REBUKE from the SECULAR PRESS
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
Liberal/ Secular bias. You need to know that. But if we can
see past the bias and the anger, we find that this journalist is
actually making some strong points that we truly need to ponder.
Sometimes it can be educational to read an "outside" opinion....
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Published Mon, Nov 29, 2004 by the Free-Lance Star,
Fredricksburg, Virginia:
"If You Read the Gospels...."
-by Rick Mercier.
Was Jesus a big winner in the last election?
You'd sure think so. If the pundits and Religious Right zealots are
correct, the Son of God scored a knockout victory on Nov. 2.
We've had it drilled into our heads that something known as "moral
values" was decisive in the election. Some worked-up commentators
have even said we're on the brink of a second Great Awakening. All
this hype about the God talk swirling around in our culture prompted
me to do a little research (a big departure from how I usually prepare
for writing a column). I cracked open my Bible and started rereading
the Gospels. And you know what? I can't see what all this
sanctimonious values rhetoric has to do with Jesus. I've compared
what I read in Gospels with what I've been hearing from the Religious
Right, and I've concluded that the holier-than-thous must have
traded in their red-letter editions of the Good Book for red-state
versions that omit most of Jesus' teachings.
The truth is, if you depend on the Christian right for your theological
sustenance, you probably won't recognize the Jesus of the
Gospels. 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!.... I've no intention of
turning this column into a Sunday school lesson, so I'll ease
up on the Bible quotes. But go ahead and read the Gospels for
yourself, and see if you can reconcile the Jesus you encounter
in those texts with the Jesus the Religious Right wields as a
battle-ax. If you're a thoughtful, independent-minded person, I'll
bet you read the Gospels and wonder: Where in America does
this Jesus dwell? 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 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?
You may observe that other things are missing from our fashionable
"moral values" rhetoric. You may, for example, notice the absence
of any critique of an economic system that turns Jesus' birthday
into an opportunity to jump-start consumer spending. Or any
critique of corporate control of the public's airwaves, which helps
ensure the culture is saturated with sexuality and violence that
appeal to the lowest common denominator but generate huge profits.
Where is the righteous conservative Christian politician who makes
these things campaign issues, who talks about them as moral
issues?
What many view as a great spiritual revival looks a lot to me like
another stage of rot in American Christianity's corpse. Can the
cadaver rise up? It doesn't seem hopeful. In contemporary
America, the Jewish Palestinian whom many call their messiah
has become just another Middle Easterner to be ignored or reviled.
[-Rick Merceir is a writer and editor for The Free Lance-Star. He can
be reached at rmercier@freelancestar.com ]
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