Harper's Magazine: The Christian Paradox

[khaosworks]

The Christian Paradox
How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2005. What it means to be Christian in America. An excerpt from this report appeared in August 2005. The complete text appears below. Originally from August 2005. By Bill McKibben.

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

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Comments

[madfilkentist]

Reading a short way further than you quoted, it quickly becomes clear that Bill McKibben is simply trying to use Christianity to promote his own political agenda. He states that Franklin's "God helps those who help themselves" is "counter-biblical." This is arguably true when compared to Jesus's teaching and much of the New Testament. It certainly isn't counter to the lessons shown in the history/mythology of Israel.

But this is nothing compared to what McKibben pulls a little further on. He says, correctly, that Jesus identified the righteous by whether they fed the hungry, etc. He then promptly uses this to attempt to imply that Jesus's doctrine commands foreign aid. Further on he identifies tax increases with Christian charity. The simple fact is that Jesus advocated no political position. He advised people to submit to tax collectors ("Render unto Caesar..."), but he took an apocalyptic view which made political activity pointless. The world would be ending soon anyway.

McKibben is, by his own explicit statement, a hypocrite. He uses the radical teachings of Jesus, which if taken seriously would require people to give up almost everything enjoyable in life, and yet simultaneously wants to keep a modern lifestyle. I'll take Jerry Falwell as more consistent and honest than this guy.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"McKibben is, by his own explicit statement, a hypocrite. "

By his own explicit statement (immediately following that one), we are *all* hypocrites. That's an important point in christian theology, the idea that we are all people who fail to live up even to our own standards, never mind God's, in one way or another. The only reason McKibben mentions it is to quickly get it out of the way, lest people be distracted by it, since it's not the issue he's addressing.

The problem (as he sees it, and I fully agree with him on this point) is not that people are failing to live up to the standards they've adopted - he accepts that as a virtual inevitability, and a forgivable one (as do I) - but that (most) American christians are completely mistaken about where the standards they've adopted actually come from, and thus about their justification for holding them.

The Bible as a Rorschach test

[patoadam]

He states that Franklin's "God helps those who help themselves" is "counter-biblical." This is arguably true when compared to Jesus's teaching and much of the New Testament. It certainly isn't counter to the lessons shown in the history/mythology of Israel.

Christians generally believe that the New Testament supersedes the Old.

He says, correctly, that Jesus identified the righteous by whether they fed the hungry, etc. He then promptly uses this to attempt to imply that Jesus's doctrine commands foreign aid.

Most of the aid US citizens give is foreign aid. McKibben adds in donations to private charities a few sentences later to get a total figure.

Further on he identifies tax increases with Christian charity.

No, he doesn't. Tax increases could be used, for example, to kill more Iraqi civilians. He talked about a specific situation in Alabama where a tax increase was proposed to make state taxes less regressive and to better fund public schools.

I would say that you, I, and McKibben all interpret the Bible in a way that reinforces our own beliefs. Perhaps the Bible is a giant Rorschach test.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be true to say that Jesus advocated no political position because, in his time, there were no political positions? He spoke, as religious people often do, in absolutes. Righteous people feed the hungry. All the hungry, all the time. Any "political position" that denies this, or excuses not feeding the hungry on the grounds that they don't deserve to be fed, or they're foreign, or we need our huge food surpluses in case a comet strikes, is by his simple, absolute definition not righteous. And Christians should deal with that.

And no, I don't want to give up my enjoyable lifestyle either. I shall doubtless go to hell.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"I shall doubtless go to hell."

My advice? Don't commit yourself just yet. Keep negotiating for a better deal.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior.

I'm a little surprised that he seems to be surprised by this paradox. A great deal of what I observe in religious practice—any religious practice, including the somewhat weirder one to which I subscribe—has to do with things the person making the observances doesn't actually possess. And the less they have it, the more they profess it (example: most of my fellow Pagans are urban dwellers).

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

I don't think his point is that he's surprised by it, so much that American Christians urgently need to wake up to it. And then, of course, decide whether they're going to start behaving more like what they claim to be, or at least stop claiming to be something that they're not.

It also helps is those non-christians whose only model of christianty is the mainstream American one - and conversely, those whose only model of "Americanity" is the dominant so-called christian one - are aware of the situation; It helps them to distinguish their criticisms of America from their criticisms of christianity.

(Of course, the problem is not exclusively American, as I pointed out when I blogged about this same article; and I don't suppose for a minute it's exclusively christian, either.)

[patoadam]

America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior

Does anyone who agrees with this statement have any idea why other predominately Christian countries don't have this problem to the same degree?