They Just Don’t Get It
January 31, 2006 by Laura | Trackback URI
I’ve commented before on the utter failure of the media and the entertainment industry to understand Christians. I have never seen a portrayal of Christians that is consistent with the life I or other Christians I know live. Christians always seem to be hypocrites, bullies, and if not actively malevolent, at least “poor, uneducated and easy to command.”
The media leaps on a deserving Pat Robertson but fails to note similar gaffes and bad behavior on the part of Harry Belafonte and other prominent liberals. Once in a while that predisposition to categorize us in this way leads to outright error, as John at Powerline pointed out today.
I’m no fan of Jerry Falwell, but I had a bit of sympathy for him when he was accused of equipping Liberty University students of “assault” ministry. It turns out that Falwell meant, “a salt ministry” as in being salt and light.
I have no doubt that liberals feel victimized and assaulted when they hear the gospel. It’s in direct opposition to what they preach and few people really enjoy competition.
I am a liberal and an atheist, so I’ll just speak for myself: I feel no such victimization or assault when I hear the gospel. My next-door neighbor is a liberal and she feels no such victimization or assault when she hears the gospel. She’s a devout Catholic. My best friend is a liberal and he feels no such victimization or assault when he hears the gospel. He’s a Unitarian.
I DO feel that my liberty is assaulted (victimized is an inappropriate word for how I feel) when Christians attempt to mandate the teaching of the gospel or mandate the imposition of their particular denomination’s moral standards. That happens a fair bit.
I fully support any Christian’s right to express herself or himself. I don’t support attempts by institutions of Christianity to impose their beliefs on others.
Like all generalizations, including the ones that stereotype Christians, my generalization of liberals is not true for all liberals. It was a cheap tactic intended to make a larger point, that many liberals, in my opinion the majority of liberals that I know personally and that I have seen in the media and entertainment industries, are hostile to Christianity above all other faiths.
One thing we agree on completely - Christianity cannot be mandated, and Christians are wrong to try to mandate it. People need to be free to reject the gospel just as we are free to preach it.
As for mandating the moral standards of a particular denomination; laws DO mandate moral standards… that’s what they are for. If you are referring to Christian political activism, the effort to shape laws that reflect Christianity, I honestly don’t see a problem. Every group in the country pushes to get their agenda implemented, that process is what makes America great. Take abortion for example. The vast majority of Christians think it is morally wrong because it causes the death of a baby. So whatever legal means they use to try to and stop it are fair play, fully consistent with American values. Or to take the flip side of that argument; most liberals are in favor of the right to choose to abort. They either don’t see it as a real baby, or think that even if it is a real baby, the mother’s rights are paramount. At the moment their moral standards have been imposed on us by a Supreme Court decision, but if the current Supremes kick it back to the states, we will debate it and some states will favor the baby while others favor the mother’s choice - but each decision represents the imposition of one group’s standards over the other’s standards.
This process doesn’t happen “a fair bit”, it happens every moment of every day. If you sometimes come out on the losing side, do keep in mind that every time you don’t represents someone else’s loss.
Thanks for writing back, Laura. I like the way you write; it’s very thoughtful and thought-provoking.
I guess what I most strongly meant by imposition of beliefs was the attempt to use laws to mandate religion, such as the current efforts to amend the constitution to mandate that government recognize the existence of a Judeo-Christian god, or to use taxpayer funds to fund the proselytization of religion, which Bush is pushing and which has the potential to harm religious institutions as much as it bugs the baloney out of those of us who would rather be left alone. I consider this sort of imposition to be unconstitutional for a very good reason; look to the Islamic world (and to the Spanish Inquisition) for examples of what happens when you get government captured by one set of religious standards.
On your example, abortion, there’s a difference between your two examples. On the one side is a group that considers mandating how others will behave to be inappropriate. On the other side is a group that considers permitting people to choose how to behave to be inappropriate. When there’s choice, I don’t see how that imposes a mandate for behavior on anyone.
I see it as analagous to the Islamic cartoon debacle: where do they think they get the right to demand that everybody obey Islamic law when it comes to free expression? It’s not only nutty, it’s dangerous if we let it happen, because who knows what nuttier, more restrictive demand will come down the pike next? Similarly, why is it appropriate that some people who have decided that everybody should have to obey Christian law (and not even Christian law, but really just the law of certain sectors of Christianity) when it comes to the exercise of a woman’s control over her body?
Taking the other side for a moment and rereading your comment, I can imaging that the objection would be: but it’s not just the woman who is involved. It’s also a baby. I’d respond that whenever anybody proposes controlling another person, especially in their bodily autonomy, they’d better not only have a reason, but a darned good, solidly backed up, logical, rational, verifiable reason. A Biblical injunction doesn’t cut it for me for the same reason that a Quranic injunction doesn’t cut the mustard on cartoons: because it’s faith-based rather than reason-based, and a significant number of us in this nation aren’t Christians and so don’t believe the Bible is a holy book. So without some compelling non-religious evidence about the “babyhood” of the aborted blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses under consideration here, the imposition of abortion fiats on other people is inappropriate. The anti-abortion movement has made a reasonably compelling case when it comes to fetuses after the first trimester. When it comes to first-trimester fetuses, and especially early embryos and blastocysts (which are just balls of undifferentiated cells), I find the case to be less than stellar, and until that case has been made I won’t be sympathetic to attempts to constrain women’s liberty.
I’m not aware of the effort to amend the constitution you mentioned, but it certainly sounds like something I’d be against. (Can you tell me the name or where to look it up? Even before Katrina I was so preoccupied with work that I let politics slide; after Katrina things have been a MESS.
Most of my politics these days are local.) The “faith-based initiatives” I’m definitely against; half the reason the country is in such a mess today is that churches stepped back from the social welfare work they used to handle and the government took it over; I’m not sure in what order that occurred or the cause, but the results are the same. If churches did their job, the government would not have to and I think both liberals and conservatives would be pleased with the results. As an aside, that does not need to include proselytizing; the biblical model is to help people first without regard to their status. (Jesus healed, fed, etc. people who were not his followers and some did not become his followers afterward.)
As for abortion; you’re right, that would be my objection. One example of why I call it a baby and not any term that diminishes it’s human-ness: the heartbeat is detectable at 17 days, long before many women even know they are pregnant. Early ultrasound readings, especially 3d ultrasounds, are also very persuasive to women who are making the decision to abort or not. So far, increased technology tends to support the pro-life position and I think that trend will continue.
As a practical matter, I consider it a very special type of murder that is impractical to try to prevent by law, although I understand why others do work to change the laws in this area. My personal opinion - and I know this is opposed to most Christians - is that persuasion and alternatives are the way to stop abortion. Changing the law will decrease the number of abortions; changing people’s hearts will eliminate it. The way to change people’s hearts is to give them information, and to provide them with better alternatives.