Christianity and False Forgiveness
By now you have probably heard about Brit Hume’s on air proselytizing directed at Tiger Woods. If not, you can watch the video below where Hume suggests that Christianity offers a forgiveness that Buddhism does not and recommends that Tiger Woods convert.
Really Brit Hume? Christianity offers a special kind of forgiveness? Tell that to the more than 3,000 inmates on death row. According to gallop, 71% of protestants support the death penalty. Christians say that, since god prescribed how death sentences should be meted out in the bible, the death penalty isn’t a problem. In fact, the death penalty is love.
When Christians support three strikes laws that give people life in prison for theft crimes, is it all about love and forgiveness? How about the quadriplegic man who died in DC prison, after refusing to promise the judge he would never smoke pot again. Was he, like the thousands of others put in prison for marijuana, supposed to have felt the love and forgiveness of the (primarily christian) people who work for the justice system?
Or maybe Hume is talking about the kind of forgiveness Iris Robinson has received. She is the anti-gay bigot who was recently busted having an affair. She confessed to have treated her family horribly, but says that god has forgiven her. (Note: Nothing in the article about her family forgiving her.)
I often think that - even more than fear of death, attachment to tradition, desire for community, or the need to deal with tragedy – it is trying to face their own mistakes that makes people turn to religion. Yet for so many people, their religion gives them the worst of two extremes.
On the one hand, Christianity paints a world in stark black and white, good vs. evil terms. Christians labels people as sinners and are quick to throw them away when they screw up. The religion lays on guilt and judgment for things as normal and necessary for life as sex. And so it creates people unable to accept their own humanity, ashamed of who they are, unable to deal with their own desires and mistakes.
To the other extreme are those Christians who think their religion is like a get out of hell free card. You can do whatever you want to people and then just say a few Ave Marias and all is well again. These people act as though forgiveness can be bestowed, like a queen knights her subject.
Forgiveness is work. You don’t develop compassion for other people until you can face your own worst mistakes and forgive yourself for them. And you don’t get to just accept easy forgiveness from your god without any attempt at reparations to the people and community you hurt.
While there may be those whose find in Christianity a path to the “soul searching” that makes forgiveness and reparations possible, more often than not their religion only seems to get in the way of that process.
They never understand why their message rings hollow when they sin yet preach to others. Organized religion (all of them) is a farce!
1So true.
2That's false Christianity you're referring to. Anyone who takes Christ's suffering and death as a get out of hell free card spits on his sacrifice. They won't find a warm reception in the afterlife. Or maybe it'll be too warm …
3Given christianity's history – if it is not about war, murder, death, destruction, intolerance, molestation, racism, sexism, and hypocrisy – then it does a very poor job of teaching.
4if christians took their bible as seriously as some of the muslims do, we would have a bunch of parents who would HAVE to kill their children.
5I haven't read the Koran, but I have read a bit of the bible. And I can't imagine how anyone who has actually read that vile thing can still believe in it.
6They believe in the vileness of the Bible because they are mindless sheep. Their religion prohibits critical thought. It requires unconditional loyalty. I know this because I was raised in that type of environment. I left it when I was 16 and haven't regretted one moment.
7And why the heck was Hume even mentioning buddhists? Honestly, I have never had a buddhist be nasty to me. Christians, plenty plenty plenty. Nasty nasty nasty.
8My impression of buddhists is a lot more positive than my impression of christians, but I think that probably has a lot to do with how many more christians I know. There is a new book out called Buddhist Warfare http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780195394849 I suspect it may dispel a few myths about buddhists.
9Like any other practice or institution, whenever religion assumes the power structure of hierarchy, those at the bottom will exist for the benefit of those at the top. And like every hierarchy, at various times those at the bottom will challenge this. In fact, this is happening all the time, in a conflict between classes.
I don't see religion as unique in this regard. It has surely served to protect the interests of those at the top, but it has also been a powerful force for social justice for those at the bottom. On the other hand, so has secularism. So I don't think we can take a categorical position on "religion" in a political sense: we have to look at how power is distributed in particular cases, and account for the same class considerations we would in any other social institution.
The irony in the case of Christianity is that Jesus was explicitly anti-hierarchical, except in his conception of divine order, where "the last will be first." Satan, the personification of evil, tempted him with worldly power, and so on. It was only when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire that it assumed the concerns befitting an empire, as one might expect.
10I agree with much of what you say. I have far less beef with individual spirituality than I have with organized religion. In fact most of my issues are with organized religion.
And I will admit that there have been social movements that had a strong religious component and did some good for some people. But I believe the religious component was more important as a tactic than as the foundation. In other words, MLK would have been just as amazing a person had he been Muslim or Atheist. But he would have had less success because fewer Americans would have identified with him.
Other movements, like liberation theology, are even more problematic. Take Nicaragua. The church fought alongside poor people in central america one day, and then turned around and completely banned abortion the next – costing hundreds of womens lives. Here in the US, the church is taking on the cause of immigrant rights on the one hand and taking away the rights of gay people on the other. They are completely incapable of tolerance.
One major difference between religion and other systems is how much you are required to believe in unverifiable and unbelievable things. Governments may say "trust us" and lie out their ass, but the truth can and will come out some day. Religion has no truth, just blind faith.
11I think religion, along with "spirituality" and so on, attempts to grapple big questions that science doesn't come close to answering. And while I think it's wise not to take too firm a position on anything that can't be "verified" in a conclusive way, I'm not necessarily sure its wise not to be interested in these questions in a way that informs your life. Science can't help us with this yet, so what should we do in the meantime?
Ideally, people make their own choices about what is meaningful to them. This is where I share your objection to "organized religion," which is really the same thing as hierarchical religion. Most people are opposed to having someone else tell them what to believe or where to find meaning. This is why I am opposed to religious hierarchies demanding that people practice in some prescribed manner, while at the same time I am opposed to painting whole categories of people — like "Christians" — with too broad a brush. If Christ was opposed to worldly hierarchy and identified ultimate truth in the solidarity between human beings, and evil as the illusion of independence from one another, then I think there is scope for Christians to pursue these questions in complementary ways. My only point is to say that sometimes they do, and we should embrace them politically in these instances, rather than attack them because the conceptual framework of their morality is speculative. If we share the same morality and values, this is much more important than how we learned them, as people naturally differ in this regard.
12I appreciate religion from a cultural and philosophical standpoint. I think it is interesting. But I mostly think that it is a waste to spend time searching for answers that can never be found. We are surrounded by crisis. Why we exist is far less important than how to make our existence bearable.
I realize that a post like this paints people in broad strokes. And I admit that I am more inclined to do that when it comes to religion than anything else. My experience with religion has been almost completely negative. The religious people I know are insecure, judgmental, and emotionally stunted. And since some of these people had a lot of influence on my life (and caused me a lot of misery), I don't have a lot of patience for it.
That said. I don't hate anybody, not even that Brit Hume twit. And I am more than willing to work with people on areas of agreement regardless of their religion or lack thereof.
But I will point out the hypocrisy and absurdity of religious people and their beliefs on occasion.
13You have a great eye for hypocrisy and injustice. I'm always grateful that you pursue them.
Your posts frequently put me in a reflective mood. Just wanted to share my thoughts on this one, and emphasize a different angle. But I think you are perfectly within your right to approach the subject as you have, and I look forward to more of it.
14Thanks for that. And thank you for emphasizing that different angle. I want people to challenge me. It's how I learn whether or not my arguments are strong. And its how I get called out for my own blind spots and hypocrisy – which I have like everybody else.
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