I recently wrote about the offense of Christianity. The offense is 1) that we claim exclusivity (which nearly all religions claim and which is the claim of Christ ... you know, the One we claim to follow) and mostly 2) the Cross. Christianity according to Scripture will be an offense to unbelievers simply because Christ died for our sins and that is unacceptable.
The truth is that there are other reasons that Christianity is considered offensive. I'm sure you've heard quite often how Christianity brought about the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts, all sorts of evil. All total, deaths "in the name of Christ" in history could add up to some 500,000. The New Atheists like Sam Harris think that religion in general and Christianity in particular ought to be eliminated because religions are dangerous. Add to that the rude, argumentative folk who argue in the name of Christ, the "Westboro Baptist" types who call themselves devout Christians while passing off hate as Christianity, the narrow-minded and bigoted people who in the name of Christ perpetrate cruelty and crimes. An easy example would be Joseph Kony, the head of the "Lord's Resistance Army" in the news lately, claiming to be "fundamentalist Christians". Really bad press. It looks bad for Christianity.
There are responses to these problems, but that's not where I'm going here ... not yet. I wanted to examine the alternatives. Let's take, for instance, Islam. One only has to say "9/11" to recognize that Islam has violent adherents. The truth about the Crusades is that during the Middle Ages Islam was on the warpath conquering all sorts of territory. The Church sent troops in to defend people who were under attack. In the 7th and 8th centuries Islam prosecuted a military-based expansion that spread from Persia through North Africa and into Spain, Crete, and even Italy. Islam calls itself the religion of peace, but its history has been a violent one, and no one can doubt that it remains so in the most Islamic areas*. If they aren't at war, they are comfortable with executing unbelievers. Today, Christianity is the largest religion with 2.1 billion adherents followed by Islam with 1.5 billion followers. It looks like the #2 choice is not a peaceful solution.
According to adherents.com, the #3 option is "secular/nonreligious/agnostic/atheist" with 1.1 billion in that camp. How does that group do in the question of violence? Well, since they lack organization, it's not too easy to pinpoint. However, we can examine how the adherents of atheism have done when in power. The fundamental premise of 20th century Communism was atheism. It was the official "religion" of China and the Soviet Union. Lacking any sort of "made in the image of God" valuation of human life, estimates are that Stalin alone exterminated from 20 to 65 million Russians. Mao Tse Tung took Communism to China. Various experts provide various numbers, but the conservative guess as to how many this atheist leader terminated round out about 40 million.
Another leader well known for mass murder was Adolph Hitler. Some have tried to tie his beliefs to Christianity, but history suggests that Naziism rather than religion was his motivating factor. While he referenced Christianity at times, he denied it as well. A song from the Hitler youth said, "We follow not Christ, but Horst Wessel; Away with incense and Holy Water; The Church can go hang for all we care; The Swastika brings salvation on Earth." This "religion" of racism brought about the deaths of 6 million Jews on top of the millions who died in his world conquest.
Here's the question I want to ask. Given all this death, which is consistent and which is not? Christians, presented with the embarrassments of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, and all that are appalled. It takes a very brief look into the Christian Instruction Manual, the Bible, to see that all of that is in violation of Christianity. Nothing in Scripture would support those things. They were certainly done in the name of Christianity, but they violate Christianity. On the other hand, we have Islam whose Holy Book demands death to infidels and approves conquest by sword. Atheism and its pals, lacking any religious demand of "made in the image of God" or rights endowed by a Creator, are perfectly consistent in destroying humans who get in the way of their plans and endeavors. And for a worldview that is based on "the perfect race", killing the "imperfect" is simply "survival of the fittest".
The point? Christianity is offensive for what it teaches. Given. We can't avoid it. Christianity is also offensive for what it doesn't teach, for people who claim the name of Christ and violate His commands. That's not our call. We are opposed to that crowd. We agree that the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, all that was wrong. I would submit, though, that consistent Christianity on its face as defined by the Bible is not the dangerous religion that those who are offended claim it to be. On the other hand, the next best alternatives are indeed dangerous in their practice and consistent in their killing. Christianity has killed its hundred thousands, but the alternatives have killed its hundred millions. I think we should think twice about the alternatives before we toss Christianity out on the offensive pile.
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* This, of course, will be denied in today's "Let's just talk nice about Islam" world. Funny how it's okay to denigrate Christianity at the drop of a hat, but Islam shouldn't be examined or questioned at all. But in truth there are over 109 verses in Islam's holy book that are open-ended demands to kill infidels. These commands were acted on by Muhammad himself as well as centuries of followers including today. By "open-ended" I mean that they are not, like the Old Testament examples of the same, contained in historical context. God told Israel to slay the Amorites, as an example. One time event. Not an ongoing command. Closed. The commands in the Quran are open-ended and ongoing. Those who deny them in Islam today do so by the same means that "Christians" today deny the clear commands of the Bible, the Resurrection, the Trinity, and the like. For a "Christian" to deny the Atonement requires the same abrogation of basic instructions as a Muslim who denies the calls for death to infidels from the Quran. Both types exist. Both require denying basics.
4 comments:
To be accurate, I wouldn't necessarily say that the Crusades were "wrong". No doubt one can point to specific aspects of how they were carried out that were wrong. But the Crusades were an answer to Islamic aggression, an attempt to defend oppressed peoples.
My point is that they weren't Christian. They may have been carried out in the name of Christ and they may have been done by people calling themselves Christians and it may have even been a "just war", but the Crusades were not Christian.
Stan,
I've been reading through the old testament since January and I have gotten the impression that if an unbeliever were to read what I've been reading - I'm in 2nd Samuel now - he would see that clearly God commanded us to rob, pillage, plunder and kill any of those who got in our way. no? It's hard to align the teachings of Jesus with that of some of the acts committed in the OT. Especially for an unbeliever. Taken at face value, the commands from God to kill all those who are uncircumcised in the valley below (or something like that) would be akin to killing the infidels in the Koran...
Mike: "if an unbeliever were to read what I've been reading ... he would see that clearly God commanded us to rob, pillage, plunder and kill any of those who got in our way."
Yes, if an unbeliever were to read it, an unbeliever defined by Scripture as "hostile to God", "without understanding", spiritually blind, deceived by the god of this world, that would very possibly be their understanding. It would not be a rational understanding. It would be the comprehension of an enemy inclined only to evil. In fact, there have been those who came to that very conclusion and went forward on that very premise. I view that as proof that they were not followers of God.
The text is historical. Nowhere does God command His people in the Old Testament to "rob, pillage, plunder and kill any of those who got in our way." Nowhere. He commands, on a very, very few occasions, that they carry out His judgment on people who sinned against God. There is no blanket command. "All followers of God for all time ought to do this." There is no generic command. "This is what we do to all who oppose us." They were specific commands to a specific set of people at a specific moment for a specific purpose that did not carry over to all of God's people under similar circumstances. To read it as anything like that is to ignore the plain text.
(As to aligning it with the teachings of Jesus, that's a different question. The purpose in the Old Testament was judgment of sin. Indeed, God told Abraham that his offspring would be slaves in Egypt until the sin of the Canaanites was full. Judgment of sin. Did Jesus not teach on the judgment of sin? However, both in the case of Christ and in the case of the Old Testament, God determined when sin was judged, not Israel or us.)
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