Salvation's Yours; To Hell With All the Rest

It shouldn't be surprising that I am interested in the intersection of faith and power, and that I remain convinced that the two should not exist in the same entity.

This article explains why, rather starkly.  I see two ways to understand what's going on in situations like this:

1. Fernandinho Guarabu's Evangelical church is irrelevant to changing evil in the lives of men, or impotent to do so.

2. This form of Evangelicalism is actively toxic -- it creates, fortifies, and legitimizes evil in the lives of men.

I'd really, really like a third possibility.

Of course, we Americans are generally bad at empathy; we fail to see trends or actions in other countries as relevant to anything we might be doing.  With that in mind, consider this episode of Dateline.

Evangelicalism isn't a trivial element of this story.  It's present in every detail -- the way the shooter and his accomplice talk to one another in police recordings, and the fact that the murder was planned during prayer sessions.  (Anyone who's been in an Evangelical "prayer session" knows how that would have gone.  "Dear Lord, we come before you, Lord, to ask, Lord, just, Lord, that you could just give us the strength, Lord, to take someone's life, Lord.")

Again, I'd really like a third possibility here.

Unless we confront this, and root it out, evil done in the name of our faith and using our God as justification will continue.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Catch the Snowflakes, Little Children; Count Them As They Bury You Alive

Stephen Mansfield has some stuff to say about the 81% in an article entitled "After 'Choosing Donald Trump,' Is The Evangelical Church In Crisis?"  And I mostly agree with him.  In the places where I don't, it's usually because I don't think he goes far enough. For example, he says, "They are in crisis.  And I think there's a lot of healing that needs to happen." Yes, but we can't leave it at that.  There's a lot of repentance that needs to happen.  "Healing" can't really take place without it. And that repentance needs to come from various corners, not just the ones that were loudly political and appointed with the movement's money and resolve to speak for all within the tribe.  I don't harbor the illusion that every Evangelical wanted to gain societal influence through political means -- but I do recall a strange silence on the matter as far as most people were concerned.  A good number of them were p
Read more

If They Move Too Quick, They're Falling Down Like a Domino

What we do well when we tell the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50): Remember that even when we think life sucks and is completely unfair, that we don't know the end of the story. What we do poorly when we tell the story of Joseph (Genesis 45-47, Exodus): Remember that it's a cautionary tale about believing your own hype and forgetting your own mortality, and that every villain believes he's doing the right thing (and can even invoke God to prove it). Joseph, after all, conducted the work of Empire.  He sought political solutions to spiritual problems.  By that, I mean that he had an opportunity to be a blessing to people -- to give them dignity and hope, using his political office as a tool -- and instead used it to increase Egypt's social and political sway, using his spiritual folklore as justification.  That, it seems to me, is why God is often referred to in the First Testament as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob", not "the God of Abraham, Isaa
Read more

Big Bangs

Creationists often assert that the only way a story can be true is if it is literally, historically, and scientifically accurate; here's a link to such an assertion .  This requirement for truth means, they claim, that Genesis must be scientifically accurate. I think this assertion makes God out to be much smaller than He is.  Let me see if I can explain by analogy. If your five-year-old kid asks where babies come from, it is entirely possible that your answer will not be literally, historically, or scientifically accurate.  You'll describe sex by analogy ("The mommy and the daddy came together in a special way"), body parts by proximity ("The baby grows inside the mommy's tummy"), and the birthing process according to the barest of details ("The mommy's body tells her that it's time for the baby to be born, so they go to the hospital").  You'll also focus on the parts that it's important for a five-year-old to know: The
Read more