Last week's post on not wanting to be a Christian requires some intellectual honesty.
Truth be told, the way Christians treat people they disapprove of is likely more a function of being human than being Christian. But, something is easier about targeting a group, than it is to reflect more honestly on what all of us are susceptible to. The fact is that many human-beings treat each other poorly, if not in the worst of ways. All kinds of groups are actually created because of the distinctions they are trying to make about themselves, relative to other people. And, once that dynamic gets started, it is very hard to stop. If our current political process isn't an example of such things, I'm not sure what is. We do this not only in religious realms (a basic contradiction in and of itself), but really in most areas of life. Even our leisure time has become defined by what team we are for (and, therefore, what team we are against) — all in the name of fun.
Our needs for belonging, acceptance, and fulfillment end up driving our belief systems, which end up translating to how we think, talk about, and treat those who are not 'one of us'. For all our supposed sophistication, some aspects of basic tribalism are still operating alive and well.
Christians really aren't necessarily any better at many of these things after all. The reality is, they are often more confused than others (or live in a lot more denial). Other people choose different forms of denial. So, at some level, Christian or not, people are often involved in things like denial and disapproval because it really is what people in general tend to do...especially when they are encouraged to do so by the personalities and power-structures that are involved in the human (and Christian) experience. In other words, people who have nothing to do with Christianity do the very same things that Christians do. And, vice-versa, most Christians are simply doing what most human-beings do.
But, shouldn't there be a higher standard...for Christians? Yes, at the very least there can be, and I'll write more about that soon.
In the meantime, I am increasingly aware that Christianity and following Jesus are more often not the same thing. So much of what happens under the banner of Christianity has little to do with what Jesus was about or taught.
It's kind of gotten to the point where someone should be saying, 'Isn't that obvious?', because apparently it isn't.
