05.19.05
Posted in faith at 10:25 am by
Lately, I’ve found myself thinking that it’s really strange that I share the same faith as fundies. Truthfully, it’s really hardly the same faith. Thus, I’ve been pondering what exactly it is that makes our faiths so different. I think I’ve come up with an answer. Of course, my answer is incomplete and doesn’t completely account for the entirity of ‘fundy behavior’ that y’all know and love. However, I think there’s some truth to my theory.
I think that some folks, fundamentalists amongst them, aren’t really interested in pursuing the character of Christ for themselves. They’re not terribly interested in becoming like Christ. Of course, if you ask them, they’ll deny this; however, it’s true. Rather I’d propose that another idol has blocked their vision of the true character of Christ–that idol is the contemporary cultural tradition of what it means to be a Christian.
These folks are so enamored with pursuing the name ‘Christian’ they’ve been blinded as to what it means to do what Christ called us to do–the greatest commandment, to love God and love your neighbors. In order to pursue this false prototype of Christianity one must now have a certain set of beliefs, politically, socially, or otherwise, that are in accord with this culturally created Christianity.
For example, it’s necessary to be a fiscal conservative to be a good Christian. Clearly, the Bible doesn’t say that one must be a fiscal conservative to be a good Christian (nor does it say anything about fiscal liberalism) this, rather, is a created cultural construct of this formulated Christianity.
This–and let’s call it what it is, these folks are really only pursuing the name of Christian rather than the character of Christ–nominal Christianity, takes great lengths to encourage devoutness. Being extreme is held as equal to being Christ-like. The more conservative one is, the more devout they are. All of this has the end goal of making the other fundies around these folks notice how much they’ve complied to the sub-culture of fundamentalist Christianity.
Rather, it seems that these folks have no interest in actually pursuing the character of Christ. After all, that would mean a radical shift in the way they behave, a radical shift in the things they believe. If they were interested in pursuing Christ, they’d have examined their behavior, tried it and found it wanting. But that would involve tearing down their golden calf, so, it remains undone.
Ironically, those who now days pursue the character of Christ are attacked as being post-modern, or overly inclusive, or worse yet–tolerant. Ah, yes, those tolerant motherfuckers who care about everybody. In some parts of the US, people who pursue the character of Christ don’t have a place to worship, don’t have a church family, and some, and this is the kicker, aren’t considered Christians by the fundamentalists around them.
And, that, my friends, really strikes me as sad.
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Posted in faith at 10:25 am by
Lately, I’ve found myself thinking that it’s really strange that I share the same faith as fundies. Truthfully, it’s really hardly the same faith. Thus, I’ve been pondering what exactly it is that makes our faiths so different. I think I’ve come up with an answer. Of course, my answer is incomplete and doesn’t completely account for the entirity of ‘fundy behavior’ that y’all know and love. However, I think there’s some truth to my theory.
I think that some folks, fundamentalists amongst them, aren’t really interested in pursuing the character of Christ for themselves. They’re not terribly interested in becoming like Christ. Of course, if you ask them, they’ll deny this; however, it’s true. Rather I’d propose that another idol has blocked their vision of the true character of Christ–that idol is the contemporary cultural tradition of what it means to be a Christian.
These folks are so enamored with pursuing the name ‘Christian’ they’ve been blinded as to what it means to do what Christ called us to do–the greatest commandment, to love God and love your neighbors. In order to pursue this false prototype of Christianity one must now have a certain set of beliefs, politically, socially, or otherwise, that are in accord with this culturally created Christianity.
For example, it’s necessary to be a fiscal conservative to be a good Christian. Clearly, the Bible doesn’t say that one must be a fiscal conservative to be a good Christian (nor does it say anything about fiscal liberalism) this, rather, is a created cultural construct of this formulated Christianity.
This–and let’s call it what it is, these folks are really only pursuing the name of Christian rather than the character of Christ–nominal Christianity, takes great lengths to encourage devoutness. Being extreme is held as equal to being Christ-like. The more conservative one is, the more devout they are. All of this has the end goal of making the other fundies around these folks notice how much they’ve complied to the sub-culture of fundamentalist Christianity.
Rather, it seems that these folks have no interest in actually pursuing the character of Christ. After all, that would mean a radical shift in the way they behave, a radical shift in the things they believe. If they were interested in pursuing Christ, they’d have examined their behavior, tried it and found it wanting. But that would involve tearing down their golden calf, so, it remains undone.
Ironically, those who now days pursue the character of Christ are attacked as being post-modern, or overly inclusive, or worse yet–tolerant. Ah, yes, those tolerant motherfuckers who care about everybody. In some parts of the US, people who pursue the character of Christ don’t have a place to worship, don’t have a church family, and some, and this is the kicker, aren’t considered Christians by the fundamentalists around them.
And, that, my friends, really strikes me as sad.
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James said,
May 19, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Another irony for you is that this is very, very similar to the standard modernist-conservative critique of modernist-liberalism. And I think that both sides are right
Nathan Ael said,
May 19, 2005 at 4:56 pm
Jesus knew it would happen. He saw it happen:
“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord’, and not do what I command?”
They didn’t listen to Jesus, and then they killed him. We should expect no better.
God Bless, and peace.
Audrey said,
May 19, 2005 at 6:20 pm
Brandon,
What makes you think you share a faith with fundies?
The fundies I’ve been around tend to believe in the Old Testament over the New Testament. I don’t understand it, myself. When I can get them to respond civilly to a call to come, let us reason together, I find:
(1) They fervently believe (as Martin Luther did) that salvation is by God’s grace alone;
(1a) As a corollary, they believe that works are meaningless;
(2) That as a result of receiving God’s grace they feel compelled to believe in and (here’s the quirky part) to live by selected parts of the Code of Leviticus.
What’s weird (to me) is that they don’t feel compelled to do a bunch of Levitical things, like:
(1) keep a kosher kitchen;
(2) practice polygamy;
(3) sanction easy divorce for men;
(4) build a temple;
(4a) send burnt offerings to God in the temple they don’t feel compelled to build;
(5) And so forth.
In doing this, they tend (in my personal view) to ignore most of the New Testament (except as it frees them from the Levitical strictures they don’t like), and most of later books of the Old Testament (especially those parts that tend to temper the Levitical hard line, like Micah).
If they want to live their lives by the old convenant, that’s their deal. But when they want to force you and me to live our lives by a warped interpretation of Leviticus, it becomes our deal.
What amuses me is their feeling of persecution. They control (to a greater or lesser degree) all the halls of power in our national government, yet they cry of persecution at the hands of secular humanists like you or me. You’d think Nero was still running amok and tossing their kind of Christians to the lions. They mock us when we call for tolerance, saying we demand tolerance for all save their kind of Christians.
What they fail to understand is that some of us have recognized them for what they are. I refuse to tolerate them because they have made it quite clear that once in power they have no intention of tolerating my kind of Christianity. Lord, I believe; help my unbelief …
So as far as I’m concerned, I don’t share a faith with them.
Audrey
ol cranky said,
May 19, 2005 at 6:39 pm
*sniff* Is that brimstone I smell?
The fundies I’ve been around tend to believe in the Old Testament over the New Testament.
Audrey, funny that the focus on the odd bit of the OT and denigrate Judaism as they do. We (Jews) follow the OT and yet we have a completely different understanding of what it means than the fundagelicals. They seem to do what they accuse others of doing: following that which suits them
Claudia said,
May 19, 2005 at 7:13 pm
My bud Soren (Kirkegaard) captured the essence of what you’re saying (albeit in a different century) quite well.
“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it we know very well that minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the bible coming too close…”
daniel said,
May 19, 2005 at 7:25 pm
No place to worship? Yeah, it’s been coming to that the last few months. My pastor has been a good and trusted friend for many years, but in recent sermons I’ve begun to notice his conservatice slant. Not perhaps because he has changed, more likely that I have. There were innumerable quotes last year about how Bush was God’s Man. There was the sermon wherein he preached that homosexuals (and only them, no other types of sinners) should be confronted about the lifestyles they lead. It would help them to change… When I and a friend confronted him with his harsh stance he retorted that there were no gays in our church and so no one could have been offended.
Basically, I’ve grown incredibly disgusted with sermons about personal morality. I’ve tried everything that was ever preached to me about ‘How to be more like Jesus’, and I never became anymore than a man who sins. I’ve been wanting to find out how I can become involved in relief work, social work, mission work, anything. I’ve never heard a pastor say anything about helping the poor, the drunk, the diseased, or those abandoned by everyone they love (orphans, the elderly).
I no longer feel as if i fit in with anyone in my church. Even the youth spout Christian cliches and sound bytes as if they were divine scripture without ever questioning their source. Some days I just don’t know what to do anymore. pray for me.
Audrey said,
May 19, 2005 at 7:35 pm
Cranky,
If you’re smelling brimstone, it’s not me burning sulfur!
It’s always easier to see the dustspeck in someone else’s eye than the splinter in your own. So yeah, they’re picking and choosing what they want to adhere to and what they want to ignore. If I were a Buddhist or a Vedanta Hindu I’d pretty convinced that the fundagelicals [love the term — may I appropriate it?] are the Pharisees reincarnated.
Their relationship with Judaism seems to me to be pretty conflicted. I don’t know (nor do I think I want to know how they would take a Jewish sect operating along the lines of 100 BCE or so. They believe in a whole bible, interpreted literally according to modern translations, so they believe in all of St. John’s Revelation. To bring that frabjous day about, they understand it’s necessary for Solomon’s Temple to be rebuilt. For that to happen, you’ve got to have Jews occupying Jerusalem. But I don’t have the feeling that as a group they much care for the idea. And for sure, they don’t want anything to do with the Reform movement in Judaism.
Audrey
Liz said,
May 20, 2005 at 12:04 pm
I feel like no one is addressing those that truly do strive to be more Christlike and still end up a fundagelical. My mother is a wonderful example. She is a wonderful woman of faith, but believes that her faith has led her to conservative religious, political and idealogical stances.
I think we often put people in boxes. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been shoved into one all of my life. I want to encourage you to be careful about labeling all fundagelicals as persuing a skewed Christian ideal rather than Christ himself. It just isn’t true.
Nathan Ael said,
May 20, 2005 at 4:44 pm
“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing, compared with Love in dreams.” - Dostoevsky.
When we actually visit the ophans, when we actually feed the homeless, when we actually try to put a bullet through someone’s skull - it is only then that we realize that we cannot war, that we cannot marginalize the poor, and that we cannot twist Christ’s words into irrelevance.
Voting doesn’t make us Christian. Talking politics and religion doesn’t make us Christian. Following Christ into the gutter, carrying his Cross, and laying down our lives for love - that makes us Christian.
God Bless, and peace.
Resident Atheist said,
May 21, 2005 at 5:06 am
Fundamentalist Christianity is a collection of social power structures tied to confessed beliefs that are expressed in certain canonical ways. So are the more liberal flavors of Christianity. Whenever people get involved in a faith community of any kind (or more generally, any close-knit community, such as families in some parts of the world), there’s a sense in which people’s “inner life”, their self-talk and consciousness and so forth, is normed by the group. This is why you have “sincere seekers” (which itself has become a kind of psychological archetype) who, while practicing only (or largely) contemplative introspection, arrive at conclusions that are syntheses of one or more of the systems of ideas that they’ve already been exposed to. (In other words, “sincerely seeking” is no guarantee of finding.) People think in certain ways, reason in certain ways, come to conclusions in certain ways based on the modes and methods they were taught in whatever cultures or subcultures they’ve belonged to in the past.
I think the relevant difference between fundamentalism as it often is today and non-fundamentalist Christianity is the isolation issue: whereas “liberal” Christians’ conclusions are just as culturally and socially conditioned as the fundamentalists’ (because all our conclusions about anything are socially conditioned in one way or another), “liberal” Christians are working with a larger data set. Relevant information for decision-making and coming to understand God and the world comes not only from within the community, but from outside as well. The more theologically conservative congregations tend to exert a tighter control on what information is orthodox, not to be exposed to necessarily, but to be used when drawing conclusions. The rules of reasoning and discussion are entirely different from ours. To us, it matters that scientists are making the best inferences from their chains of evidence when they do biology. To people who think as you describe, it matters only what they believe their sacred text says.
One of these days I’m going to wake up and think Foucault is the most boring thing ever, but not yet, apparently.