There’s a very common argument I run across online. A recent example is found in the comments at Confessions of a Former Conservative, where Former Conservative is getting angry at Park 51 protesters. Inevitably, someone shows up in the comments to draw a dichotomy where Christianity=civilized and Islam=violent.
As it happens, Luis Leon Religion Dispatches has an article about two explicitly Christian organizations located in Mexico: La Familia Michoacana (LFM) and its successor organization Knights Templar of Michoacan (KTM).
The LFM was founded by Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, who was heavily influenced by John Eldredge, a former board member for Focus on the Family. Gonzalez appreciated Eldredge’s masculine brand of Christianity and created his own Christian brotherhood. As Leon explains it,
“La Famila was in line with other Pentecostal movements throughout Latin America insofar as they prohibit the usage of drugs and alcohol, condemn homosexuality, and require that their members become born again Christians, attend enthusiastic worship ceremonies, prayer meetings, and Bible study groups.”
When Gonzalez died in 2010, the group reformed as the KTM. The new organization is more Catholic than Pentecostal, and it places an emphasis on the idea of sacrifice: “KTM emphasizes sacrificing for honor, country, and God, and especially for the state of Michoacan. They require that members exemplify these virtues and many others including humility and, remarkably, religious freedom for those who believe in God.”
So here we have two organization that are explicitly and proudly Christian. The only problem is that they are both drug cartels. Despite the fact that they forbid drug use among their members, they are essentially gangs funded by drug sales. Both groups are violent, and Leon described the calling card of the LFM, “La Familia took the severing of human heads as their signature ritual: all across Michoacan decapitated corpses litter the landscape while testifying to the transformative power of the Holy Ghost.”
No doubt many Christians would point out that conflict between these acts and the supposed Christian pacifism. But as Leon explains, John Eldredge views things differently:
“He correctly points out the multiple stances toward violence exhibited by the Jesus of the gospels. Christ appears conflicted, referring to himself as the Prince of Peace and advising his followers to turn the other cheek. Yet, in other canonical places Jesus is capable of great anger and even violence: he upsets the tables of money changers at the Temple, whipping them while in a frenzy (this is a pivotal reference for Eldredge).”
So as Eldredge points out, there are two different traditions within the text of the Bible itself. How do we work this out?
I think the bottom line is that religion is endlessly flexible. Every good sized religion contains numerous traditions, and members gravitate – sometimes unconsciously – towards a combination that makes sense to them. There is no One True Christianity or Islam, only thousands of combinations of the various traditions.
That makes it pointless to say that Christianity is X, while Islam is Y. With very little effort you can find examples that draw from the same sources as the version you prefer, but wind up with radically different results.
as we say there, religion must always be able to “turn the eggs around” (dunno if there is an idiom like that in the English language, I traduced it litterally, it means “to turn every situation/question to your advantage”
Holy crap! Is this the “Wild at Heart” John Eldridge?
Yup.
He’s a little embarrassed at what his theology has become.
‘Wild at Heart’ and thug criminal enterprises are about as far apart as, well…Wild at Heart and thug criminal enterprises.
I can only imagine. Can’t wait to see what the fall-out from “Captivated” will be (FYI “Wild at Heart” for girls written by Mrs Eldridge).
I seem to remember that the violent bits of Christianity were deliberately played up by the first missionaries to northern Europe and the British Isles. Does that ring bells for anyone else? The idea was that the (Byzantine, I think) missionaries were completely snubbed for having a god who just died. One or two ‘creative’ missionaries started to dramatically overemphasize the more exciting themes: Christians as soldiers over Christians as fishermen, etc.
That said, though, it does make sense to look at what those texts actually say. It simply isn’t true that the Bible supports these readings. Or, rather, there are interpretations of the text which or more or less wrong. This is true for Christianity, Islam, or really anything else you care to name. Based on text, it is hard to get a ‘perfect’ interpretation–but it is *certainly* possible to distinguish between different interpretations to the extent of saying “X is not nearly as good an interpretation as Y,” or “the amount of time that the NT spends exhorting Christians to righteous martial, masculine, or “warrior” behavior is astronomically small compared to the amount of time it spends encouraging a distinctly non-violent, almost pacifistic code of behavior.”
The practice of religion will, as we have seen, be bent around the people that practice it, and I don’t think there is any doubt of that. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t tell! We notice idiosyncrasies like “being a part of a major drug cartel” precisely because they don’t match up with our other experiences. We can reasonably decide that, while it might be possible for the Bible to be used to justify literally any kind of behavior, there are some interpretations and justifications which are less wrong than others.
“The practice of religion will, as we have seen, be bent around the people that practice it”
You could’ve left it at that.
It’s not so much that “being a part of a major drug cartel” doesn’t match up to experience (clearly it does, as demonstrated above); it doesn’t match up to our expectations of people who claim to a higher moral authority. Hence we have reason to reject that claim from them.
That they found this morality in a convoluted (and probably incorrect) interpretation of the bible, is significant to christianity in general as it highlights the problem of claims to divine authority being found in an easily twisted and highly ambiguous book.
It is this which undermines any attempt to seek “less wrong” versions. Why not just discard the bible? There are plenty of ancient philosophers and writers who have contributed more to the progression of modern thought and morality than Jesus or the Jews; we have a lingering cultural icon whose potential is to do more harm than good, so tear it down and find a new one.
I agree with you. The bible is pretty much useless given how it can be used as a basis for any type of behaviour, and the explicitly contradictory nature of the bible makes any claims of interpretations being ‘less wrong’ than others difficult to justify. I have to disagree with JonJon’s rationale that because the NT spends more time talking about being pacifist than aggressive (and I would argue that while the gospels might, the whole NT may not), it makes aggressive interpretations much less valid than peaceful ones. The fact is, the NT explicitly states in several places that Jesus came to enact violent revolution, wanted to tear apart families, etc. even though it explicitly states in others that he came to bring peace and goodwill to everyone.
And the NT does state, from the mouth of Jesus, that none of the OT laws are to be forgotten, so the idea of hiding behind the nice, new, friendly god of the New Testament seems unsustainable. There’s plenty of scope to interpret Jesus as wanting us to stone children to death, as there is to interpret him as thinking no one should have the right to execute another. Either interpretation can be based on direct, clear passages in the bible. I think sometimes we like to suggest that only the nice ones are really ‘valid’ because it is difficult to think that but for a slightly different perspective, our nice Christian neighbours would believe in pretty horrendous things. But the reason they don’t believe in these horrendous things is not because they’re not there, in their holy book, it’s because they are not inside these people. Which brings me back to what blotonthelandscape said. Since this bible is not really informing people’s morality so much as they are bending it to their own, it may be time to just jettison it completely, even for Christians.
From a secular, humanistic, and philosophical viewpoint, the Bible is inferior to so many other works, no doubt about that. But Christians value the Bible mainly for its spiritual message – to the extent many of them think this message fully justifies the Bible’s many examples of horrible ethics. The more moderate Christians generally disregard the flawed ethics, not seeing it as examples to follow, and instead concentrate on the fuzzy spiritual parts. Neither of those Christians want to discard the Bible.
Another one of the largest pills to swallow in my de-conversion…. If I have to sit and philosophize about what the bible really means in any passage…. Then its just as much ME writing the bible as it is Jesaws. Or Paul, or President Obama, or the preacher on the pulpit. If the bible is to be taken seriously, it must be so self evident that my mind wouldn’t need to make any extra leaps so as to make any sense of the passages.
” If I have to sit and philosophize about what the bible really means in any passage…. Then its just as much ME writing the bible as it is Jesaws. Or Paul, or President Obama, or the preacher on the pulpit. If the bible is to be taken seriously, it must be so self evident that my mind wouldn’t need to make any extra leaps so as to make any sense of the passages.”
So, a book wouldn’t do it for you at all then? I mean, basically anything we read is something we actively interpret. That’s what reading *is*. I have other issues with what you just said, but I’ll start there.
“I mean, basically anything we read is something we actively interpret. That’s what reading *is*.”
Sorry for pointing out the obvious … the Bible isn’t just supposed to be just a book.
Indeed. When I read another book my interpretation of its meaning is not supposed to determine the consequences for my eternal soul.
Really, JonJon, I know you like to defend the bible on this topic, but this seems a no brainer to me.
Your interpretation of its meaning doesn’t have to determine those consequences. Seriously. The Bible doesn’t say “failure to read and interpret this book correctly will result in hell.” At least not anywhere I can think of.
We’re talking about a book that celebrates a wide, wide variety of moral and ethical stances, from pacifism to… whatever the opposite of pacifism is (eldredge-ism?). We get fire poured on Sodom for (depending on who you ask) gayness, rapiness, or simple lack of hospitality, but Jonah gets in big trouble for attempting to point that wrath at Nineveh. We’ve got adulterers who don’t get in trouble at all (generally male) and adulterers who get stoned (generally female.)
The one thing we don’t get from the Bible is that there is one consistent moral or ethical code (that we have access to) that will tip the eternal judgment scale over to “righteous.” Rabbis consistently differed on scriptural interpretation long before Yeshua ever started roaming the Galilean countryside, and that was okay. It still is. Reading the Bible and thinking that there is only one correct way to interpret its contents is (although a commonly held belief in a particular branch of American evangelicalism) not a particularly accurate or helpful interpretation, and on most reasonable standards of interpretation it falls badly short.
That’s ridiculous. Of course you think it’s more than that. Don’t be disingenuous.
But I’m not! Where am I being disingenuous?
Well, hey, I guess if you think the bible should be more than a book, then the above criticism doesn’t really count for much. I think the bible is a book. I read it like a book. I think it does the things required of it’s status as a book–even a book of religious teaching.
Its. Damn. I’m too used to being able to self- edit on the forums…
“Well, hey, I guess if you think the bible should be more than a book, …”
For the claims it make then yes I do … see Ty’s post for an example. We’re not talking about a book that is just claimed to be some sort of self help manual.
“…The LFM was founded by Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, who was heavily influenced by John Eldridge (sic), a former board member for Focus on the Family. Gonzalez appreciated Eldridge’s masculine brand of Christianity and created his own Christian brotherhood…”
For a half-dozen years or so in the 1990s, John Eldredge (not “Eldridge”) was simply one of 1400 people employed at Focus on the Family. He was never a “board member,” nor did he serve in any executive leadership position at Focus. In his private life, not under Focus auspices or publishing avenues, he wrote his strange book on (faux) masculinity.
I recognize and should have acknowledged, by the way, that this “…former board member for Focus on the Family” error originated with Religion Dispatches and not with you
“Christianity=civilized”
Dunno… Doesn’t bombing the shit out of other countries count as violence?
Or it is violence only if you are poor, unorganized and wearing a turban?
WHOA THERE, JOHN ELDREDGE.
Every once in a while a name will come up on an article here that I’m either vaguely or intimately familiar with from my childhood – whether it’s a pastor of an old church, an organization whose materials I used to see everywhere, or someone like Eldredge, whose books my parents STILL own (I threw out my copy of ‘Captivating’ long ago).
And every time it happens, I get freaked out all over again. It’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that once upon a time, people and oganizations like Focus on the Family, Billy Graham, the Eldredges, Answers in Genesis, and Gordon McDonald were who I was told were “the good guys”.
I’m with you there. Always odd to see John Piper and the Focus on the Family crew show up; people I actually respected and thought were wise and worthy, now laughable hypocrites and deranged dangers to society.