A friend of mine posted a graphic on FaceBook yesterday. It contained a picture of Rick Santorum above the following text:
So, America was founded on a a Foreign born, Brown skinned, Jewish guy that never spoke a word of English, fed and healed the poor for free. Defended a woman from being slut shamed and killed, and chose not to conform to either Religious or Political nonsense?
Cool . . . When are we gonna start that?
This is one of many examples I could point to of unbelievers (usually on the left) playing a particularly egregious type of religious-political dirty pool.
The purpose is always an attempt to control Christians from the outside, and this is often done in a political context: most frequently, it’s done by leftists who would like us to tie ourselves in knots that they have devised: instead of standing for liberty, we’re told, we should put our trust in the state, channeling all our altruistic impulses therethrough.
If only we’d agree with them politically, we’re told, it would help us spiritually. Sadly, of course, they cannot join us on the rocky road of Christian commitment, but they are prepared to coach us from the sidelines . . . by telling us whom to vote for.
Thanks, guys.
This argument rests on: 1) telling us what the nature of Christ is, based on their (usually quite limited) knowledge of the Gospels; 2) instructing us on how, exactly, to strike the balance between our religious obligations and our civic duties; and 3) exhorting us in to live up to their stereotypical views of what Christianity is and is not.
First of all, it’s important to deal with the “Heidi’s grandfather” hypothesis. The essential thrust here is that Jesus was and is passive, pure victim, and that He came to about peace on earth in a fairly direct way (that is to say, not as part of a dramatic multi-millennium struggle between good and evil, but rather by being passive, and exhorting his followers to be passive, too).
This is a canard among non-Christians—and some Christians, as well—and rests on texts such as “the meek shall inherit the earth,” “turn the other cheek,” and the like.
And there is some truth to it; gentleness is certainly one of the natures of Christ. One of them. But there are many threads within that nature, and some of them appear to contradict each other. For every image of Christ the sacrificial lamb, there is one of Christ with a whip, clearing the moneychangers from the temple. Or Christ with the sword, or Christ as the Sword: “the sword of the Lord,” or the holy cross.
The paradoxes within Christianity aren’t to be resolved by outsiders explaining to us that we should be political collectivists. (Instead, I suggest pistols at dawn—me versus the best shot the Quakers can produce . . . I keed, I keed.)
Christ was very clear about the division between the material world and the Kingdom of God. The Jews of the time were expecting the Messiah to be a great king, an earthly leader; Christ had other things on His mind. “Render unto Ceasar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” The two realms, that is, are separate. They may intersect every day. They may require a tough balancing act. Negotiating the two may feel like taking a raft through whitewater rapids.
But they are different things. In the American tradition, the division in enshrined (so to speak) in the First Amendment, and its insistence that we must all have freedom of conscience on spiritual matters.
There is another side to this, of course, even aside from my extreme distaste for Rick Santorum. And that comes from the allusion in the leftist graphic (channelling Christian theocrats—and “theocrats”) to the notion that this is a “Christian nation.”
There is nothing wrong with asserting that the U.S.A. was founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic, and built around the Ten Commandments—including property rights, of course, and the instruction that we oughtn’t to covet our neighbor’s material goods. There’s also nothing wrong with pointing out that some currents in modern culture are objectively anti-Christian.
But there is a distinction to be drawn between that, and contending that the law should give Christians special status. There is tremendous irony in a minority religion that spent centuries being marginalized . . . attempting to marginalize people of other faiths. It’s cheeky to even attempt that.
Promoting middle-class values, yes: society has a stake in that. But Christianity itself? Not really. As far as the smooth running of the State is concerned, people need only be reasonably moral—not particularly religious.
That said, it’s repulsive to make a little puppet out of your stereotypical Christ figure, and use it to tell me what to think . . . while maintaining perfect intellectual freedom for yourself, because you’re out of the fold.
Like I said, it’s dirty pool.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Cool . . . When are we gonna start that?
Here’s my response to your friend: when you give up the notion that it is a woman’s right to murder her unborn child in the womb. Oh, wait, you don’t want to hear that part of Jesus’ message? sorry, this ain’t a buffet were you can pick & choose.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, reworked for the Nanny State era would be I didn’t stop to help because it’s the government’s job. Jesus didn’t say let Caesar do it.
Precisely–it wasn’t “raise that other guy’s taxes so Caesar can do it.” Or “let Caesar do it.”
The abortion thing is a valid point, though at least one of my leftist crowd has broken with the choice position because he loves kids and he “gets it.” I don’t think it’s *quite* murder, though, and in all fairness Jesus didn’t mention it. It is, however, a killing—and Christ certainly ratified the Ten Commandments. Abortion is a large-scale tragedy in this country, and society has to figure a way to put the brakes on that runaway train of tragedy. History may judge the Roe v. Wade era as harshly as it did slavery, and for similar reasons: it has to do with dehumanizing people.
One of the reasons Jesus never spoke against abortion was because He lived and worked in what history tells us is the first culture that had standards for how children were to be treated. As Tacitus said of the Hebrews: “They consider it a crime to kill any child.”
Ditto for His lack of condemnation of homosexual behavior; it was already a capital offense among the Israelites; why comment on that with which you agree?
Joy – It’s good to see a new post up here. I find no end to the amazement/amusement of the spectacle of people who have never known the heft of a Bible in their hands pronouncing from lofty perches of pure ignorance what I must believe/do if I follow Jesus.
Like the artist said:
If I hear just one more time
That I should try and be more open-minded
I think I just might scream
The world says this is all there is
Yet I believe the One who says there’s life after this
Now tell me how much more open can my mind be?
Joy,
Trust me, class IV rapids are waaaayy easier that day-to-day Christianity (the “Razor’s Edge”, as the lama told Bill Murray).
I’ve survived class IVs, but my Christianity (Catholicism) has not fared so well over the years.
>Promoting middle-class values, yes: society has a stake in that. But Christianity itself? Not really. As far as the smooth running of the State is concerned, people need only be reasonably moral—not particularly religious.>
I understand the point you’re making – but, a question: why will, or how long will, people remain “reasonably moral” once they’re not even moderately religious? I’d hardly be the first or the most erudite to posit the thesis that the moral disintegration of our society in the last 50 years has followed on from the “death of faith” of the 1920s onwards – that is both the increasing number of individuals who reject Christianity as truth and the increasing irrelevance of the Church to our society.
In other words, “middle class values” means Judao-Christian values, and they were, for most of the last 1600 years or more, maintained in Western society to a considerable extent by the fact that our societies were committed in various ways at least to nominal Christianity.
IF society and government can be said to have a legitimate interest in promoting value systems that promote peace and justice in society, then logically government must have a legitimate interest in promoting particular worldviews in society. Value systems flow from wordview.
Of course, what that means in practice is more than a little complicated…
The only alternative, to me, is of course the Principled Pluralist position that government should promote NO specific worldview at all, but be scrupulously neutral and, to the extent that government money is involved in, e.g., education or healthcare, aid ANY group that wants to work in that field. So your voucher can go to the Catholic School, the Atheist School or the Satanist School….
God may well prefer a horrible sinner – a thief, a rapist, a killer – who nevertheless fights the urge to sin, recognises the sin, and loves God deeply, to a person whose actions are above reproach but whose heart is hard and without love. In order to run a society smoothly, we flip things around: we don’t much care how hard people try, but we do very much care as to whether or not they act in a certain way. On the margins, we’ll mitigate the punishment for crimes for those with diminished capacity, or punish more harshly those whose motives are particularly reprehensible, but we fundamentally care about the way people act.
Beyond that, humans are not good at judging each other’s hearts. If we want America to be a “Christian nation,” and not one merely of Judeo-Christian principles, then we make it our business to decide if our fellow citizens are adequately Christian – a very messy business.
The other answer to the liberal twisting could be:
“Open your Bible. It makes a wonderful cracking sound when you do it for the first time.”