Wendell Berry, interview with The American Conservative
I don’t know when, why, or how it happened, but at some time the mainstream denominations put themselves in charge of the Sunday job of accrediting people for admission to Heaven, turning the workdays, the human economy, and the material creation over to the materialists. And so it became possible for people to commit their souls to God while participating in an economy dedicated to the swiftest possible extraction and consumption of everything it values in God’s world, with unlimited collateral damage to all creatures, humans included, that it does not value.
Once this desecration of creation, of life itself, becomes conventional economic practice, then the submersion of the Gospel in nationalism and the waging of Christian warfare readily follows. Once war is accepted as the normal condition of human, including Christian, life, then spying upon citizens, imprisonment without indictment or trial, torture of prisoners, and all the malpractice of a tyrannical “security” evidently follow and are justified by leaders. If the life of the poorest being that crawls on the earth is not respected as a great and holy mystery, then it may be that humans go “free” of all limits, become disoriented, and are truly unable to find themselves.
Addie Zierman, “3 Things We Need to Stop Saying to Youth Group Kids”
One of the recurrent themes in my Christian youth was the pressure to stay strong for God around peers and teachers who, I was told, would be antagonistic toward my beliefs. So many talks and sermons and rally-sessions wrapped tight around this topic, constricting my chest with the urgency of knowing how to accurately and compellingly disseminate the specifics of the Christian faith to others…even if they mocked me for it.
I spent the duration of junior high and high school braced against the entire student body, sure that they secretly mocked/hated/despised me. I wore Christian t-shirts like some kind of bullet-proof vest. I memorized all of the brilliant apologetic arguments in favor of Christianity in case any teacher or student ever cornered me in the hall and forced me to debate my faith.
But here’s the thing. No one ever did.
Elizabeth Stoker Breunig, “Is ISIS Authentically Islamic? Ask Better Questions”
Determining religious legitimacy would require not only a debate about how authority is sourced in each particular tradition, but an understanding of what relationship to that authority would produce authenticity. It would also require some sort of agreement on the identity of the person or group making the call, and their right to do so. After all, even if ISIS is ‘Muslim’ because they use Islamic texts and incorporate some elements of Islamic history into their political practice, isn’t it possible they’re bad Muslims, heretical Muslims, or some sort of ‘lapsed’ Muslims — still Muslim, but without the broadly damning consequences of less qualified labels? Our public discussions rarely penetrate this deeply into the matter precisely because we are not used to establishing the authentic content of religions. A moment of high religious tension is probably not the best one in which to try to develop a public language for debating these truths. And since we are neither equipped nor posed to develop such a language right now, the question of whether or not ISIS is authentically Muslim seems endlessly fraught and otiose.
Rod Dreher, “Is ISIS Islamic? How Would We Know?”
What the Hal Lindsey vision gave to me was a sense of purpose and meaning that I did not get anywhere else. Specifically, it charged daily life with intensity. I would read the newspaper in the morning over breakfast, and find my newfound apocalyptic beliefs confirmed in the headlines. Any time the Soviet Union would make a move, I would think, “Ha! Gog and Magog! We know where this is headed.” It is a crazy way to live, but I’m telling you, if you are inside that mindset, it is a kind of spiritual methamphetamine. You want to believe it, because it delivers you from boredom, insecurity, and the difficult business of getting through the day.
I remember sitting at a table in the school library in 7th grade, reading a newspaper and looking up and thinking, “If the Rapture happened five minutes from now, what would they all think of me? I would be gone, and most of them would be left behind. That would show them!” You see the power of this kind of thinking on the mind of a 13 year old kid who feels lost, scared, and overlooked. That’ll show them. They thought I was a social reject, but in the end, I will have been one of God’s favorites, and these of little faith will be left behind to suffer.
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