verging_on_random

Frauds for Jesus

October 13, 2007 on 9:35 pm | In Uncategorized |

I was raised as a good little Christian boy. I remember being mightily impressed with the Christian virtues. However, I couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11 years old before the truth hit home (starting with my own family) that none of the Christians I knew behaved in anything like the way their ostensible beliefs required them to.

I blame this for a deep cynicism about religions and other superstitions that has dogged me all my life.

Anyway recent events have reminded me of this gaping chasm between what Christians say they believe and how they act. Moreover, they seem curiously unaware of this disconnect between ideology and action. It’s a real-time, live case study of cognitive dissonance.

Prime Minister John Winston Howard is a Christian. So is Leader of the Opposition Kevin Rudd. They admit it themselves so it must be true. Yet neither of them pays the slightest heed to one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity.

I’m talking of course about Jesus’ exhortation in Matthew 5:44:

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you

The trouble with this, from the point of view of Messrs Howard and Rudd (and those Christians I knew all those years ago) is that it goes against human nature. It’s revolutionary stuff. Jesus was a radical and most Australian Christians don’t get radical. They leave that kind of stuff to the excitable Latins and Africans. No, the attitude around here is basically that Christian principles = the British common law. Stuff about doing good to them that hate you doesn’t fit into their world-view so poof! It’s air-brushed from their version of the faith.

The reason I was thinking again about this is the reaction during the week to the suggestion that the Bali bombers might avoid execution. My, didn’t the faux Christians have a field day spitting their outrage! Yet Jesus couldn’t have been clearer: ‘Love your enemies’. You don’t usually go on national television urging that people you love be put before a firing squad.

I’d love to see Messrs Rudd and Howard and Costello and any of the other professed Christians in politics cross-examined about how they reconcile their religious beliefs with their behaviour. Not that it will ever happen of course. One of the quaint conventions of Australian politics is that a politician is free to flaunt their self-proclaimed faith without fear of being questioned about its actual meaning.

In contrast to the Christians’ blood lust directed against those they’re supposed to love was the behaviour of the infidel from the north. Yes to add insult to injury, not only are the Indonesians contemplating a reprieve from the death sentence for the Bali bombers, they actually had some of them over for a meal. Or ‘a party’, as the Australian media described it. Well more accurately it was an occasion to break the Ramadan fast and pray but it’s much more shocking if you describe it as a party.

What’s really outrageous is the response of the Indonesians when angry Australians confronted them with their behaviour.

Brigadier-General Dharma said the gathering was part of a strategy to win over terrorists.

“We approach the terrorists with a pure heart,” he said. “We are all Muslims. We make them our brothers, not our enemy.”

Great goddlemighty, the dumbass sounds like he’s on Planet Jesus! Next thing he’ll be saying he wants to do good to them that despitefully use him.

The thing is, the Christians are all phonies. Their religion means nothing to them really. They just co-opt the useful bits and wear them like a magic spell when it suits, and ignore the bits they don’t agree with. Somehow this convinces them that they occupy a moral peak infinitely superior to anyone else.

Muslims, on the other hand, actually take their religion seriously, including the bits that it holds in common with Christianity. Christians find this highly offensive; they regard Muslims as crazy fanatics.

Me, I shake my head at all religions. It’s beyond me how any otherwise intelligent person can take all the superstition and authoritarianism seriously. But I have to say that at least I can respect Muslims. They are prepared to live by their principles, no matter how misguided I might consider those principles to be. It’s hard to respect most of the self-proclaimed Christians. They just come across as totally expedient hypocrites.