A Belt at the Belt 2
Michael Austin is professor of psychology and a professing Christian. The Christianity that he professes is the kind of Christianity that I grew up with, one that focuses on love and forgiveness, not on hate and vengeance.
At Psychology Today Blogs, he explores the essential hypocrisy behind the “Myth of the Bible Belt” by contrasting the Christ of the Bible with the Christ of the Bible Belt.
- love of God
- love of one’s neighbor (no matter their religious beliefs, or lack thereof)
- transformation of one’s character
- care for the “least of these” (i.e., the poor and marginalized) in society.1
If the criteria from the New Testament are applied to our behavior, then atheist high school students wouldn’t receive text messages that say “Hey, Satan.” And atheists wouldn’t lose their family and friends because of their lack of religious faith. To reject someone or cut them out of your life because they are an atheist is one of the least Christian things one can do.
Read the rest, then read Matthew 6:5.
May 30, 2014 at 12:10 pm
The Jesus of America, particularly in the south but lots of other places, too, is distinct from everybody’s else’s Jesus. Here in the land of liberty we showed him what to do, rewrote his book, so to speak. Jesus was the first reverse-Robin Hood. Scourge the poor. Virtue is the damning of those unlike you. Tax the weak and sick. Jesus and God wanted you to be rich. As old as the Reverend Billy Sunday, David was worth 3 billion dollars in gold, Abraham, five. Take heed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a poor man to get into the kingdom of Heaven. It is bad to give money and housing to the impoverished because if you do, they’re just going to choose to live in the creek and do heroin (an actual quote). It’s all so old.
May 30, 2014 at 10:21 pm
God spake in Elizabethan English.
All seriousness aside, we had a good discussion about Christ vs. Christianity at Wednesday’s special DL meeting.
I’ve read the Christian Bible six times through or more. Nowhere in it, except in Leviticus, can I find the seeds of “Jesus of America.”
(I recommend the “Jerusalem translation,” for all that it is a Catholic translation. It manages to be both readable and poetic, whereas most “readable” versions have all the poetry of an antivivisectionist tract or a Dick and Jane reader.)