What it is to be a Christian
If I said I was religious, would you be surprised? Granted, I’m not religious in the Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or James Dobson sort of way. I don’t attend one single church, and I only attend sort-of-occasionally-semi-infrequently.
Actually, I went to church the Sunday after Pope John Paul II died. As a Catholic, I felt empty, and the best way — in my mind — that I could fill that emptiness was to go to mass. I wanted to pray for the Pope and for the Church. I could have done it from home. But on that day, I needed to be with people grieving in the same way I was.
Some of you may remember past comments I have made about certain religious figures or mentalities. You might even remember the column I wrote last year, “Was Jesus Gay?”
For those who don’t remember or didn’t read it, I didn’t say He was. I just asked the question. Boy did I get a lot of hate mail following that column. The irony is it was from so-called Christians.
By hate mail, I mean profanity — lots of profanity — and even a few threats. More than one zealous Christian wrote to tell me to f*** off. Another said I deserved to get AIDS. And at least one wanted to kick my a** .
Apparently, they didn’t stop to think that Jesus could and would deal with me in his own time and in his own way.
Perhaps in their zeal to curse and threaten me, they forgot that Jesus had said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13: 24, NIV)
No doubt they also forgot Jesus’ admonition to Peter, who had drawn his sword to defend Jesus against the Roman soldiers, “Put your sword back in its place…for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52, NIV)
Some Christians defend righteous anger citing Jesus’ run-in with the money-changers in the Temple, an account that is retold in three of the four Gospels. Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts are very similar. But nothing they say suggests that Jesus resorted to violence.
John’s account — from the gospel allegedly written by the alleged Beloved Disciple — mentions that Jesus made a “whip of cords” and drove the money changers from the Temple. I say “allegedly written by the alleged Beloved Disciple” because the Gospel of John is the most disputed of the four canonical gospels.
Hundreds of scriptures speaking about peace and love ignored in favor of one passage that showed Jesus might have been riled
It’s alarming that some Christians can be so easily roiled. I, and many Christians, believe that Christianity is, above all, a message of love. But other Christians — what I like to call Old Testament Christians, because that’s where all the fire, brimstone and vengeance are — resort to hate speech to attack their opponents. Never mind that Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5: 44, NIV)
Many believe — myself included — that the hate speech coming from the religious Right is inciting people to commit violence.
Earlier I mentioned James Dobson. You remember him. He’s the nut — sorry I can’t describe him any other way — who launched a campaign against SpongeBob SquarePants. Apparently, cartoon characters who live in a pineapple under the sea aren’t supposed to have gay friends.
Just this week — in keeping with the slew of rightwing calls-to-arms against judges — Mr. Dobson said the following:
“I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men, and that’s what you’re talking about.”
How do you respond to spittle like that? I guess the “Reverend” Dobson has forgotten that the KKK was replete with Baptist men and even ministers. To compare the savage atrocities and injustices carried out by the KKK to the decisions handed down by the Supreme Court is beyond reckless.
Mr. Dobson, however, has never been one to shy away from reckless analogies or even mistruths.
Last month, while attacking the Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down the execution of juveniles, Dobson said, “Seventy percent of the people disagree with that. It doesn’t matter what the people think and neither the executive nor the legislature will step in.”
Dobson’s statement is an outright lie. A recent Gallup poll, in fact, showed that the opposite was true, that 74 percent of Americans disapproved of executing juvenile offenders.
The decision — which has blood-lusting Christians wishing they were seeing red — was written by Justice Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, and has come under attack from many Old Testament Christians and rightwing wackos.
Just last week, a group calling itself Remedies to Judicial Tyranny, met in Washington, D.C. to share ideas of how to deal appropriately with the judiciary.
Dr. Edwin Vieira, a Harvard trained Ph.D. and J.D., speaking specifically to the juvenile death penalty case, leveled a thinly veiled threat against Kennedy, who, according to Vieira, “upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.”
“Stalin,” Vieira said, “had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem.’”
Unlike Dobson, Cornyn and DeLay, Vieira parsed his words very carefully, leaving himself ample wiggle room against the predictable charges of inciting violence against judges.
Unlike Dobson, Cornyn and DeLay, the issue wasn’t what Vieira said, but what he didn’t say. “Death,” Stalin said, “solves all problems: no man, no problem.”
Love, it seems, is in short supply in some Christian circles.
