(no subject)

[avevale_intelligencer]

Paul Cornell said this.

"I say there's no excuse for Christian homophobia. The New Testament references are tiny. There's nothing at all from Christ. But most importantly, he told us that when the book's wrong, you chuck the book and love."

Which is the distinction I've been trying to find between the people who call themselves Christians and preach hate and real Christians, the distinction that's been called a "no true Scotsman" argument by those who need all their enemies to be easily identified and labelled, and don't much care who else gets swept up in the process. That is the difference between someone who believes what Christ taught, and someone who is simply hiding behind a label that he thinks will guarantee him immunity from exposure.

It's real. It's there. And it took a better writer than me to put it into five simple words that I bloody well should have been able to find.

Chuck the book, and love. That's it.

EDIT: it is true that I have a history of being passive-aggressive. It's a flaw I recognise in myself and try to combat. So, let's try some active aggressiveness.

Yes, in fact, I do believe that if a person or an organisation does not adhere to the principles of Christianity as I understand them then that person or organisation is not in my understanding of the term Christian. Whether it be the Westboro Baptists, Pat Buchanan, James Anderton, Tony Blair, or the Pope in Rome and all his hierarchy of cardinals and priests. I don't care how many fancy frocks they wear, how often they wave the Bible at me, or whether their church was personally founded by God, with a marching band of Thrones and Dominations in attendance. If they don't understand "chuck the book and love," if they don't understand "forgive those that trespass against us," if they haven't got the message of the Good Samaritan, or the point of the crucifixion itself, then they have failed the entrance examination and they are not worthy to be called Christian. The alternative seems to me to be tantamount to saying that all you have to do to be a Christian is to say you're one. Which is like saying all you have to do to be a policeman is put on a badge.

And just as not all the fake crop circles in the world can convincingly eliminate the possibility that at least one might be genuine, not all the fake Christians in the world can invalidate the real message of Christ. Which is that all the hate, all the persecution, all the violence and all the bigotry...has to stop. And every day that it doesn't...every day that the sick and the evil and the power-crazed and the greedy use Christ's name to justify atrocities against their fellow man...Christ is crucified again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Ten thousand times over, every day. When we do it to the least of his people, we do it to him. God won't make us stop. We have to do it ourselves, because we have to understand why we need to stop, and we have to find that understanding for ourselves, because otherwise we'll never own it. And when we come to that understanding, we will at last have begun to grow.

At least, that's my take on it.

Comments

[omniguy.livejournal.com]

Love it!

And just ranted on the same topic myself.

Spooooooky.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

That is an awesome distillation of what Christ was saying. I am always in awe of people who can say things in a few perfect words (being prone to verbiage myself).

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

It's a very wise post by Paul C., and I hope it's read widely and makes people pause.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Show me a true Scotsman and I'll show you a Disney promo.

Don't Get Me Started. ;-)

[hurdle1gal.livejournal.com]

Now if only you can convince more priests to do that... lol.

Actually, the priests at my church I feel are good at spreading Christ's message of love. I'm currently a part of a church group that is reading through the Bible and trying to better incorporate prayer in our daily life (our guide is the book, "Unbinding the Gospel") By reading passages from the Bible and then sititng back to think about the meaning of such passages, we try to figure out how we are leading our lives and how to best reorient the pathway so that a) we are more open to Christ's message of love and b) we can have a better connection with God. It is an interesting book, as it translates the concept of prayer into REAL WORLD TERMS, so it is easy to understand (American oriented but I think you would be able to follow it as well). But it is amazing how many passages there are IN the gospel and other chapters that discuss God's love for us and how he is always there for us...

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

the distinction that's been called a "no true Scotsman" argument by those who need all their enemies to be easily identified and labelled, and don't much care who else gets swept up in the process.

Wow. How very passive aggressive of you.

Sorry, but the reasons I wasn't taking your arguments terribly seriously in that thread kinda began when you pointed out that what the Bible actually says about Christianity doesn't actually influence what you believe Christianity to be. Since the books are absolutely everything that Christians have to point to, acknowledging that you're tossing out the things in them that you don't care to pay attention to kinda makes it difficult to talk about the subject.

Once you've defined Christianity as consisting of what you think it consists of, and declared that those others who disagree with you aren't really Christians, you've used the No true Scotsman fallacy to perfection.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Do you really think you're the only person who's used that phrase to me? Sorry, no, not about you.

The definition of Christianity I quoted above is not mine. It does, however, confirm what I took away from my early years of contact with the faith; that Christianity is not about hate, or intolerance, or bigotry. That actually being a Christian is a difficult thing, something to live up to (and incidentally something I have failed to achieve) and something good. And that the evil that has plagued the churches for the last two thousand years has as much to do with the message of Christ as a rather nicely done car advertisement has to do with global warming.

If you don't accept that, then you are entitled to that belief. I don't share it.

[grey-lady.livejournal.com]

Works for me.
Amen.

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[batyatoon]

This may be a bad time for it, but I do feel it necessary to draw a distinction between "not a Christian" and "not a good Christian". In self-identification with religion as in defining art, I don't see why it's more useful to say "real/fake" than to say "good/bad" ... and I don't really see a problem with saying that all you have to do to be a Christian is to think of yourself as one.*

I'm coming at this from the outsider's perspective, of course.

* I use "think of yourself as one" rather than "say you're one" to sidestep the issue of those who knowingly falsely claim to be Christian. I will, however, point out that historically speaking, a knowingly false claim to be Christian has much more often been used to avoid persecution than to safely practice it.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Indeed, in some parts of Christianity all you have to do to be counted as a member is be born. I'm working on another definition of the term, one which I believe is more useful as a definition.

One could think of oneself, for instance, as "gay", and evince many of the superficial traits associated with the various stereotypes. But if one only ever had sexual feelings or relations with people of the opposite gender, would it be useful to say "I'm gay. I'm just not good at it"?

Or again; there are good writers and bad writers. Good writers write well, bad writers write badly. People who go around burning or defacing other people's books and claiming that's art are not bad writers. They are not writers at all, and it's not useful to say they are.

I also come at Christianity from an outsider's perspective, and from the country where we invented the ultimate "all you have to do is call yourself a Christian" flavour of Christianity. I do firmly believe that the people of whom I speak in the post, including the Pope, are in fact knowingly falsely claiming to be Christian. But this is because I believe that being a "real" Christian means something specific, something that is not simply a fictional construct in my head but is an idea shared in common by many others. I don't think it's enough to be born to a particular set of parents, or use the words "God" and "Christ" a lot in conversation, or to be seen in church every Sunday. It's not just something you are, it's something you do, and in order to be considered a "good" or a "bad" one, you have at least to try to do that specific thing.

It has, after all, been pointed out many times that Hitler thought of himself as a very good Christian.

[batyatoon]

Well, to take that one piece at a time:

If one has never had relations with people of the same gender, or indeed with anyone at all, it could indeed be useful to say "I'm gay, I'm just not good at it." But that's perhaps not the best example.

People who go around burning or defacing other people's books and calling it art are not claiming to be writers; they are claiming to be artists. I've got no problem calling their works art. If they were claiming to be writers they'd be either lying or deluded, in which latter category I would include having a definition of "writer" that includes burning or defacing other people's books.

To be knowingly falsely claiming to be Christian, the people of whom you speak would have to share your definition of "Christian." I think it goes without saying that they don't. Hitler thought of himself as a very good Christian, because his definition allowed for that, and would not have been lying if he'd said so.

It's fair, from your point of view, to call these people deluded. It's not fair to call them liars.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I remember an episode of a sitcom called "Gimme Gimme Gimme" in which a character appeared who said at the end "I'm not gay, you silly sausage. I'm a straight man who likes to sleep with men." Lying or deluded?

This is where we come up against the old it-depends-what-you-mean-by problem. Does a word mean something specific, or does it mean what you want it to mean? Dr Johnson or Humpty Dumpty? I always side with the former, because unless a word has a specific meaning, it's valueless as a word. So I say that "Christian" means one thing and does not mean others. It isn't a shoe, or a modern dance, or a kind of warehouse used for storing bales of coloured paper. It isn't Islam, or Buddhism, or the cult of the Space Brothers. So what is it?

Enough people have commented in support of this post that I know my definition isn't mine alone, isn't something I invented. It's what I learned. It's what was taught to me, and obviously not only to me, as being "Christianity." If other people have been taught something different called "Christianity," then okay, they may be deluded, but somewhere down the line someone has lied. Either to me or to them.

In the end, I suppose you pick the definition you find most useful. If you want a Christianity that enables you to be immensely rich and powerful and have millions hanging on your every word, you pick that one. If you want a Christianity that justifies the slaughter of millions of Jews, then you define it that way. If you want a definition of Christianity that you can safely hate, that gives you a nice sense of entitlement and righteousness, there are plenty out there.

And each different definition renders the word more and more meaningless, takes away more and more of its utility, till you have a word that means so many things that it means nothing, a mere collection of noises. Kriss-tee-un. A null concept. If its definition includes fleetfootmike and Cardinal Ratzinger and Fred Phelps and Adolf Hitler and Albert Schweitzer and Dennis Whatsisface who killed Doctor Tiller and Mother Teresa, then it means nothing, it says nothing about them, and it's useless as a way of conveying information about them. I will always fight that kind of devaluation of language wherever I can.

I might suggest that if you were looking for the "right" definition, the one that actually belongs to the word (as one and only one must), you might do worse than ask someone who gets no benefit at all from his definition. Whose definition of "a good Christian" does not include himself. Who finds himself getting into endless arguments over the nature of Christianity, for no good reason that he can even explain to himself, and which he could easily avoid.

But then, I could be deluded, or lying.

[batyatoon]

If its definition includes fleetfootmike and Cardinal Ratzinger and Fred Phelps and Adolf Hitler and Albert Schweitzer and Dennis Whatsisface who killed Doctor Tiller and Mother Teresa, then it means nothing, it says nothing about them, and it's useless as a way of conveying information about them.

Useless as a way of conveying anything about their moral standing, certainly, and as a way of conveying anything about what they believe God wants of people in this world, but why on earth is that what it needs to convey?

Again I feel that possibly the problem is that I didn't grow up in a household or a community where "Christian" meant anything like "virtuous" (or its opposite). Insofar as it had any other connotation, it meant something closer to "alien".

"Christian" to my mind means "person who maintains that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and the son of God". Maybe that's only a sufficient definition for me because of the unspoken rider "...unlike us."

Or maybe not, because I don't have a problem with a definition of "Jewish" that includes me and Rahm Emmanuel and Jeff Goldblum and Meir Kahane and Karl Marx and Mel Brooks and Maimonides and Michael Chabon and Harry Houdini and Menachem Mendel Schneerson. But that could be because "Jewish" has always been an ethnicity as well as a religion.

Finally: in your last paragraph you say that there can be one and only one "right" definition of the word. I can't agree. By way of illustration, I could invite you to look up the word "right" and tell me its sole definition ... but more to the point, countless other people in the world use the word "Christian" to mean many different things, many of them mutually exclusive. If you say the word doesn't mean what they think it means, you're making their use of it valueless. I find the most useful definition to be the one that encompasses as much as possible of the different variations; what my old philosophy professor called "the center of the distortion set."

Speaking as one who likewise gets no benefit from her own definition, and whose definition does not include herself.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

countless other people in the world use the word "Christian" to mean many different things, many of them mutually exclusive. If you say the word doesn't mean what they think it means, you're making their use of it valueless.

If they think it means "someone who has the right to deny women control of their bodies," or "someone who has a duty to club a gay man to death for existing", then their use of it is valueless. If they think it can include such people, then their use of it is markedly devalued, because they don't know, or don't care, what they're talking about.

Your definition of "Christian" is true as far as it goes, and probably covers everyone who calls him- or herself a Christian. But as I said, I don't think that all you have to do to be a policeman is to put on a badge, and maintaining that the police force is wonderful isn't enough either. Nor is going through police training if you then don't do the job, or do it wrongly on purpose. That doesn't make you a bad cop; it makes you a fake cop.

To me the definition of "Christian" has to include some reference to following the teachings of Christ (not Leviticus, not St Paul, not Pope Whichever the Umpty-fourth) and specifically the one about loving God and loving the Other, and that being the most important bit. Other good bits include judging not, forgiving each other and not being a hypocrite. My definition thus excludes a goodly chunk of the people who have brought Christianity into disrepute over the centuries, and I think rightly so. They are fake Christians. They have read the same Bible I have, and ignored the most important bit, the central teaching of Christ himself, because they wanted to. That makes them knowingly fake Christians. And that makes them liars.

There's a dichotomy here between descriptive and prescriptive uses of a definition; yours is adequate in a descriptive sense, because it covers all those people who call themselves "Christians" and makes it easy to lump them all together. Mine is more about what a Christian should be and often is, which may be of no particular usefulness to you, but it does make it easier to tell real and fake Christians apart. And if language is a tool for making distinctions, for separating "this" from "that," then I think my definition is in that context better suited to the purpose.

[batyatoon]

Ah, well, there we are then. I don't care for prescriptive definitions of people. Especially not with regard to religion.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Really? That seems an incredibly sweeping statement to me. Prescriptive definitions of its adherents have always been part of what the religions of the Book are about, from the Ten Commandments (prescriptive definition of a follower of the Mosaic Law) onwards. Every society, every corporation, every organised group of people there's ever been has a set of rules or a charter or a body of law which constitutes a prescriptive definition of what you have to be in order to be a good citizen or employee or member. Unless it's something totally amorphous like fandom.

Prescriptive definitions can of course be good or bad, but at their best they give us something to live up to, some way to make ourselves better than we are. And that central utterance of Jesus, for Christians, is not among the worst.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

The basic problem is that when Christianity took over the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire took over Christianity. And the Empire wasn't big on chucking the book. They liked to do things By The Rules. So the religion warped. Happens when a philosophy tries to swallow a pre-existing culture that's larger than it is.

Remember: you are what you eat. :)