I am growing tired of the word “Christian” because it tends to be overused by people who claim it as a descriptive for themselves and yet possess few or none of the qualities that Jesus Christ exemplified for us. It is to the point where I am now hesitant to call myself a Christian, knowing that such a claim puts me in the same company as quite a few unsavory characters. I am most disgusted when politicians, especially the conservative ones, co-opt the word Christian to describe themselves when it's obvious they are no more Christian than a box of cereal. Placing a veneer of Christian ideology over one's self-aggrandizing attitudes in an attempt to pander to the "Moral Majority" (which is neither moral nor the majority) or the "Religious Right" is ridiculously inane, yet I find plenty of people willing to support these politicians who callously do so. Where is the Christ-like behavior that qualifies these people as Christian? Now, I’m absolutely willing to forgo any expectations about performing those extraordinary miracles mentioned in the Bible— that is, I really don’t expect anyone to walk on water or change water into wine or even raise the dead to prove they deserve to use the label of Christian--because, honestly, there is no empirical evidence that Jesus actually did any of the above miracles either. If we're serious enough, we will admit that every religion adorns their leaders with extraordinary features-- Jesus Christ is not the first to be born of a virgin, nor is he the first to heal, the first to make extraordinary events happen, and so on, so for the remainder of this blog, let's set those miraculous events aside and focus strictly on the side of human capabilities.
Maybe my issues with Christians stem from my expecting them to be kind, considerate, and compassionate, and acting with humility in a spirit of service and finding that type of Christian to be quite rare. Instead, I hear "Christian" pastors boast of their material wealth as proof that God has shown them divine favor while callously ignoring members of their own congregation that are struggling financially. One pastor I know was quite audacious about it-- in one service he touted his latest 'blessing', a new Armani suit-- not just a new suit, it was Armani--and then brazenly announced his next "blessing" would be a Harley Davidson motorcycle. (I am aware that some churches promote the 'name it and claim it' form of wish fulfillment, but this begs me to ask the question-- why does the Bible repeatedly emphasize the rejection of all worldly trappings and admonish us to get rid of our material wealth and store up "treasures in heaven" instead?) And to see the pastor stake his claim with a smirk on his face even while the people in the front pews on the other side of the church looked like they hadn't had a square meal in days made me feel horrible. I wanted to stand up and walk out of the church in protest, and I'm sad that I did not take the time to do so.
North Carolina minister Charles L. Worley is an example of another "Christian"; he said that since gays cannot reproduce, all gays should be put in concentration camps until the gay population naturally dies out. His level of ignorance is astounding. I personally would prefer that we round up the ignorant buffoons who use the Christian pulpit to promote hate speech so they can be removed from the gene pool but, alas, we Americans still allow hate speech as a Constitutional right. But, notwithstanding the fact that children, regardless of their sexual orientation, are most often the result of a sexual act between people of opposite sexes (in vitro fertilization being the obvious exception to the case), and the fact that many gays have had children and raised them-- and surprise(!), their offspring in most cases are heterosexual-- how can the clueless Rev. Worley believe he is in alignment with what Jesus taught or demonstrated? There is no scripture about Jesus encountering a gay person, so we have to extrapolate by looking at how he treated others. When I read those Bible stories of Jesus, I see him portrayed as a man who broke every established custom, and even the established Jewish legal code about social behavior, to reach out to women, people of other races, poor people, sick people, people of other faiths, and many others; he also rebuked the Pharisees who attempted to push their sanctimonious lack of compassion on the prostitute who was found in flagrante delicto. So when I hear "Christians" make such flagrantly asinine statements about gays, lesbians, transgendered people, etc., I know those "Christians" are not Christian at all.
I believe if you're going to label yourself as a Christian, you should be more than willing to emulate Christ and ignore the ‘societal barriers’ that were formed out of uncompromising legalistic beliefs and reach out to those outside the 'mainstream', i.e., the disenfranchised, wherever they are in their walk in life. If you can't treat women, poor people, sick people, gays, lesbians, transgendered people, people of other faiths, people of other races, people in prison, scientists, atheists, people who are politically powerless, oppressed people, and those who are undergoing one form of hardship or another with the same or greater level of respect and courtesy that you give your friends, and in the exact same way you want to be treated or better, then your use of the word “Christian” as a label should be automatically revoked.
Being Christ-like
does not mean you get to enforce your biases or limited understanding of centuries-old legalistic choices on others; Jesus
did not, so you do not get to either. You are not holy and living at some loftier
standard than everyone else. I don’t care if you are a nun, priest, pastor, church elder, or the pope himself; I don't care if you have tithed all of your life, attended every Sunday church service for decades, or teach Sunday School: you don’t
get to set the bar for everyone else’ behavior based on your personal beliefs of holiness. "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car," the saying goes, but this concept seems to fall on deaf ears for so many wannabe Christian spokespeople. I have no idea why so many allow themselves to be duped by sanctimonious leaders who claim to support Christianity but never exert Christ-like behavior.
Now in the interest of full disclosure, let me explain a little about my 'Christian upbringing' and maybe you will have a better understanding of my point of view. I was raised as a Methodist-- by that I meant my parents took me to a rural Methodist church once a week, usually with my father griping all the way there and back. Once in a great while we would go back mid-week for the ice cream social (in summer) or a Christmas special (in winter.) The church was about seven miles from home, at the edge of a small hamlet (population: 17) just off the highway that ran in front of our home. It was never clear why we attended that particular church until years after my suicide attempt (see my second post) when my mother explained to me that that church was the only church in the entire area that invited us to join them in worship. We lived only a mile from a village (pop: <800) with several churches, including a Methodist one; many other churches, mostly Lutheran or Catholic, dotted the landscape and were much closer to home, but we were never invited to visit any of them. You see, my family 'wasn't good enough' for those churches. In their eyes, my family was irredeemable 'white trash'.
In the small rural church I attended, there was one family that acted as if they were the Swiss Guard at the Vatican, so to speak. They lived within a stone's throw from the church, and it seems that the matriarch of that family believed that living in such close proximity to the church placed them closer to God, and thus were naturally holy and able to lord over everyone else, and tried to inculcate this belief in her children as well. They were my first exposure to hypocrites, and their lessons over the years never sat well with me, and it was with some glee (I hate to admit) that I received the news that one of their daughters had a child out of wedlock. It couldn't have happened to a nicer family of Pharisees.
They were not the only "Christians" that treated my family like lepers. It was a theme that would repeat itself time and time again. Admittedly, the alcoholism that ran wild in my family and the large number of relatives who didn't do well in school may have been a contributor to the stigmatization of my family, but when I look back at how we were ostracized by the people in the surrounding community, I am disturbed by the hypocrisy. You see, over twenty percent of the girls in my graduating class were pregnant by the time they graduated from high school (none of them were impregnated by me or my brothers); drug use was rampant, and several of my classmates ended up dead or in jail within ten years of graduation due to their drug abuse; kids were put on the honor rolls and joined the National Honor Society but it really was their popularity and wealth that got them there, not their grades. (If it was their grades, then I should've been a member based on my 3.98 GPA, but I was never asked to join the NHS, even though I participated in extracurricular activities (school newspaper and yearbook); I should have been the class valedictorian, but relinquished that honor because I was still suicidal and didn't give a damn when the high school counselor stripped it from me in favor of the son of his friend.) My high school curriculum was putrid, perfect for hicks that would never amount to much of anything, and favoritism was given to "choir" and "band" (extracurricular activities) over coursework for college-bound youth. My friends joked about "Underwater Basket Weaving", a reference to the 'easy A' courses that filled most of the schedule, where mere attendance guaranteed a place on the honor roll. And the sleaziness of those kids in the NHS was covered up by the rich parents who bailed out their brats when they committed felonies. ("Yes, destroying a hundred mailboxes on a drunken joyride is a Federal crime, but he's only a minor and an honor student, Officer! Please show mercy!") These examples were of the 'good' "Christian" kids in my community, who had the backing of their 'faithful' parents and the churches they attended. It wasn't a huge loss to me, then, when I decided to leave the church after my failed suicide attempt in 1979. I promised myself I would never go back to church, and for many years I did not. It took the death of my father in 1989, a decade after I left the church, to make me break my promise.
By the time my father passed away, I had already begun going to a Zen Buddhist temple in Japan to practice meditation. I had already begun to distance myself from the Christian church in hopes of finding some spiritual development that was more palatable to me. And, for a while, I found Buddhist practice assisted in my spiritual growth just fine. In fact, on the day I heard that my father had passed away I was scheduled to give a speech in Japanese at a contest sponsored by one of the Buddhist priests I knew. In Japan, I experienced none of the stigma that I felt growing up in the U.S.; in fact, on the contrary, I was quite a popular person, and my interest in Buddhism seemed to increase the warm welcome I received from the natives. When I started shaving my head in an attempt to remind myself of my ultimate goal of becoming a Buddhist priest, some of my friends and co-workers were surprised, but at the same time they encouraged me to pursue my dreams.
Let me make one thing absolutely clear: my Buddhist practice has never prevented me from believing in God, from trying to emulate Christ, or from having a good relationship with Jesus. It's a great shame that many Christians (and some Buddhists) believe the two are mutually exclusive, but it is only out of ignorance that fear that such claims are made. (Note: most Japanese accept a variety of religions; you can visit a Shinto shrine, go to a Buddhist temple, have your wedding performed by a Christian priest, etc. with no condemnation from others.) Yes, I understand that most of us treat Buddhism as a religion and that it has all of the trappings of a religion (due to the influence of Hinduism) but, Buddhism was originally nothing more than a philosophy developed to reducing suffering and can still be treated as a philosophy if you strip away all of those religious trappings and the Hindu pantheon that had been attached to it after the death of the historical Buddha. The historical Buddha denied being a god, and when asked whether or not he believed in a Higher Power; his reply was that no one could empirically prove the existence of such a being, so any answer would be irrelevant. So, in my view, if you strip away the miraculous adornments of a religious leader like Jesus or Buddha, there are still plenty of good qualities that remain in the teachings of either man (and in truth, they bear a close resemblance to each other) so that it doesn't hurt to follow the teachings of both of these men concurrently.
I can imagine the skepticism that someone with a Fundamentalist viewpoint would have about my Christian faith when reading my statements above, but to be honest, those people can mind their own business. I will let God tell me when I am stepping out of divine favor. I do not require some intermediary to speak on my behalf when it comes to my faith. I count myself as a Christian, but temper it with the acknowledgement that I do not have the exact same beliefs as many other "Christians", and therefore render myself an outlier of sorts. And I am fine with that, because I know Jesus is fine with that as well. Now in the interest of full disclosure, let me explain a little about my 'Christian upbringing' and maybe you will have a better understanding of my point of view. I was raised as a Methodist-- by that I meant my parents took me to a rural Methodist church once a week, usually with my father griping all the way there and back. Once in a great while we would go back mid-week for the ice cream social (in summer) or a Christmas special (in winter.) The church was about seven miles from home, at the edge of a small hamlet (population: 17) just off the highway that ran in front of our home. It was never clear why we attended that particular church until years after my suicide attempt (see my second post) when my mother explained to me that that church was the only church in the entire area that invited us to join them in worship. We lived only a mile from a village (pop: <800) with several churches, including a Methodist one; many other churches, mostly Lutheran or Catholic, dotted the landscape and were much closer to home, but we were never invited to visit any of them. You see, my family 'wasn't good enough' for those churches. In their eyes, my family was irredeemable 'white trash'.
In the small rural church I attended, there was one family that acted as if they were the Swiss Guard at the Vatican, so to speak. They lived within a stone's throw from the church, and it seems that the matriarch of that family believed that living in such close proximity to the church placed them closer to God, and thus were naturally holy and able to lord over everyone else, and tried to inculcate this belief in her children as well. They were my first exposure to hypocrites, and their lessons over the years never sat well with me, and it was with some glee (I hate to admit) that I received the news that one of their daughters had a child out of wedlock. It couldn't have happened to a nicer family of Pharisees.
They were not the only "Christians" that treated my family like lepers. It was a theme that would repeat itself time and time again. Admittedly, the alcoholism that ran wild in my family and the large number of relatives who didn't do well in school may have been a contributor to the stigmatization of my family, but when I look back at how we were ostracized by the people in the surrounding community, I am disturbed by the hypocrisy. You see, over twenty percent of the girls in my graduating class were pregnant by the time they graduated from high school (none of them were impregnated by me or my brothers); drug use was rampant, and several of my classmates ended up dead or in jail within ten years of graduation due to their drug abuse; kids were put on the honor rolls and joined the National Honor Society but it really was their popularity and wealth that got them there, not their grades. (If it was their grades, then I should've been a member based on my 3.98 GPA, but I was never asked to join the NHS, even though I participated in extracurricular activities (school newspaper and yearbook); I should have been the class valedictorian, but relinquished that honor because I was still suicidal and didn't give a damn when the high school counselor stripped it from me in favor of the son of his friend.) My high school curriculum was putrid, perfect for hicks that would never amount to much of anything, and favoritism was given to "choir" and "band" (extracurricular activities) over coursework for college-bound youth. My friends joked about "Underwater Basket Weaving", a reference to the 'easy A' courses that filled most of the schedule, where mere attendance guaranteed a place on the honor roll. And the sleaziness of those kids in the NHS was covered up by the rich parents who bailed out their brats when they committed felonies. ("Yes, destroying a hundred mailboxes on a drunken joyride is a Federal crime, but he's only a minor and an honor student, Officer! Please show mercy!") These examples were of the 'good' "Christian" kids in my community, who had the backing of their 'faithful' parents and the churches they attended. It wasn't a huge loss to me, then, when I decided to leave the church after my failed suicide attempt in 1979. I promised myself I would never go back to church, and for many years I did not. It took the death of my father in 1989, a decade after I left the church, to make me break my promise.
By the time my father passed away, I had already begun going to a Zen Buddhist temple in Japan to practice meditation. I had already begun to distance myself from the Christian church in hopes of finding some spiritual development that was more palatable to me. And, for a while, I found Buddhist practice assisted in my spiritual growth just fine. In fact, on the day I heard that my father had passed away I was scheduled to give a speech in Japanese at a contest sponsored by one of the Buddhist priests I knew. In Japan, I experienced none of the stigma that I felt growing up in the U.S.; in fact, on the contrary, I was quite a popular person, and my interest in Buddhism seemed to increase the warm welcome I received from the natives. When I started shaving my head in an attempt to remind myself of my ultimate goal of becoming a Buddhist priest, some of my friends and co-workers were surprised, but at the same time they encouraged me to pursue my dreams.
Let me make one thing absolutely clear: my Buddhist practice has never prevented me from believing in God, from trying to emulate Christ, or from having a good relationship with Jesus. It's a great shame that many Christians (and some Buddhists) believe the two are mutually exclusive, but it is only out of ignorance that fear that such claims are made. (Note: most Japanese accept a variety of religions; you can visit a Shinto shrine, go to a Buddhist temple, have your wedding performed by a Christian priest, etc. with no condemnation from others.) Yes, I understand that most of us treat Buddhism as a religion and that it has all of the trappings of a religion (due to the influence of Hinduism) but, Buddhism was originally nothing more than a philosophy developed to reducing suffering and can still be treated as a philosophy if you strip away all of those religious trappings and the Hindu pantheon that had been attached to it after the death of the historical Buddha. The historical Buddha denied being a god, and when asked whether or not he believed in a Higher Power; his reply was that no one could empirically prove the existence of such a being, so any answer would be irrelevant. So, in my view, if you strip away the miraculous adornments of a religious leader like Jesus or Buddha, there are still plenty of good qualities that remain in the teachings of either man (and in truth, they bear a close resemblance to each other) so that it doesn't hurt to follow the teachings of both of these men concurrently.
I also will leave you with this: hypocrisy is not limited to the Christian faith; I have met my share of Buddhists who do not seem to understand the basics of what Buddha taught, even though they had been practitioners of Buddhism for many years. I have met Buddhist priests who were horrible examples of humanity-- racist, womanizing, alcoholic, arrogant, greedy, seedy, compassion-less people-- all while wearing the robes that identified them as 'a step above'. I have watched some priests and in doing so learned what not to do. But, for the most part, I have not been harassed by them, accused of wrongdoing by them, or told that my sexual orientation was 'an abomination' by them.In short, Buddhism may not be perfect either, but its adherents rarely stand up and put forth offensive remarks that make me ashamed to be associated with them, at least not as often as some "Christians" do.
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