God, Please Forgive the Religious Right
I have felt the Religious Right in American politics has been wrong for a long time, but I have never been able to fully articulate why. It is the middle of the night on January 11, 2006, and I had the strangest dream about my pastor Greg, and somehow, the thoughts have come together and I am typing as fast as I can to get them down. I hope it works.
Whether it comes to abortion, stem cell research, gays, or creationism in schools, the religious right consistently weights in on these issues from a legal, and legislative perspective. They may be scriptially correct, with their hands on their Bible, but whether they know it tor not, hey are doing Christianity much more harm than good.
Each and every one of these issues without exception are deeply divisive issues in our country. Let’s just take one as an example since my argument is the same for each of them. I’ll pick abortion. First off, let me say that I am quite religious, and I personally believe that abortion is killing a live baby, and it is wrong. Although it says it in the bible, I don’t need the bible to tell me that this activity is wrong. If I had children, or someone asked me for advice on this subject, there are few circumstances in which I can envision that I would counsel for abortion. I am opposed to abortion.
Being a male, I will never have the opportunity to experience an abortion, but I would imagine after a woman has an abortion, there is a lot of natural guilt involved. If someone came to me after they had recently abortion, I would not choose to lecture them on scripture and abortion. I would tell them that God loves them and He is a forgiving God.
Here’s my revelation. God has two faces. First and foremost, God is a forgiving God, that is just waiting to forgive our sins in exchange for eternal salvation. This is the Good News of the Christian relgion – The Redemptive Power of Jesus Chirst. Secondly, Jesus was perfection personified. We all fall short of this unattainable glory, and at times, God can be quite judgemental in the manners in which we fall short of his glory.
What the Christian Right has wrong (pun intended) is that our job as Believers is to help other’s find salvation. This should be our #1 goal, and any other goal is entirely secondary to this first goal. The Christian Right is neglecting this goal, in favor of other goals, and in fact, I would argue they are doing a lot of harm to goal #1. To the unchurched, the Christian Right are painting God as a judgemental God, and that sinners in some bizarre way are unworthy of God’s love.
The way to bring more people into the kingdom is by helping the unchurched see God’s forgiving face. Once people see and feel the redemptive power of God’s forgiveness, all the rest happens naturally. But the Christian Right spends all of its time showing God’s judgemental face, by choosing (creating?) divisive issues and disharmony in our country in the name of God. Of course this is wrong, God almost by definition is a uniting force not a dividing one. God wants everyone of His children to feel his forgiveness, and to know that he is a forgiving God.
For all of these reasons and more, I reject the political posturing of the Christian Right, and I ask God to forgive them because they have really lost their way on to what they are trying to accomplish and what God’s purpose is. God in heaven, please forgive the Christian Right. And do it fast.
I would call it discernment, to each thing there is a season. We, as Christian must discern the season someone is in and meet the the immediate need with the love of God that passes ALL understanding. Only then can we present the source of our love. Its like beating someone on the head with a baseball bat and at the same time telling them God loves you. If we meet the human need, the their curiosity will be spark as to why them!
You should listen to the Whitehorse Inn.
http://www.whitehorseinn.org.
And http://www.KFUO.org. In both cases, they agree with you, as I do. The religious right has long since lost sight of the gospel due to their long tradition of “social gospel”, which can be traced back to Thomas A. Kempis’ famous line, “preach the gospel, use words if necessary”.
Ugh. =(
Go to the websites, download the programs and find people who believe just as you do. Not all Christians are in “the religious righ”.
Organized religion is the root of all evil. What passes for religion is so far removed from the original teachings of Jesus, Mohummed, and all the other true prophets. God did not decide what to put into the bible, men with an agenda did in the 6th century. Look at the gospels that were included, the earliest of which was written 40 years after the events. Where are the documents of events as they occurred? The disciples were not stupid people. They recognised early on the importance of what they were witnessing. The men with an agenda needed to scare uneducated peasants into Christianity and they used the hocus pocus of divinity to get the job done. It appears that hocus pocus is so deeply woven into the fabric of society that people are still afraid to question “organized religion”. Notice I did not write “faith” which is separate from religion. Freedom of religion leaves us free to have faith.