The public face
'Tis true that the Bible is not supposed to be a universal answer book. Some wisdom is required, or maybe not, since wisdom seems to be the problem (see Genesis 3).
The problem seems to be, well, nature itself. Even by the most faithful renditions of scripture, the one thing that cannot be held constant is how people perceive the Word, what it means to them as they learn and understand it. So the one thing that changes is how people respond to scripture.
If we are to attempt to understand the scriptures in their original context, legends of Christ among the Apostolic generation, perhaps, one thing that happens is that all those years, all those lives spent, are set aside for naught as all we have learned as a human species in the intervening period is set aside as apocryphal at best.
What strikes me is that the most public face of Christianity in America treats the Bible more like a collection of fables and faery tales than any contemptuous atheistic characterization I've encountered. And then there's that sense of what I would call matronly nagging except that it abuses a stereotype of dubious qualification to begin with; it is enough to say that there's a reason their children are all crazy.
Regression, progressive downfall:
Grabbing what's there and still wanting it all!
On words they fall!
Obsession, religious belief,
Worshipped on Sunday, forgotten all week!
One foot in hell
Taking the truth form the Book and then twisting it,
Feeling they're touched by the Lord.
Loving their neighbor, yet tasting the flavor of sin
But seeing no wrong;
Cramming the wisdom that righteously flows in them,
Walking the crooked straight line;
Closing of minds to these innocents crimes
Now they're deaf, dumb, and blind!
(Forbidden)
It doesn't always have to be this way. And it isn't. But the public face of American Christianity rejects that other part of itself.°
In this context, no, the Bible is of no use as a legitimate guidance tool. But this is not the only context available. Coffee-table atheistic talking points aside, there are much more important issues afoot than one person's testament to the truculence of failed understanding.
To consider an example at least slightly more substantial than body piercing (apparently the bit about taking a crap doesn't fit well into a sound-bite): McKinley, in his article, "
When Christ Was Gay" points to a functional contrast in American Christianity:
A divorced man who remarries is entering into an adulterous relationship. And it's not just a relationship; it's an adulterous lifestyle because the remarried man chooses to continue living in the adulterous relationship for the rest of his life (or until he divorces and remarries again). However, if you ask this adulterous man if he is still a Christian, he will say something like, "I believe God has forgiven me and I'm now living under his grace." And ask him if he's willing to leave his current wife in order to "turn from his adulterous lifestyle," and he will refuse because "God's grace has already saved him." But this is the same man who earlier claimed that the homosexual must turn from his "sinful" lifestyle as a condition of receiving God's grace.
Yeah. Just try that one on "middle America". Evangelicals. Fundamentalists. There are, however, a host of sects throughout these United States wherein, while people might not have thought about it in exactly those terms, such an argument would find even possibly majorities nodding and saying, "Sounds about right." In those cases, you're preaching to the choir.
Nonetheless, McKinley has a point: such a seemingly arbitrary double-standard doesn't seem to be a modern perception so much as a modern rejection of the Bible. And that sort of arbitrary--"I refuse the least of His brethren because I just don't like 'em"--rejection leads to exactly the unwieldy permissiveness that, strangely enough, socially conservative Christians fear of progressive society.
Are these Christians hypocrites? By what definition, for surely there seems something
hypo-critical that leads to the appearance of a double-standard. But what of the
Christian standard?
• "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in." (Matthew 23.13)
• "You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'"
And he called the people to him and said to them, "Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." (Matthew 15.7-11)
• "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
"Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
"And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him ...." (Matthew 6.1-8)
Revised Standard Version
There are plenty for whom the overarching spectre of American Christianity does, in fact, meet such a standard for hypocrisy.
We can certainly waste a good number of words expressing disgust at either the notion of hypocrisy or the value of it, but is it, for instance, that Christianity is persecuted, or that a form of Christianity so deviant as to ignore its own foundation is rejected?
The Bible, characterized and empowered by such bedlam, becomes not a tool for guidance or understanding, but a weapon to wield against demons raised in the minds of the faithful and projected unto a world no longer unsuspecting.
You've taken all that you can take. Time marches on again.
You've broken all that you can break. Time marches on again.
Spoken to those who would listen,
Taken from those who would give their attention:
You quoted Ecclesiastes and you brought all our hope to its knees.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
You just keep on hating the whole world if you must
If you think that's just.
Take up that stone and feel its weight. Time marches on again.
Cry out, "Throw first before it's too late!" Time marches on again.
Run to the shelter of sarcasm and the shield of permanent grin;
Wrapped in your cloak of superiority so thick that that none of that
shit can get in.
(Floater)
____________________
Notes:
° the public face of American Christianity rejects that part of itself - "The Lord said, 'Peter, I can see your house from here'." (Roger Waters)
Works Cited:
