The Christian Paradox (1)

The following is going to be a multi-part post because of an article I read recently that has given me some thought and I wanted to address various aspects of that article.

I read an article a little while ago on www.harpers.org. It was titled: “The Christian Paradox”. It is originally from a guy named Bill McKibben who wrote this back in August 2005.

From the onset, he points out some interesting stats about Americans.

• Only 40% can name more than four of the Ten Commandments.
• 50% can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels.
• 12% believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

But the scary stat is:

• 75% believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves”.

As McKibben points out, three out of four Americans believe this über-American idea. A notion that is at the core of the current American politics and culture. The sad fact, this was uttered by Ben Franklin and it not in the Scriptures.

Actually, what those 3 out of 4 American believe is completely counter to the Bible. One of the most radical summons in the Bible is to love thy neighbour as thyself. And that meant everyone, even those you despise.

McKibben writes that asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. Yet there are so many Americans that take pride in that the States is a Christian nation. Many of these Christians go to church to learn lessons. And then these Christians make real decisions based on these lessons.

And more and more, these lessons inform their politics, McKibben points out. He says that one poll found that 11% of the American churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in 2004 which is up from 6% in 2000.

And lest we forget that moment when George W. Bush said that Jesus Christ was his favourite philosopher. And ten to one he was being sincere yet he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of a large group of Americans. Americans who don’t seem to know their own religion.

And here is the paradox that McKibben is pointing out: America is the most professed Christian of the developed nations yet the least Christian in its behaviour. As McKibben states that this paradox:

lluminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

At the time McKibben wrote the article, America could be seen as one of the most spiritually homogenous rich nations of the world. Overall 85% of Americans called themselves Christians. Even though only 33% of Americans say they try to get to church, 75% say they actually pray to God on a daily basis. The Christian identity is saturated in America.

For me, what is interesting about what McKibben is saying is also reflected here in Canada. What is it to be a Christian? And as he says:

This is not a matter of angels dancing on the heads of pins.

With my journeys over the past while, I have been exploring Christianity. I have read through the whole Bible and am rereading it now. All too often I was shocked at what I read with respect to what I am seeing Christians doing around me.

All too often, Christ was very specific about what he had in mind for his followers. In Mark 12, Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment. He answers:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength [Mark 12:30 (NIV)]

Then he goes on the second is:

The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. There is no commandment greater than these. [Mark 12:31 (NIV)]

And in the days leading up to his crucifixion, he summed up all of this by saying there was a simple way to tell the righteous from the damned. Those who would feed the hungry, slake the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger and visited the prisoner were righteous. But do we see this today?

McKibben brings up a damning point that in 2004, as a share of their economy, American ranked second to last, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Italy was last. He says that Americans provide 15 cents a day in official development aid to poor countries.

But he doesn’t stop there. It isn’t because Americans are giving to private charities for relief work. That funding only adds 6 cents to the total.

Of course, there will be some Americans that will jump on this and say that the focus should be domestic rather than foreign. We need to take care of our own. Yet that is farther from the truth.

McKibben says Americans aren’t too busy taking care of their own. He brings up some points focused on children. This is important because the most important measure of caring is how the children are treated, and the America is failing miserably.

Nearly 18% of American children live in poverty whereas it is only 8% in Sweden. When it comes to aspects like childhood nutrition, infant mortality and access to preschool, they come in nearly last among the rich nations and often by a wide margin.

For McKibben the issue is it is not that it is the American nation that trails badly in these categories but it is the overwhelming Christian American nation that is trailing badly.

The final point on this subject is to show things aren’t getting better. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in 2004 that the number of households that were “food insecure with hunger” had climbed more than 26% between 1999 and 2003.

Within my limited scope of the things, be it here or in the States, there are churches that are out there helping the best they can. The church I occasion (VCC) had a block party just before school started so some kids could get backpack and school supplies. VCC also has a soup kitchen. And the same is for churches around the States.

Yet we have people like Dubya and others profess the Christian aspect of America but the overall the country does not “act” Christian when it comes to charity and loving their neighbour.

The critical point (again) is the idea of “loving your neighbour”. After Jesus say the two commandments, a little while later he adds: “and to love your neighbour as yourself”. Every time this comes up, he refers to neighbour, not friend or family. And specifically he says:

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you [Matt 5:44 (NIV)]

Neighbours are not just those you like or love. It is everyone around you. Thing is, this is not an easy commandment to follow for any human being, let alone Americans.

But if you are going to profess to be a nation that follows Christian values, ah shouldn’t you be following these values? More and more, with the polarization of politics in the States, from me on the outside, I am seeing more and more non-Christian values being espoused. But I’ll get into that in the next post.

The last point of this before I close is McKibben rightly points out that as a Christian nation, America tends to make personal, as opposed to political, choices that the Bible would seem to frown upon.

Despite the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill”, America is the most violent rich nation on the planet with a murder rate four to five times that of Canada or Europe. America’s prison population is a factor of six to seven compared to other rich nations.

Then McKibben brings up a point I found a little weak but needs to be addressed. Jesus had strong declarations against divorce. Yet American marriages break up at a rate of just over half. Whereas in the European Union, the average is about 40%. He does bring up the fact that many Europeans marry less frequently so the average can be held down. But he points out, the godless Dutch have a divorce rate of only 37%.

There are tons of other areas that can be pointed to where Americans fail with respect to the messages in the Bible. But why is this so? How can America stand up and define itself as a Christian nation yet fail so badly. I’ll turn to that in the next post.