Anthony De Leo, a Jesuit priest who spent most of his life in India training other Jesuit priests how to be effective pastors, would typically start his opening remarks to a new group with something like this: “ You are the best of the best. You’ve been trained in the Old and New Testaments and are walking concordances. You understand church tradition, administration, conflict resolution and everything else necessary to effectively lead your flocks. You can’t wait to get up in the pulpit and tell your congregation all about God. And you miss the point. The man in the pews does not want to hear about God, he wants to know if you have ever had an experience of God and how he can too.“
Those who understand that being a Christian is a lifestyle, not a set of unthinking beliefs, have had that experience of God. The Bible becomes a compelling story of the interaction of the divine with humankind, but it’s not to be taken literally. You used the example of killing homosexuals. How about the instructions to Joshua to kill every man woman and child in Jericho? No one would ever think that is an acceptable thing to do today. Christianity is most powerful when it is attractive. When someone looks at you and says I want to know more about your faith. There is something about you. Whatever it is you have I want. They see the love and the peace and the joy. This is the mark of a true Christian, not people holding up a book written by fallible men in a different culture in a different ignorant time and projecting a sense of superior moral certitude, trying to create shame and fear in the hearts of their listeners. The Bible is not an infallible supreme instruction manual for all of humankind. There is a lot in it that is inaccurate and bigoted. Its power lies in the attempt by its various authors to explain the world, their personal experiences, the universe, the meaning of life and the way the divine interacts with the here and now. It is a series of stories which read as a whole provide insight and comfort and inspiration to billions.
I find it interesting that in discussions with fundamentalist Bible thumping Christians, when they start losing their arguments, they always conclude with something like God spoke it, man wrote it, I believe it and that’s the end of the argument. No wonder so many people in modern society view Christians as intolerant hateful bigots wanting to control their lives. A little bit of love, understanding, respect and forgiveness would go a long way towards repairing the image of Christianity for the majority of Americans. But to be loving and forgiving requires being in contact with the mind of God and seeing the world through his eyes, not through some arbitrary defective anthropomorphic human lens.
A very dear friend of mine, now deceased, was trained as a Catholic priest but never worked in a parish. He dedicated his life to the imprisoned and those who were sick and dying, especially AIDS patients. In prison, inmates would often ask him to resolve theological disagreements. He would smile and quietly listen to their heated discussion and then hand them his business card. He would say, “I have summarized the Bible on my business card. It is 99.9% of what you need to know. Get that part right and we can discuss the incidental details.” What were the words? “Love. No buts…“ Invariably one or both would protest with something like, “but he is wrong.“ To which my friend would reply, “What part of ‘no buts’ do you not understand?“. This exchange would often go on for several minutes until a lightbulb went off in the minds of the listeners and they would quietly slip away to consider what he had shared.
“Love. No buts…“ If only the Christian church could get this one little thing right at least some of the time. Its image and authority would be transformed overnight. That is the true message that God has been trying to teach us through the millennia.
