Christian Life 3 - What's Love Got to Do with It?

     I said at the beginning of these posts that I would be saving some of my sharpest barbs for fellows Christians, and I suspect that the last post showed that to be true.  But I ain't done yet!  Atheists, you get to once again sit back and watch the fur fly.  And fur will be flying, because this is going to get a bit personal!  Before my most recent post, I suggested a coffee and bagel.  For this one, you might order pizza.  It's really long.

    What follows is a hypothetical conversation, but it's based on conversations I have both overheard and found myself engaged in.  I'm sort of condensing them into a single chat in order to make a point:

A: "I'm so proud of Luella."

B: "I'm often proud of Luella, but what are you specifically talking about?"

A: "Well, when I was visiting her last week, we went to Target.  While we were there, we went through the book section."

B: "I never thought of you or Luella as avid readers."

A: "Just listen.  We were in the book section and found some books in the children's section about homosexuality.  So Luella went through and hid them all behind some other books in the adult section."

B: "Interesting.  Last week, when I was at the library, I found some books written by atheists with titles I found offensive.  You know what I did?  I checked them out, took them home and read them."

A: "These were in the children's section! One of them had a picture on the cover of two men making out!"

B: "If it was a children's book, it couldn't have been very long.  Did you read it in the store?"

A: "Why should I read it?  There were two men kissing on the cover!"

B: "So, you were literally judging a book by its cover?  How often have you yourself told me not to do that?  Or were you just speaking metaphorically?"

A: "I don't remember ever telling you that."

B: "So, do I understand, then, that prejudice is only bad when it's someone else's?"

A: "This wasn't about prejudice, it was about protection!"

    There's a lot to unpack here.  To begin with, I wonder how much good these people thought they were doing by hiding books behind other books on the shelf.  Are they not aware that Target employs a small army of stockers to come into the store overnight and re-shelve items properly?  The most they could have hoped to accomplish would be to forestall the ability of another customer to locate the specific title by one day.

    Second is the allusion that these two are clearly not in the book section of Target for the purpose of buying books.  They are clearly here for "reconnaissance."  Seems to me that if you don't want trouble, you shouldn't go looking for it.

   Third is the point that B attempts to make in the conversation above.  How can anyone make choices about morality for not just themselves (as these two people had clearly made a moral choice for themselves long before arriving at Target), but for everyone else, without so much as examining the evidence left for them by "the enemy?"  In this case, literally judging the book by its cover?

    While valid, none of these points are the focus of this post.  Instead, I want to focus our attention on the last statement: 'this wasn't about prejudice, it was about protection.'  The least amount of logic allows us to dismiss the first part of this statement out of hand.  Of course it's about prejudice.  Judging a book by its cover is the literal definition of the word 'prejudice.' I'm sure the adage was originally created to be the preeminent example of pre-judging.  So this half of the statement is easy enough to dismiss as being patently invalid.  But where does that leave us as regards the 'protection' part?  What parent could refute the need to protect our children from certain harms, be they physical, mental or moral (in this instance we are not arguing the validity of the position that homosexual ideas are specifically harmful to children; we'll save that for another day)?

    But this is exactly the point at which I will stop and go, "Hmmm..."  This is where I will always pause to ponder the assumptions buried within the argument.  Can ideas be harmful?  If they can, to whom are they harmful?  And whose responsibility is it to protect the vulnerable?  By what means should this protection be carried out?  I am aware that few people will spend much time on such a minute issue regardless of on which side of that issue they find themselves.  I am also aware that most who read this post (or any of my others) will think I waste a great deal of time pondering them myself, to speak nothing of the time spent typing them out and presenting them to a disinterested public.  In my own defense, let me express the conclusions to which such ponderings have led me.

    To begin with, I have never known of an instance in which ignorance has served as protection.  Teaching our children to bury their heads in the sand seems to me a very poor method of protecting them.  Far better to teach them critical thinking skills, so that, when faced by alternate viewpoints (which they inevitably shall be), they are able to make informed, intelligent choices.  Of course, this statement presupposes that 'protection' is indeed the goal here and not 'control.'

    But there's another, more insidious point buried here that needing digging out:

    There is an idea that seems to be floating around my conservative evangelical brethren these days that, while never quite articulated as such, runs along lines not unlike the following.  It is no doubt, to a greater or lesser extent, the idea behind hiding books at Target:

1. We live in the most evil age in history.  Satan is making a mockery of the Christian ethos at every turn.

2. This is a war that we cannot afford to lose.  It is incumbent upon every True Christian, therefore, to fight this evil and return the world to the moral sanity of the past.  We must use every weapon at our disposal toward that end.

3. Any ideas contrary to the above - whether expressed by Christian or non-Christian - are the direct result of Satanic influence and must be dug up root and branch.  Christians who disagree are not True Christians and are doomed to the same hellish eternity as their infidel allies.

    As my younger followers are apt to say, OMG!  Where shall I even begin?  If we start our examination at the end, we find Point #3 to be a circular argument, one of those "closed loops" of which half-baked apologists and politicians are so fond.  It's one of those "for us or against us" arguments used when debaters have no actual evidence to support their position but are unable or unwilling to cede.  There is no logical process by which a circular argument can be made valid.  The logician's only choice is to shake one's head and attribute the argument to acute foolishness.

Let us take up the discussion, then, with Point #1: "we live in the most evil age in history."  In the words of David Wuhl, "Holy Hyperbole, Batman!"  Frankly, from a Christian point of view, I can't think of any evidence to support this view.  If one wishes to blame evil on the powers of Satan in the world, let me assure my dear reader that Satan has made this a pretty evil place starting with the moment Adam and Eve took that first bite of apple!  The fact that this particular age seems uniquely evil is purely based on the coincidence that we are alive to see it.  Are today's non-Christians (on whom we blame all this "evil") actually any worse than Egyptian slave traders, Roman conquerors, Mongol hordes, Nazi genocidists, or Irish anarchists?  Or is it more likely that we tend to give past evils a pass merely because we read about them as opposed to living through them?

    As for Satan making a mockery of Christian ethos, the epistles of Paul would tend to indicate that that has been going on since before the Christian ethos had even been defined.  Nothing new there.

    If there is a difference today (and my previous arguments show that even this is capable of question), then that difference is not "out there somewhere," but very much "in our own house."  There are, at last count, approximately 7.5 billion human souls occupying this planet and, by that same count, approximately 3.5 billion of them consider themselves Christian.  That's just less than half the population, for those who aren't too good at math.  How could evil be so rampant in an environment wherein nearly half the population consider themselves among "the good guys?"  The only conceivable explanation is that a whole lot of those Christians aren't doing their part for Christianity.  To borrow mercilessly from George Lucas, many of us have evidently "gone over to the Dark Side."  Progressives and evangelicals will happily point the finger of blame at each other, so, which is which?

    This brings us to Point #2 above.  This "war on evil" is a metaphor of which St. Paul was fond.  In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells the church there to "put on the whole armor of God" (6:10).  In the following verses, Paul describes the various pieces of armor: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the sabatons of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the word of God (14-17).

    A couple of points here.  First, this "armor of God" is a metaphor, and quite obviously so.  There is no literal breastplate of righteousness, nor is there any way  for the best smith in the world to fashion one.  Metaphors are very useful as a way of explaining complex ideas to a comparatively simple-minded audience.  Many great teachers, including Jesus, make extensive use of metaphor.  The problem comes in when the audience mentally substitutes the metaphor for the reality of the thing being represented.  Jesus says that the kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer sowing seeds, not that there are actual farmers sowing actual seeds in Heaven.  What would be the point?  Do disembodied souls eat physical food?  So the armor of God is metaphorical and is to be donned to fight a metaphorical battle.  The armor is like the idea of Christian preparation for an encounter that's sometimes like a battle.  It's not real armor, and there is no real war.

    Secondly, even if we choose to be more literal in our interpretation, armor is protective.  It's used for defense, not offense.  The only part of the "armor" in Paul's metaphor that is offensive is the sword of the word of God.  And what, exactly is the word of God?  Love!  That's the word - L-O-V-E.  This is repeated so many times in the New Testament that an entire thesis could be written of nothing more that Scriptural quotes relaying this message.  I will confine myself to just one: "For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save it." (John 3:17)  So, while we may need to protect ourselves from evil, our only offensive weapon - the only weapon we use to fight back - is love, never condemnation.  Save your breath; I already hear you: "love the sinner, hate the sin."

    Love's a funny thing.  It usually requires a lot of commitment that we're unwilling to make to more than one person at a time (and even that is often dubious).  It requires patience, kindness, confidence, humility, honor, self-deprecation, forgiveness, meekness, forgetfulness, truthfulness, protectiveness, hope and perseverance (1 Corinthians 13:4-6).  That's an awful lot of commitment to make to even one other person, much less to all humanity.  Yet that is precisely what our Master requires of us.  This is the sword which we have been given to wield in our "battle against evil."  It is, in fact, a marshmallow sword!

    Too simplistic?  Are you sure?  Did Constantine successfully legislate people into Christianity?  Did Charlemagne successfully behead people into Christianity?  Did the Spanish Inquisition successfully torture people into Christianity?  When did a frontal (and, frankly, vitriolic) assault ever work in ridding the world of evil?    When did fire ever successfully win out over fire?  And, as a side note, do you know what Constantine, Charlemagne, the Spanish Inquisition and even the Nazis had in common? They were all big on banning books! As my granddaddy always used to say, "if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got."  Maybe it's time to simply love people into conversion.  You know, like Jesus did.

    It's hard to love people, especially when they're behaving in distinctly unlovable ways.  I can't imagine anyone ever arguing that.  It's hard.  It's really, really hard.  But that's the point.  It is no one's responsibility to bend to your will, to take on your view of Christian ethics.  It is your responsibility, as a representative of Christ, to make them want to do so.  And how do we do that?  Anyone who's ever owned a dog knows that you can't win affection - or obedience, for that matter - through force.  Trying to force a dog into affection almost always results in a pretty nasty bite.  And why shouldn't it?  Good for the dog, I say!  As for a dog, so much more for a human being.  And that is precisely why people are currently leaving the church in droves!

    Unconditional love wins the day every time.  Yes, politics are easier, but politics never actually win in the moral arena.  Only love can do that.

    In fact, here's a quick test of Christianity that I use on myself quite often.  I pass it along for your consideration:  When you head for bed at night, ask yourself these questions, and really consider the answers before you move on.  Did you act like a Christian today?  Did others see the love of Jesus in you?  Did you consciously see the face of Jesus in each of them? Did you smile and laugh and hug your way through conflict and difficulty?  Did you find it fairly easy to do so?  Was it reasonably painless?  Are you pretty sure you can do it again tomorrow?

    If the answers to the first four are "no," or the answers to the last three are "yes," then you did it wrong!

Pax