I suppose I’m even progressive in my Bible translations, as I never was comfortable with the loquacious language from the KJV the Ten Commandments are usually presented in, complete, of course, with “thou shalt not”s).  One topic which wasn’t covered in the sermon though (seriously, give it a listen, you’ll hear someone better at presenting God’s message to us than I, you can come back here for any progressive response to any non-progressive points brought forth.  😉 ) was presenting the truth online.

I know Jesus never had a Facebook page or an internet email address, but I’m wondering if His Facebook page would be different from a lot of ours.  I’m sure everyone is familiar with Snopes, the online fact-checker of persistent Internet rumours.  Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the rumours  that the site checks out are ones passed along by Christians to others. The one about “NASA’s lost day” and the one about “Einstein proves the existence of God to atheist professor” are both ones that get passed around by Christians as fact without people bothering to check; this Slate article mentions another about Darwin recanting evolution on his deathbed, all have crossed my inbox or Facebook wall and all are false.

This trend worries me in a few areas.  First it makes me wonder as to how people can assume it’s true because they read it on the Internet or it got passed down to them somehow.  Are we really that susceptible to any suggestion with just the flimsiest pretext that we don’t bother checking to see if it’s true?  I hope that Satan isn’t aware of this, as that’s a great way to get people to believe anything.  (Satan doesn’t read this blog, does he?  Remind me to check the IP logs.) Secondly, and most importantly, we are presenting the gospel to others who don’t believe as the truth, how would it look if we say on one hand that God came down to earth, became a man, to give us his message of love, and on the other hand also say that we believe that, say, Bigfoot is real?  This is probably why Zechariah 8:16 and Ephesians 4:25, as well as other passages, say that we should speak the truth to others because we are to make the Gospel credible from a credible source.

Another way Christians lie – actively lie – is to somehow trick people into belief.  I hope that things like are mentioned in this article are not at all common, but the statistics at the end of the article worry me.  (I know a few Christians here in Canada that volunteer with Christian-run pregnancy crisis centres, I hope that they aren’t taking pages from their American cousins.)  Why would anyone tell a lie to get them to believe in their side?  After all, they didn’t come to the program believing in a lie, they chose to actively tell them something that they know is false, that they don’t believe themselves.  If we have to lie to convince people, it seems that we are more needing to convince ourselves than others, because if we don’t believe what we believe is the truth, and have to lie to get others to believe it, then we aren’t following the truth.

There is an elephant in the room here that I haven’t addressed yet (although I touched on it by linking to the Slate article earlier) and that is the topic of such subjects as evolution and the scientific view of the creation of the world.  It seems to be commonly believed, especially among the non-religious, that one cannot be a Christian and believe that scientific theories are valid, and indeed it would seem that there is a difference between those who interpret the Bible literally and those who hold to scientific proofs.  An article by my favourite progressive Christian blogger deals with this in a wonderful way, he reminds us that Christians are focussing more on the “how” than the “who”.  The message that Genesis 1 presents to us is simply “In the beginning, God”.  He is reminding us of his constant presence.  The story that follows of how the world was created, we have to keep in mind who it was written for.  Let’s look at it this way, if your three year old asked you where he came from, we aren’t going to launch into a detailed explanation of human reproduction complete with a description of fertilization, cell division, the growth of organs, and the mechanics of human reproduction.  Rather, millions of parents have used the story that begins “when a mommy and daddy love each other very much” and this is what the child understands, he or she can’t wrap their minds around cell division or how an egg becomes fertilized, but he or she does know they have a mom and dad, that they love each other, and they show that love in an affectionate manner by hugging and kissing.  The explanation may be technically wrong, but the basic information is there based on their comprehension level.  As the child gets older, for example in their teen years, they would be able to learn more about it because their experiences have broadened and they have the mental capacity to understand the science involved in the reproductive process.  Such is the case with the story of creation.  Written thousands of years ago, it was written to a society that had no way to observe the forces of the earth, that were thousands of years away of inventing a telescope to observe the universe, and couldn’t comprehend how to interpret the data through experimentation.  What they did know is that they had a God that “loved them very much” and attempted to explain how the earth came to be through their limited scientific understanding.  When we got older, as a species, we were able to understand more about science and we used the wisdom God gave us to learn more about his creation.  We understood more than what we did thousands of years ago, but still there was God.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. – 1 Corinthians 13:11

This isn’t a new phenomenon in Christianity, back in the early days of Protestantism there was a sect called “abecedarianism”, which basically said that all learning, even that of the alphabet (which is where the name comes from) is idolatry, and they stubbornly refused to learn anything.  It seems that abecedariansm is making a modern-day comeback with conservative Christians.  Rick Santorum, a prominent American right-wing conservative politician, who often likes to mix politics with his particular brand of conservative Christianity, once said at a summit that “the smart people will never be on our side.”  He would make a great abecedarian.  Progressive Christians, on the other hand, realize that knowledge is a gift from God and that we should get to know Him with the brains that He gave us.  We are to use that knowledge to always speak the truth, whether it is about God coming to earth as a man, or about how God used the scientific process that we discovered to create the world, or about the latest bit of Internet rumour that’s clogging up your inbox.  We want the smart people on our side, because the Good News is smart.

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Thank you very much for following The Friendly Neighbourhood Progressive Christian.  I love hearing feedback from my followers, it encourages me to write more (especially on days when the blogging software doesn’t necessarily want to cooperate).  I recently added a link to email me on the left hand side bar, please feel free to reach me that way.  You can also comment on the articles, and hopefully comments will be respectful whether or not you agree with me.  But I would most appreciate it if you pass along the word of this blog to your friends, whether they are progressive or not.  My goal in starting this blog is to show Christians who aren’t acting towards others in a progressive manner that this is not what Jesus wants for us, but rather to “seek justice” and “defend the oppressed” (Isaiah 1:17).  Ideally the message of equality and justice and putting away ourselves will reach those who use Jesus’ name for hate and we can start doing what He wants us to do.  Please tell others about this blog.  Pass it on!

Hoosier Lord and Saviour?

OK, I admit it, I’ve been getting a bit behind in this.  I started on one entry and then an excellent sermon from my pastor forced me to put that first entry aside and start a second one on a topic that he preached upon and that I had planned to write an entry on anyways (just decided to move it up as a kind of “response” to his now almost two week old sermon) – and of course now when I log in I can’t find the draft copies of those two.  Sigh, such is the life of a blogger I guess.

But I did want to write a quick entry today based on current events, I’ve told myself I’m not going to worry about word count or anything on this one, but just get a quick entry out based on current events.

The current event is probably the one you’d expect when relating to the subject matter of this blog, that is the “Religious Freedom Act” recently signed in Indiana.  Having a lot of progressive friends (Christian and otherwise) this has come to my attention in spades, I can’t throw a cat meme around the blogosphere without running into another progressive outlook on this issue.

But I don’t want to say too much about it myself.  One reason being that the times that I do try to say things myself I get bogged down in nuances of what to say, and therefore my entries get delayed and delayed.  But, you’re coming here to see progressive responses to current affairs issues and boy howdy, this is custom made for it; I’m sure the world is sitting wondering what the Friendly Neighbourhood Progressive Christian has to say.  Well, some are.  Well, I’m pretty sure I have at least three readers judging from my WordPress stats.  And I’m sure at least one is wondering my thoughts.  Or maybe concerned about their NCAA March Madness bracket, I’m terrible at reading minds.  Anyways, what I instead will say is to point you to the blogosphere, I’ve been quite proud of my fellow progressives posting on this.

For example, I just came across this article earlier today.  You can use Google (or Bing if you’re a real weirdo) to see some other progressives’ take on it, but most of the ones I’ve come across have the same message:  show love – to those who are affected by this, or could be affected by this, or perceive that they could be affected by this.  This is simply the progressive’s mantra, love no matter who they are.

I hope to see this from all Christians, whether they consider themselves “progressive” or not, because I think that’s the main issue here is that different people claim to speak categorically on what God has to say, and this, of course, gives non-Christians ample opportunity to point out that our message is so inconsistent yet we all claim to be singing from the same hymn book.  There is a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln “a house divided cannot stand”, and the Christian church is so divided lately, some of us feel we *have* to publicly show how much of a Christian we are by vociferously speaking out against others, whereas progressives are sitting and quietly helping them.  So, with some persecuting, and some helping, those oppressed (even if they aren’t oppressed) by this bill, we need to come together.  Let’s not make this about us, our need to “show off” to God and come together and help those who are persecuted.  This is what Jesus would have done.

 

Well, this article came in at my usual word count, and only took about half an hour to write!  Please mind the rambling nature of it, but hopefully this one little progressive’s view is heard, you can rest easy.  Now, hopefully, I can get to work on those articles that had their drafts disappear soon, this blogging this is easy once you put your mind to it!

Does God Love Republicans?

One of my favourite jokes by one of my favourite comedians goes as follows:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

We humans like to put people in groups.  And when we do that, we find out something very quickly:  we are in one group, and everyone else is in another group (or more than one other groups).  But the fact that we are in a group must mean that we are in the best group.  After all, that’s why we’re here.  I cheer for Team X because they are the best sports team on the planet, they have the best players, and they perform the best, why on earth would I cheer for Team Y, they aren’t Team X?  Therefore, the thinking would go that people who cheer for Team Y must have something wrong with them, because clearly they aren’t as good as your team.  And of course, those who cheer for Team Y believe exactly the same, just switch the letters.

Lately, though, I’ve noticed our division and our anger for the “other team” is becoming less Christ-like and less tolerant.  Not just in sports, but also in politics and religion, and boy are people really adamant that they are on the winning team and that the others are wrong in every single way (because they’re not on their team, and their team is right because they are on it, you know).  I couldn’t help but notice this story recently about famous conservative Christian Jessica Duggar whose headline says that she believes liberal Christians are “going to hell”.  Well, as a liberal Christian, I couldn’t help but notice!  But wait, as a liberal Christian I must not like conservative Christians – after all I have this blog where I often talk about conservative Christians not acting like Christ asks us to.  Do I think God doesn’t love them?

Clearly God must have a “team”, he blesses those who he blesses and curses those who he curses.  He must be either with the conservative Christians or the progressive Christians.

Let’s take a look at who Jesus liked to hang around with.  Jesus was often pilloried by the “religious” of His day – the Pharisees – for hanging out with those who they deem were not “true believers”.  They were sinners:  tax collectors, prostitutes, and other people who they loved to say the Scriptures did not approve of.  So there we have our answer:  the “conservative” religious of the day were against Jesus for hanging out with the “liberals”, those who didn’t care about who other people were.  Case closed, Jesus is on Team Liberal.  But wait a minute, we didn’t talk about all of Jesus’ followers.  One of the most famous Bible verses come from John 3, where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus who came genuinely seeking Him.  Nicodemus was a Pharisee.

The Gospel of Bill and Ted

So, whose “team” was Jesus on?  He had disciples from both sides of the spectrum.  When we look at who Jesus hung out with, how he was treated, and how he treated others, it’s clear that he was on Team Be Excellent To Each Other.  When Nicodemus went to Him, it was not to judge who he was hanging out with, what He taught his disciples, or what He believed, Nicodemus came with a sincere heart to hear what Jesus said.  He didn’t stop being a conservative (a Pharisee), but he discovered you could be a conservative and a decent human being.

Jesus was accepting of everyone, even those on all ends of the political spectrum. The only people he was against was people that hated and that put barriers against others simply because they didn’t believe the way they wanted them to believe.  These were often the “religious right” of his day – and times haven’t changed – but as long as you are kind in your dealings to others, you can be a follower of Jesus, whether you’re a progressive or not.

Hi Neighbour

In my last blog entry I talked about the Greatest Commandment, if you are to read nothing else from the Bible, Jesus wants us to know that loving God and loving our neighbour are the messages we are to take away.  In Luke 10:29 the “lawyer” that asked it wanted to know just who Jesus meant by “neighbour”.  I love that the NIV says that he asked it “wanting to justify himself”, I’ll have more to say on that in a later post, but it also shows this attitude of just wanting to learn the bare minimum to meet some standards.  “Do this, get to heaven” philosophy that was prominent with the Pharisees of the time, and some Christians today (again, a running theme in this blog will be likening Pharisees to some modern day Christians, the parallels are surprising), Jesus gave an interesting story about who our neighbour is whose meaning may have been lost on modern audiences.

The parable that Jesus told to illustrate his point was what we all know as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  To recap, the main players are the man who was “attacked by robbers”, a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan.  We can kind of picture who the priest and Levite are, while nothing is said about the man who was attacked, we can assume he was Jewish, but the Samaritan I’ve always found interesting.  Nowadays, we hear the term “Samaritan” and I’d assume most people think of a person who does good works and helps others merely because of this story.  In Jesus’ time, though, Samaritans were not looked highly upon.  They trace their ancestry back to the Northern Kingdom, the other 10 tribes that were often at war with Judah (the southern tribes) , and many Jews of Jesus’ time staunchly did not see them as “real Jews”, I can definitely see the “religious leaders” of his day throw this epithet at them.  (There is also a hint as to their feelings towards the Samaritans in this story, where when Jesus asks him who he thought was a neighbour, the lawyer replies “the one who showed mercy”, not “the Samaritan”.  I like to think he said it in an embarrassed tone.).

So in his parable, Jesus has someone who is “not a real Jew” by the audience’s mind being a neighbour to someone and helping them, while the people that are “just like them” and admired – the priest and Levite – ignoring their duty to their fellow man.  Maybe they didn’t have the time?  Maybe there was something “different” about the traveller that made them not want to have anything to do with him.  The Samaritan didn’t ask questions, didn’t ask if he was friend or foe, he just saw a fellow human being.  The Samaritan, the outcast, was the neighbour to someone that he despised, and we are commanded to “do likewise”?

Hi Neighbour Sam, from waymarking.com

To further illustrate the principle of a “good neighbour” I’m going to take an example from the neighbourhood I live in called Transcona.  When you go into Transcona, you’ll see a statue of our neighbourhood “mascot”, Hi Neighbour Sam.  He stands at the entrance of Transcona and has his hat tipped saying “Hi Neighbour” to everyone that comes in, no matter who they are.  Christian, atheist, black, white, Muslim, Jew, gay, straight, liberal or conservative.  It doesn’t matter.  Everyone is his neighbour.  And Jesus has told us that this is to be our attitude.

Too often we forget that to live out the Greatest Commandment, we are to treat as our “neighbour” those who we can’t stand, like the traveller would have been to the Samaritan, not just our physical neighbour who looks like us, believes what we believe, and roots for the same sports teams.  Our neighbour is to be found on the road to Jericho, ignored by those who are too busy, too religious, or too selfish to help them out.  Instead, we are to ask no questions.  We are to help our neighbour.

tl;dr

Hand up, if you’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover.

Ok, now let me ask you why you are raising your hand. You know this is a blog and I can’t see you, right?

I see we’re not getting off to a good start here.

But I’m also sure that not everyone raised their hand, and not because they were smart enough to see through my “this is a blog” ruse (although congratulations those who did).  That’s because the Bible is a big book!  Reading plans that help you read through the entire Bible are usually structured to read through the book in an entire year.  A quick Google search tells me there are 807,361 words in the Bible (I’m assuming King James).  (And I must read too much science-fiction because the first thing that came to mind when I saw that number was the year the protagonist of H. G. Well’s The Time Machine travelled to, but that was the year 802,701), which is a lot of words.  To compare, there are 835,997 words in all of Shakespeare’s plays (thank you Google), about 40 million words in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, about 2.6 billion in the English language Wikipedia, and  (surprisingly) 693,303 words in the Criminal Code of Canada (thank you painstaking work) – although granted only half of those are in English. OK, maybe I got a bit carried away there (as you can tell, I like doing research). My point is that the Bible is really big, and many people who call themselves Christians haven’t read the whole thing, much less memorized it.

This isn’t a new thing either.  In Jesus’ time, of course, the Bible (although it wasn’t called that) was much shorter, mainly only consisting of the Old Testament (although I believe the Talmud – commentary on the Old Testament or Torah – might have started to be developed then, but regardless I’m pretty sure that there was more to Jewish Scripture of the day than just the first 39 books of the current Protestant Bible) but the tendency for people to want to take shortcuts and do things quicker goes back millennia.  In Matthew 22 and Luke 10 Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was so that, if nothing else, they would just follow what he replied.  The account seem to state that the person questioning Jesus was doing this to trap him, but the Mark account seems to say the question was asked from a genuine desire to know what Jesus said the greatest commandment was.  If the question was a genuine query, then it seems that the “scribe” or “lawyer” was basically saying “Rabbi, there’s a lot of stuff in the Scriptures, give me the short version so I don’t have to read the whole thing.  I mean, the whole thing is on scrolls, CTRL-F hasn’t even been invented yet, never mind books.  And chapter and verse?  Not even that!  It’s too much!  Just give me what I need to know from the Scriptures and I’ll be happy.”

Of course, Jesus’ answer demonstrates his wisdom.  The most important thing is to make God happy.  How does one make God happy?  I can sense some of you starting to whine “you’re going to make me read the Bible cover to cover regardless so that I can find out every little thing that I’m supposed to do to make God happy.”  Well, no, Jesus wouldn’t have given the Readers Digest version of the Scriptures if he didn’t think that we couldn’t use it.  How do we make God happy?  By loving our neighbour as ourselves. Some have called this passage, referred to as The Greatest Commandment, as the cornerstone of Christianity.  Jesus seemed to think so, as he wasn’t afraid to immediately cite it as the most important thing to take away from the Bible.  “If you read nothing else, read this.”  Yet us, like people all over time, try to find ways to get around Jesus’ teaching by not treating others as we would treat ourselves.  “But, they’re [X], they’re not our neighbour.”  Who was Jesus really referring to that we should love “as ourselves”?  He had something to say on that too …

(That’s a cue to go to the next post, I’ll see you there.)