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elfsThere are few things that make me more furious than the idea that one group of people "owns" virtue. So I sorta Hulked out on the radio this morning when the director of the movie "October Baby," about a woman who goes on a road trip to discover the woman who "courageously refused abortion and sadly gave her up for adoption," said of his movie:
The Greeks discovered honor and virtue and sacrifice without you. So did the Chinese. So did American Natives, and the Hindus, and the Romans, and the Nordic peoples, and the early Japanese.
This, more than anything else, is what repulses me about modern American Christianity: a claim on the last word in goodness. That to be a good person, to have virtue and honor one must buy into all the bullshit about talking snakes, burning bushes, and a god who loves you so much he'll cast you into a pit, and if you defy him:
"I think that the values that we hold dear as Christians are immensely appealing — things like sacrifice and virtue and honor and destiny and things like that. ... I think when they're presented correctly, they're appealing to everybody."Here's a secret, Christian America: the culture wars will stop when you stop claiming you own all of the good human values for yourself, and anyone who doesn't buy into your tribal beliefs cannot possibly be a good human being.
The Greeks discovered honor and virtue and sacrifice without you. So did the Chinese. So did American Natives, and the Hindus, and the Romans, and the Nordic peoples, and the early Japanese.
This, more than anything else, is what repulses me about modern American Christianity: a claim on the last word in goodness. That to be a good person, to have virtue and honor one must buy into all the bullshit about talking snakes, burning bushes, and a god who loves you so much he'll cast you into a pit, and if you defy him:
The riders not thrown leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted, and their tongues disintegrated. Tthe soldiers stood briefly as skeletons in now-baggy uniforms, then dropped in heaps of bones as the blinded horses continued to fume and rant and rave. Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they too rattled to the pavement. [Tim LaHaye, Left Behind: Glorious Appearing, p 273]Claiming to own honor and virtue is a claim to special privelege, one American Christianity has consistently failed to demonstrate it deserves.
