I finally finished a looong letter I mailed this evening to my pastor at my church. To give you a brief overview, this church that I called my home for more than 6 years is a Pentacostal Holiness Church, one that is not afraid for massive amounts of music and praise, speaking of tongues, hands of healing, etc. Frankly, it's a church some of you up north could call one of those crazy Bible-thumping churches; my hope that it is does not fall in that category.
I will warn you, it is a long letter, but I wanted to make it public to the community here as it pretty much establishes my disgust with the whole "moral" crowd, in which I counter most of what mainstream Christian leaders have said via scripture (showing their quotes), and offer other means of moral values through articles and emails I have read over the last month. It is essentially my own proclamation saying goodbye the the form of Christianity that I can no longer support. I have omitted the pastor's name and my church name, but it resembles what I would say to a pastor of any church who preaches morality. So, here is the letter in its entirety:
****
Dear Pastor,
This is Tony. Remember me? I played keys for your church for a long time, now trying to pursue a music career. How have you been? I hope things are going well for you. I have been very busy with my music career, as it keeps me touring around the southeast on many weekends. I just finished a series of gigs, including a series of shows several weeks ago in Quincy, FL at the Down on the Farm Festival. This is a long letter, but an important one I think you should read, so if you want to grab some coffee before reading it, by all means do so.
You know the kind of person I am (at least I hope you remember), how you loved my talent and respected my abilities and my personality, always bringing a smile to Sunday services. So having said that, please allow me to be blunt. I think over a month ago we, as a nation, made a mistake, a terrible mistake, choosing whom we wanted to run the country. Even more so, it is the reaction from those who elected him that trouble me the most, the ones who claim they voted for him because of "moral values." I'm talking about the Religious Christian Right.
There is no denying it as the evidence has been made clear (if you would like to provide it for you, I'll be happy to) - this president, that the majority (led by the Religious Right) kept in office on that Tuesday, misled, if not lied to, us into a war with another country that need not be fought, and is also planning to dismantle our entire economic and social system, all the while attempting to put the blame on those that oppose such horrible change. Our soldiers are coming back disfigured, mentally destroyed, distraught, even suicidal, to a country that, by their actions more than words, do not care about them and what they have suffered (a recent 60 Minutes special showed a quadriplegic soldier who is listed as not an official casualty - that is how they are being treated). They're still having trouble understanding why they are there, while our re-elected government keeps giving them different reasons, after the fact, for being there. Their families that they left behind while going off to Iraq are becoming broken, unable to sustain a living in this weak economy. Some find themselves sleeping in shelters now or with family members that are having just as hard of a time.
I'm not saying that every person who voted for him is stupid, but the majority of people that claimed to vote for him said they did so because of his family values and because of "moral values." These are the folks that embody the principles that represent mainstream Christianity, or the type of Christianity that everyone sees in the news and throughout the world. If you would like to know what passes off to many as this mainstream version of Christianity, check out parts of this LA Times editorial from Frank Pastore, Christian Talk Radio Personality:
The left bewitches with its potions and elixirs, served daily in its strongholds of academe, Hollywood and old media. It vomits upon the morals, values and traditions we hold sacred: God, family and country. As we learned Tuesday, it is clear the left holds the majority of Americans, the majority of us, in contempt.
Simply, a majority of Americans have rejected John Kerry and John Edwards and the left because they are wrong. They are wrong because there are not two Americas. We are one nation under a God they reject. We remain indivisible despite their attempts to divide Americans through their relentless warfare against class, ethnic and religious unity.
...The nation has now resoundingly rejected the left and its agenda. We do not want to become European. We do not want to become socialist. We do not want to become secular. We are exceptional. We are unique. And we are the greatest force for good in the world, despite what the left, the terrorists or the United Nations may claim. It is for these reasons that we remain the last great hope in the world for freedom.
We continue to be that shining city set on a hill. And we fully accept the responsibility; we are proud to be the envy of the world.
With all due respect Pastor, this man has just called my parents, many close friends of mine and myself unchristian, if not evil. How am I supposed to respond to this? Is this hate becoming the face that the world and everyone here sees as Christianity? Do you support this kind of language? As far as "we are proud to be the envy of the world" goes, what happened to Proverbs 11:2 - "When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom." Or Proverbs 13:10 - "Pride only breeds quarrels, but with ones who take advice is wisdom." Or Proverbs 16:18 - "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." Or James 4:6 - "But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."
Another church leader and face of mainstream Christianity, James Dobson, had this to say in an exchange on a Sunday Interview show:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Dr. Dobson, you also have a problem with the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy. I want to show something that was reported in 'The Daily Oklahoman' during the campaign. In the 'Daily Oklahoman,' it quoted you saying, 'Patrick Leahy is a God's people hater. I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people.' Now, Dr. Dobson, that doesn't sound like a particularly Christian thing to say. Do you think you owe Senator Leahy an apology?
DR JAMES DOBSON: George, you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about? You know, I think -I think I'll stand by the things I have said. Patrick Leahy has been in opposition to most of the things that I believe. He is the one that took the reference to God out of the oath.
Excuse me Pastor, but weren't the Pharisees (who demanded that Jesus be crucified) the ones who took offense when people, in particular Jesus, went against their "sacred" religious practices, much less questioned their actions? Jesus acted in accordance to God's Word instead of demanding a mandate that all the laws of the earth be changed to His liking, right? If so, does this not seem that the Christian leaders representing our faith aim to do the latter rather than the former?
Then we have guys like Bob Jones, yet another face of mainstream Christianity, making these statements:
You (Bush) have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.
Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.
Excuse me Pastor, but since when did one Christ become better than another? I thought there was one Jesus, one Son of God - what is this Christ that Jones talks about that we despise? When did our Lord and Savior become reduced to a brand? Does not this statement spew the kind of pride the Bible detests, as I showed before in scripture? One particular commentator made a key rebuttal with your greatest weapon - scripture:
Matt.23, 13-17; 23-25
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
To understand where I'm coming from, I never believed in denominationalism. I always felt that to be Christian meant you follow in Jesus' footsteps - not so much talk like He talked, but walk like He walked. I'd rather not preach scriptures, but adapt them to my life to help others that need it, just as Jesus did before. Jesus embodied all those words. He entered the world with empty hands and full, open arms, embracing everyone no matter their race, sex, creed, class, disability, or profession. He cared about God's greatest creation, and offered a choice, not a threat, to join Him. To be honest sir, the people who are hurting badly today, those who lost their job, who have no health insurance, who are coming back from Iraq physically and mentally damaged, and who are discriminated by their race, faith or orientation, these people are not needing the scriptures of Jesus told to them, they need the actions of Jesus.
Our reelected president and his crew have never needed the actions of Jesus, and even though they preach to the world they have God in their hearts and ask Him for guidance (even going as far as to decline Divine Right), I really wonder if they really know what it means to be Christian. Our president has had everything handed to him on a silver platter, so what could he really know about living from paycheck to paycheck, with having health costs he could not afford? Does even the Religious Right today really know what it truly means to be Christian, to be Christ-like, to walk and act like Jesus did? As an example of those "moral values" (that supposedly decided this election) being put into practice, our Congress (more or less the Republican Right in Congress) has just revoked a rule they institutionalized 10 years ago now making it legal for their majority leader in the House to stay on as leader should he be indicted (which it looks like he will) on state corruption charges. Are those the values that so many moral Americans voted for two weeks ago?
I was going to list a bunch more statements about moral values, but I think John R. Borowski, in a column he penned called I'll Ask Them, Jesus, says it better than I could:
If a certain "segment" of our populous thinks it has the upper hand with morals they must "walk the walk." In other words, Jesus would like some answers:
Has George Bush received a mandate to liquidate the creation? George Bush has not addressed the issue of mass extinction or the threat of global warming. How can despoilment of the earth be moral? Even the bible (Ecclesiastes) acknowledges this: "Yea, they have all one breathe; so that a man (or woman) hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity."
Do the supporters of George Bush think that it is moral to let an economic system treat its most treasured asset, children, as nothing less than prostitutes for profit? Where is the moral outcry against selling thongs to eight year olds and targeting children with consumerism at home and at school? Soda pop companies and fast food entities now act like big tobacco in its quest to lead children into the quagmire of diabetes and osteoporosis. We are selling out children as commodities to an economic system that increasingly has no ethical parameters.
Do the "elite moralists" who claim this election was about values believe they have the right to tell a girl or woman who is the victim of incest or rape or a domineering man that they cannot decide for themselves about the option of abortion? Where are the programs to make birth control free? Where are economic safeguards for those in poverty who lack medical care? Jesus tells me that "the care of children" does not end after nine months in the womb! The real work begins after birth: health care for children and an equal playing field for women in education and work options. If moral pundits have such disdain for abortion why don't they show the same disdain for those who place women in desperate situations?
Is it moral to lie about war? Is it moral to allow our beloved young soldiers, both men and women to be killed and maimed for a war that seems to be justified with ideals as solid as the shifting sands of a beach? Where is the outcry for the tens of thousands of dead Iraq children? Is it not the height of immorality to term them as collateral damage: for in the eyes of God, no child is marginal or expendable.
Ask the moralists is it right to steal? Corporations steal from the American treasury like uncommon criminals: their thievery destroys families and denies the elderly of pensions. Lives are ruined, yet economists boast about Darwinian economics?
I'll add two more: first, for these moralists that say the War in Iraq was the right thing to do, why have they hid their own children and family members from going over there to fight it and let other people's children (all who may not support the war) die for them? My cousin, whose political views differ from mine, is probably going to enlist - why are so many families who supported this president not willing, unlike my cousin, to stand up and fight in the war they and their leader defend so self-righteously?
Secondly, if the moral pundits have the same disdain for same-sex marriage as past pundits had for interracial relationships much less marriage, why don't they show the same disdain for those who divorce or marry multiple times? Where is the moral majority on that outrage?
When did hate and fear become qualities of Christ, much less Christianity? I remember one sermon where you said fear is a grievous sin, one that spawns other sins - of hate, control, anger, lust, greed, control, etc. And yet that seems to be the driving force for many of today's Christians and their desire to reelect this president that they say shares their same moral Christian values. Wasn't it Jesus the one who stood with the adulterous demanding that he who was without sin cast the first stone? Borowski continues...
The discussion of morals in America is a good thing. When it comes to "goodness": it doesn't belong to the religious or non-religious, Democrat or Republican, poor or rich. It belongs to those who practice it and defend it. For Republicans to claim that this election was a referendum on "morals" is utter hypocrisy. The "vocal apostles" of the Republican party: the Michael Savages, the Rush Limbaughs, the Lar Larsons, the Anne Coulters and the Bill O'Reillys are charlatans who increase hatred and vitriolic national dialogue. The Republican effort to highjack morals is as transparent as George Bush being the environmental, education or fiscally responsible "president."
The Democrats are as equally guilty in their inability to take moral stands that are consistent. Some in the Democratic Party would like to shun the opportunity to defend an issue based on "morals." That is a tragic mistake. There are a great many "religious" members of the Democratic Party, as well as a great many "moral" members of the party that are not religious. Religious or not: it is goodness and conviction that counts.
...Jesus is liberal: forgiving, loving and steadfast. For the Democratic Party to ignore people like me with devout beliefs is foolish. For the Republican Party to claim itself a party of Jesus-like values soils the historic reputation of a man like Jesus as well as Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Buddha and Mohammed.
And that is what it seems the Christian Right has done - they have taken Jesus, and told everyone that either you follow their version of Jesus or you cannot have the blessings of our Lord. Their "values" are all that matter, and anyone else who disagrees despises Christ. Is that being a true Christian, or a religious CINO, a Christian in Name Only?
Karl W. B. Schwartz is a man who has gotten a lot of attention lately. He is a Conservative Christian Republican, and has voted consistently Republican for 24 years since 1980. He voted for John Kerry, and in a recent editorial proclaimed what we all should be heeding to in regards to the Bush Administration:
I have been telling Conservative Christians that who should be howling at the top of their lungs is not the Liberal Left, it is the Far Right Christian Conservatives for they are being lied to, seduced and misled even more so than the Liberal Left. They are being seduced into fascism and that is not Christianity.
Christians are admonished in the Bible to be leery of new prophets for all prophecy ended with the coming of Christ the Messiah. In the Book of James we are warned of the evil that comes from the mouths of men. James 3:5-6: "Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell."
Book of James 3:9: "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in Gods' likeness. Out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing."
Unless you are deaf, dumb and blind, Christians need to come to grips with the fact that Bush-Cheney are lying to the world and that is not a mark of Christian virtue, nor is it a mark that the Bible tells us to seek, or to follow as Christians.
This year alone, I have been blessed to tour in Colorado, Arkansas, Kansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida. While I have been overjoyed with seeing different places, I have also been dismayed with what I have seen in some areas I have passed. I have seen towns where houses are broken down and unkempt. I have seen farms whose crops no longer grow like they used to. I have seen downtowns completely desolate, like ghost towns, with rooms and buildings full of Closed and For Lease signs. I have seen tiny communities that have had life and joy stripped from it. I have seen people who are forgotten, and yet vote for those whom they think share their moral values, while continuing to live a hellish life.
A couple of emails of stories have made their way to independent media outlets, discussing not only the hardships people are facing, but the souls who voted against their interest because they did not know better or because they were influenced in some way. Here is the first one:
Yesterday while reflecting about 4 more years of Bush I was talking with a woman staying in the shelter. I will give her a fake name, lets call her Laura B. Laura is 28, pregnant, (never considered an abortion). She finished high school and did a year of college before dropping out to have a couple of kids with her military husband. Living in Virginia on base with her autocratic mate (he doesn't allow the boys 3 and 4 to say "yeap" they have to answer "yes sir") drove her crazy and she was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. Military dude divorced her and has custody.
She came home to Mom in Mich and ended up at our shelter to try and sort out her life. (Mom has no money either and her own problems.) We, like all secular agencies, have seen a steady erosion of funds.
Laura B. has found a job working in the kitchen at a local faith based Christian College. She makes $6/hour. She drives a dying Ford Escort wagon pays $2.15/gallon for gas. Her latest crisis is her insurance expired on Oct. 9 (her ex-partner cancelled policy). She needs to come up with $211 to get insurance for one month or face a $1,000 fine if she gets caught driving with no insurance. We have some public transportation, Dial-a Ride, minibus runs between 7 am and 6 p.m., M-F $1.50 one-way. She has to be at work at 6am.
She has been walking to work lately but it is about 2 miles she is 5 months pregnant, it is dark at 5 am, and winter is coming. Solution? Go begging at the churches who seem to have money for these things. They will give her the money if she attends bible school. So last night she was at bible school until 9 p.m.
She has never attended our domestic violence support groups as she is too tired at night and goes to bed early but the bible study was not optional.
She was excited about 'God's message' when she came back.
This week she moves into low income subsidized housing. Her newest crisis is she has found out when the college is closed for the Christmas holiday (one month) she has no employment. She is hoping to find temporary employment as a seasonal retail worker if the Christmas sales are brisk to tide her over. She doesn't know what she will do when the baby is born, hopes she can work up till the last week (she is on her feet all day with this job). She will be eligible for subsidized daycare.
She voted for Bush because of his 'family values.'
This broke my heart. Did Jesus ever ask for anything from us? As Christians, those who strive to be like Jesus, why can't we be the same? Why does it continue to seem these days that aid only comes with a catch? When did bribery, which can include your vote, become the standard means of receiving help from Christians and the Church? Here's one more email:
I know someone who lives in our neighborhood. She is in her mid 20's has a 5 year old girl. Single parent working as a waitress at the local restaurant. The restaurant closes two weeks out of the year, and during that time she does not get paid. She decided to go to night school to become a Nurse.
She is squeamish about needles and blood, but this was the only opportunity she had to better herself. The schooling is free, if she contracts to work for the health care organization for 4 years.
Another waitress at the restaurant came into work sick and gave everyone a nasty virus. She couldn't stay home sick, because she gets no sick pay. She continued to work and got so ill, that she had to go to the emergency room and stay in the hospital.
She has no health insurance, and her medical bills came to $17,000.00 she had to drop out of classes because she had to work part time to make up for her lost wages while she was sick and start paying her medical bills.
Fortunately her daughter does have health care coverage courtesy of our previous democrat Governor Jeanne Shaheen starting a state program to provide child health care.
She voted in this election for the first time in her life.
She voted for George W. Bush. Her pastor told her to.
People are hurting, Pastor, but they are voting against their own interests - some told by those who have an ulterior motive. Are we being moral for striving so hard for the Kingdom of Heaven while simultaneously making life miserable and more desperate for our families, our children, and our children's children, oblivious to the consequences of our actions? You talk of prosperity repeatedly in your sermons, and there is nothing wrong with that. But one of the greatest passages from Jesus resides in Mark 7:36 - "for what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" We can be a prosperous people, but like it or not Pastor, many people, even those who are strict Christians, live today in a material world, focused on material things for prosperity. Until they break from that mentality, our surrounding areas and circumstances will never improve and that scripture will never be realized. Your congregation may openly praise about prosperity, but I'm willing to bet that for a good amount of them, it's earthly prosperity they are after rather than Christian prosperity.
I have faith that God doesn't want us to remain as children, but rather want us to grow up. As Karl Schwartz said in his editorial, "Use the mind that God gave you and use discernment that the Bible warns you to use as a shield against following wrong or evil." You have children of your own - don't you wish sometimes that they would just grow up and mature? How would you feel if your children destroyed the very house you helped build and gave to them? What do you think God ponders when He sees His "children" killing each other, oppressing each other, scorching the very house and land He created? Would God want these children to join in on His affairs and His kingdom if this is how they act? Would you want your children to be involved at church board meetings if they acted this way?
I also have faith that God would not want us to become, for lack of a better phrase, mind-dead zombies who just roam the earth and plunder God's creation until its resources are destroyed. Did not Jesus' Disciples ask Him many questions? By doing so, they questioned authority, and when Jesus supplied answers that could not easily be refuted, with their open minds they respected that authority more. It was the closed-minded religious leaders of the time that despised Jesus so much that the only way to stop them was by brute force and later crucifixion. Now that the Christian Right aims to impose their laws on all of us Americans, the eerie similarities between them and the leaders in the Bible send a chill down my spine. Eliminationalist rhetoric is picking up steam, with hard right-wingers even now calling for the death of journalists, simply because one journalist video-taped that horrific Mosque killing that has become Propaganda 101 for right-wing Islam fundamentalists.
The world looks at us as if we have gone mad, and it is because we talk about moral values and valuing human life, or as our President calls a "culture of life," but yet we engage in actions (Fallujah) that produce this:
*Not in original letter
I ask you Pastor - what did these poor souls do to deserve such a horrible fate? What ill did they bring to us, to all of us, to make such a brutal act justified? Where in the New Covenant and what declaration from On High justified such brutality? Imagine that image, and multiply it by thousands and thousands, along with women. That is what our government is doing over there (illegally according to the international community) that the American people, by their vote, condoned and endorsed. Before Election Day, the world only saw Bush as the object of their resentment for such inhumanity and arrogance; today, the object now consists of him and the rest of the American people, whether we like it or not. For that, I no longer say God Bless America, but rather God Save America. These people we are bombing, most of whom are civilians, could care less about our feelings on gay marriage, abortion, public school prayer, or what have you. Their babies are being killed daily by our troops (ordered by their superiors) who have no clear idea how to handle the situation. I don't blame the troops for following their orders, although those who disobeyed out of conscience are blessed in my book; I blame the leaders for instigating these policies, and sadly, we have reelected those same leaders for another term, the same ones who say all is fine while our men and women in uniform are living these nightmares.
I'm sorry if these pictures offend you, but they are the truth, the cold hard truth that is not being told to you or the American people. It is being shamefully hidden by our national media and government, out of fear it will dwindle support for this war of which boosts corporate profits for those that control the government and media, while the rest of the world sees it all uncensored - and we have the nerve to keep asking, "why they hate us?" Given that the latest excuse for this war is spreading democracy, but this is giving "spreading democracy" a bad name. These people have souls like ours - we may not speak the same language, have the same customs, but we all share this planet that God gave to us, all of us. What right do we have to cause this much suffering? September 11?! The man responsible for that attack today taunts us in videos when we should have captured him and brought him to justice long ago. Instead, we turn our attention to a country that had no part in that attack, used our tragedy that cost 3,000 American civilian lives as an excuse to flatten that nation, and, according to the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, killed 100,000 civilians, 0.4% the total population of that country. "They hate us for our freedom?" I think they hate us because we kill and destroy their families.
Pastor, I tell you this and share the above with you because you were a pivotal, pivotal person in my life three years ago when I sorely needed what you preached. Given they were what I needed back then, I have never forgotten and always respected your inspirational, stop-crying-and-be-a-man messages; well here I am sir, being that man you called so many to be. I'm not saying sir that you are one of these crazies (and it is my greatest prayer that you are not), but these crazies are what pass for mainstream Christianity. This is what the world sees, looking at us now with utter contempt, not because they despise "our Christ," but because they despise how we and our leader Bush (who proclaims to have an open channel to God) hypocritically use the Prince of Peace for all the injustice we inflict upon ourselves and the rest of the world.
The Christian Right of today, I feel, has lost its way, and has given into fear - fear of terrorism, fear of homosexuality, fear of people taking their Bibles away, fear, fear, fear. Isn't it written in that great hymn that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but rather a spirit of power and love, and a sound mind? Where is that spirit of love today? I'm not usually one to judge, but I wonder how God would feel about those who oppress others to follow their ways and act as they do to bring about the Rapture. I wonder if they are doing it for God's glory or for their own selfish desires, and I wonder what God may have to say about it when it comes time to finally meet our Creator. With all due respect sir, if all this, this hate-filled, my way or the highway, hellfire and brimstone, kill all Muslims and gays and liberals attitude is what passes for mainstream Christianity today, then you might as well call me a Christian in Exile - one who no longer feels at home with this highly religious group. The hate is too great for me, and other fellow Christians of mine that I know, to stand and associate with. I don't wish for it to be, but what it is is what it is.
One final example I would like to share with you came this past Monday from The Free-Lance Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He wrote this, of which bear important fruit:
Jesus was quite a troublemaker. In fact, I'm thinking the Bush administration would have a special place for Jesus were the swarthy Nazarene to take up his ministry today in the U.S. of A.--in a cell with other Middle Eastern men awaiting deportation.
Let's recall what the Jesus of the Gospels espoused. "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you," the sandal-wearing rabble-rouser was known to say.
That sounds pretty good, but it makes you realize that JC would never have reached "Ranger" or "Pioneer" status in the Bush fund-raising machine.
Then, of course, there's Jesus' encounter with the rich ruler who said he was a righteous man because he'd followed the Ten Commandments since his youth (though he gave no indication that he'd ever erected a monument dedicated to them in a public place).
Jesus told the ruler: "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
When the ruler started looking glum, Jesus responded with his famous kicker: "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
Holy class warfare! No wonder Republicans have switched out the Jesus of the Gospels for a low-rent moralizer preoccupied with what other people are doing with their bodies.
... Where in America is the Jesus who sides with the poor and the outcasts? Where in America is the Jesus who disdains those who wear their piousness on their sleeves? Where in America is the Jesus with the prophetic voice, the radical who dares to tell the powerful what they don't want to hear?
Is he in the pews that fill every Sunday morning with the smug and complacent? Is he in a political party that fights for tax cuts for the rich while neglecting the needs of decent, hard-working Americans? Is he among the "God-and-country" demagogues who push an idolatrous nationalism and who see military service as the supreme form of sacrifice?
...In the spiritual vacuum that exists in this country, the Christian right is well-positioned to argue that its menagerie of fears and chauvinisms--piled into a box labeled "moral values"--constitutes a serious moral narrative. It doesn't, but the Religious Right's contribution to the denigration of Christianity will continue unabated until other Christian communities come up with a compelling alternative.
The trouble is, our society seems to lack the kind of exemplars who could build that alternative. What we need are the spiritual descendants of Martin Luther King Jr. and Dorothy Day, people who are willing to endure the enmity and scorn of the political establishment and mainstream culture.
Maybe those people are out there, but I don't see them. That's why I'm not optimistic about the survival of the Christian tradition in our culture. What many view as a great spiritual revival looks a lot to me like another stage of rot in American Christianity's corpse.
Not meaning to appeal to your vanity (if you have any), but couldn't this be you or someone else in your church? Christianity needs someone like this, or else the hell-fire-and-brimstone religious Christian Right will rein supreme, and our faith will become nothing more than a propaganda tool of which no one wants any part. If Christianity is the one true faith as so many other "Christians" profess, would it not be the greatest tragedy in God's story if God's own children and followers of His Son and His teachings forced so many into eternal damnation because they could not stand the hate and suffering brought by these Christians? Come to think of it, would not these Christians also find themselves under the same circumstances for their hypocritical stance? As one pastor put it, Christians too will be judged under God.
I would like to get the chance to talk to you about this more, because I do believe a change is needed, if we are to bridge this divide that is engulfing this country and this world. Those that don't follow your faith look at you in disgust because they feel you are ramming down your faith their throats trying to control their lives, and likewise those that follow your faith spit at them for their "disgusting, immoral lifestyles." It doesn't have to be that way, and while my imperfectness will lead to mistakes, I intend to be what I feel a true Christian is - one who speaks not scripture but rather embodies the teachings of Jesus Christ through action and love. I would like to meet with you for your personal prayers and blessings as well as to discuss what I have written here. It's a lot to digest, I understand, but you always talk about a calling. Well, I think I may have found it, through my music, my activism, my faith. It is my hope that you agree with my sentiments and feelings about the church of today, and why I believe a change must come in order that we all survive. I look forward to that dialogue.
With love and hope,
Tony
Christian In Exile