The
Christian Right Would Disagree With Me
If
I Told Them What Was Really In the Bible
by
Rev. Paul J. Bern
I
met someone not too long ago who insisted that the King James Bible
is the only legitimate version available. As far as he was concerned,
all other versions currently in print, including my New International
version Bible, were “not from God”. I don't care to elaborate on
this much except to say that I don't agree with that at all. But I'm
using this example to make the point that there are a lot of
conservative right-wingers like that guy who have some views about
the Bible and Christianity that are totally contrary to the
Scriptures. If indeed these people's beliefs are inconsistent with
Scripture, then the question becomes why do religious extremists on
the right (and Christianity has them just like the Muslims do) get
away with proclaiming what Jesus would or wouldn’t support (such as
endless wars)? The answer is simple: Conservatives have not read the
Bible. Of the ones who do, an overwhelming number of Christians are
astonishingly illiterate when it comes to understanding the Bible. On
hot-button social issues, from same-sex marriage to abortion,
Biblical passages are invoked without any real understanding of the
context or true meaning. What America needs is Christianity without
the dogma, and faith without the spiritual pollution of conservative
politics. Nondenominational Christianity with the commandments of
Jesus Christ being first and foremost, viewed from a liberal or
leftist perspective, would be far closer to what Jesus originally
taught than the ultra-conservative slant being espoused all over the
right-wing media today. That's why it's vital as we live in these
last days to help the helpless whenever possible. In so doing, we
become ambassadors for Christ while living our lives in complete
accordance with God's will.
It’s
surprising how little Christians know of what is still the world's
most popular book. The Right has successfully rebranded liberals who
gave away free healthcare and were pro-redistributing wealth into a
white-skinned-only, trickledown, union-busting conservative. So how
much do secular Americans know of the book that one-third of the
country believes to be literally true (like I do)? Surveys that I
pulled up on the Internet show that 60 percent of Christians can’t
name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults
think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50 percent of high
school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A 2013
Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first book
of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who
help themselves” is a biblical verse. So, if Americans get an F in
the basic fundamentals of the Bible, what hope do they have in
knowing what Jesus would say about labor unions, taxes on the rich,
universal healthcare, and food stamps? It becomes easy to spread a
lie when no one knows what the truth is. That's why the Right has
successfully rebranded liberals who gave away free healthcare and
were pro-redistributing wealth into a white-skinned-only,
trickledown, union-busting conservative. The truth, whether
conservatives like it or not, is not only that Jesus was a meek and
mild liberal Jew who spoke softly in parables and metaphors –
except when He threw the moneychangers out of the Temple in Matthew
21, verses 12-13 – but when one reads down a couple more chapters
in any of the 4 Gospels, it was the religious conservatives who had
Jesus killed. The fact that He rose again on the third day tells me
everything I need to know about Jesus' view of conservatives.
American conservatives, however, have morphed Jesus into a muscular
masculine warrior, in much the same way the Nazis did, as a means of
combating “terrorism”, which has become a synonym for American
world domination.
Knowing
the Bible requires a contextual understanding of authorship, history
and interpretation. For instance, when Republicans were justifying
their cuts to the food stamp program back in 2013, they quoted the
2nd book of Thessalonians: “Anyone unwilling to work
should not eat.” One poll showed that more than 90 percent of
Christians believe this New Testament quote is attributed to Jesus.
It’s not! This was taken from a letter written by Paul to his
church in Thessalonica. Paul wrote to this specific congregation to
remind them that there were too many people in the congregation that
were freeloading off that church. Only a few were doing all the work
and making the majority of the financial contributions, and everybody
else was just hanging around for the free food. What Paul did say is
that anyone too lazy to work shouldn't expect anything at dinner
time, and that's just common sense.
What
often comes as a surprise to your average Sunday wine-and-cracker
Christian is the New Testament did not fall from the sky the day
Jesus ascended to Heaven. The New Testament is a collection of
writings, 27 in total, of which 12 are credited to the authorship of
Paul, four to the Gospels (Luke also wrote Acts), and the balance
with the remaining apostles. What we do know about Jesus, at least
according to the respective gospels, is that Jesus’ sentiments
closely echoed the social and economic policies of the political left
in the 21st century. The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the
Mount read like the mission statement of the ACLU: “Blessed are the
poor, for theirs is kingdom of heaven,” “Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth,” and “Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they will be called 'Sons of the living God'.”
Jesus also said, “Judge not, or else you shall be judged, for you
who pass judgment do the same things yourselves”, and “Sell what
you have and give it to the poor” (I'm paraphrasing here). Sounds
an awful lot like wealth redistribution to me, a societal woe that
urgently needs to be addressed if ever there was one. So, when
Republicans accuse Obama of being a brown-skinned socialist who wants
to redistribute the wealth, they’re thinking of Jesus.
Biblical
illiteracy is what has allowed the Republican Party to get away with
shaping Jesus into their image. That's why politicians on the right
can get away with saying 'the Lord commands' that our healthcare,
prisons, schools, retirement, transport, and all the rest should be
run by corporations for profit. When the Christian Right believes
it’s channeling Jesus when they say it’s immoral for government
to tax billionaires to help pay for healthcare, education and the
poor, they’re actually channeling atheism. When Bill O’Reilly
claims the poor are immoral and lazy, that’s not Jesus, it’s
atheism! The price this country has paid for biblical illiteracy is
measured by how far we’ve moved toward atheism’s “utopia”. In
the past three decades, we’ve slashed taxes on corporations and the
wealthy, destroyed labor unions, deregulated financial markets,
eroded public safety nets, and committed to one globalist corporate
free-trade agreement after another. With the far-right,
Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court ruling in favor of
the Koch brothers' Citizens United, the flow of billions of dollars
from anonymous donors to the most reliable voting bloc of the
Republican Party—the Christian Right—will continue to perpetuate
the biblically incompatible, anti-government,
pro-deregulation-of-business, anti-healthcare-for-all, Tea Party
American version of Christianity, and I for one have had more than
enough.
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