A Facebook exchange a few years ago produced a minor epiphany.
I observed that my Facebook friend, a high school classmate at an Evangelical boarding school (who now has expressly apostasized and gone kind of New Agey and knee-jerk Left), was credulous about some leftish things, but that we both were products of the sixties. “We are so much reverse mirror images” I wrote. He replied:
I don’t consider myself to be a Christian, but I do think the philosophy [Jesus] preached is a good one. You know, peace, love and helping your fellow man. Also protest the actions of the money-changers. The Republicans who claim to be Christians have no use for that kind of nonsense. Democrats, at least, are more inclined to think in those terms.
The epiphany was that the phenomenon, which I’ve long noted, of non-Christians, or progressive Christians, trying to shame conservative Christians with cherry-picked Bible passages (“Judge not” is the Progressives’ equivalent of John 3:16) or supposed themes. The exegetical skill displayed in wielding these progressive clobber passages is distinctly inferior to that of the people who, in the obvious counterpart, oppose sodomy with their “clobber passages.”
In the present instance, “peace, love and helping your fellow man” is (to avoid my own proof-texting) at best a debatable summary of Jesus’ “philosophy,” and I distinctly recall that where the money-changers had set up business was crucial to Christ’s decisive action.
It’s odd that the Bible still has such purchase even for those who try to reject it — at least those of my generation, who knew a little about it. I suppose I’m such a malcontent that I’ll complain when kids are too illiterate even to misuse the Bible.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 