Writer Anne Lamott, a Presbyterian herself, is responsible for my favorite religion-related quip: "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates the same people you do."
Which is related indirectly to this billboard, erected (during 2010 I believe) in Christchurch, New Zealand. Then as now, such sentiments generate a lot of squawking, posturing and flapping of wings among some believers.
I'm not suggesting that one shouldn't practice a faith that incorporates belief in some sort of overriding creative force if that helps to float your boat, only that it's useful to remember that religion begins with the human need to explain what seems to be inexplicable. And that the varying understandings of what a "god" is begin there.
And that science and reason --- not to mention love and compassion --- are useful tools, too, when faced with primitive terror of the unknown and the impulse to create a formula to deal with it.
The gentleman after whom Christianity is named preached that right action is important, a theme expanded upon in James 2:14-17 --- "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."
Now Martin Luther and other protestant reformers just hated James and would joyfully have purged him from the canon had they been able to figure out a way to do so. Having to live one's faith is so darned inconvenient. But they couldn't, so those words remain to plague believers toward right action.
All this came to mind while reading this weekend about the flurry in South Dakota schools resulting from action during the last session of that state's legislature --- a law that requires "In God We Trust" to be posted on the walls of all public schools. There's similar activity in Kentucky and other places where evangelical Christians are running scared.
But can you imagine anything deader than a slogan mandated by a government and plastered on a wall?
No comments:
Post a Comment