The
Christian Right Would Disagree With Me
If I Told
Them What Was Really In the Bible
by Pastor
Paul J. Bern
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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, Amplified and New Living Translations, 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. The Bible is still the Word of
God. The version we prefer is actually beside the point. But I'm
using this example to illustrate that there are a lot of conservative
right-wingers like that individual 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 wouldn’t support (such as endless wars and
America's prison-industrial complex)? The answer is simple: Not many
conservatives have read the Bible.
Of the
ones who do, an overwhelming number of Christians are astonishingly
illiterate when it comes to understanding the Bible. In fact, over
half of church attendees in mainstream denominational churches don't
even own a 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 social
Gospel viewpoint or the perspective of an equality crusade for
all of humanity (think Rev. Dr. King and the Kennedy brothers teaming
up with the late Billy Graham), 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. Putting
others ahead of ourselves is mandatory in God's kingdom! In so doing,
we become ambassadors for Christ while living our lives in complete
accordance with God's will. Why remain in the darkness when you can
run to the Light?
It’s
surprising how little Christians know of what is still the world's
most popular book. The “Alt-Right” has successfully re-branded
the healing ministry of Jesus Christ – who gave away free
healthcare while teaching wealth redistribution – into a
white-skinned-only, trickle-down, union-busting bunch of
conservatives. So how much do secular Americans know of the Book that
one-third of the country believes believes in unconditionally (like I
do)? Recent surveys that I have 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 2015 Gallup poll showed 60 percent
of Americans can’t name the first book of the Bible, while roughly
86 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: “Now
listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is
coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your
clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will
testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded
wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the
workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries
have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.” (James 5, verses
1-4). What about taxes on the rich, universal healthcare, and food
stamps (“The poor you will always have, but you will not always
have me.” Matt, 26, verse 11)?
It
becomes easy to spread a lie when no one knows what the real truth
is. That's why the Alt-Right has successfully re-branded left-leaning
people who gave away free health care and were pro-redistributing
wealth into white-skinned-only, 'trickle-down', union-busting
conservatives. 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 money changers
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 God's
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 world domination by the American military-industrial
complex.
Knowing
the Bible requires a contextual understanding of authorship, history
and interpretation. For instance, when the Republicans in Congress
were justifying their cuts to the food stamp program – the set of
cuts that was prior to the latest round of cuts this year – 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 the
apostle 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 (the apostle Luke also wrote Acts), and the
balance with the remaining apostles, some of whom had their accounts
of the Gospel removed by the Catholic church sometime between the
third and fifth centuries AD. What we do know about Jesus, at least
according to the remaining gospels, is that Jesus’ sentiments
closely echoed the social and economic policies of the political left
in the 19th and again here in the 21st century. The
Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount read like the vision
statement of a missionary: “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 accused then-president Obama of being a brown-skinned
socialist who wants to redistribute the wealth, they were actually
thinking of Jesus without realizing it. Some of them still haven't
figured it out!
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 of
Fox News infamy claimed 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 Mr. O'Reilly's
atheist utopia.
In the
past three decades, the US government has 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. At least
president Trump is trying to repair some of the damage this has
inflicted on America. I don't agree with some of what he does, and I
didn't support him in the 2016 election either (I cast a protest vote
for Dr. Jill Stein). 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 biblical
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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