Do you find it jarring that so many "Christians" can fervently support American-led wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, destroyed that age-old culture's social fabric far beyond what Saddam Hussein had done, and displaced an estimated 2-3 million Iraqis, bankrupting the United States in the process? How do these "Christians" do things that the man they claim to emulate would never do?
Were you expecting at least one or two of their number to acknowledge a few of these contradictions?
You're not alone.
Welcome to Planet Random, where Christians have been displaced by "Christians", where political and social prejudices masquerade as divine revelation. Here the cognitive tensions the rest of us feel cannot be resolved by matching behavior with the original teachings of Christianity. Anyone who has attempted to reason with "Christians" knows that discrepancies are revered as indictments of "liberalism" or "secular humanism" or some other Other.
We've all watched those who exult in irrationality slough off the discredit they bring on themselves, as though it were a minor point. They drive many who were raised Christian to disillusionment. They ultimately leave the faith and seek consistency in less violent religions or in secularism: Buddhism, paganism, New Age pantheism or, not incomprehensibly, atheism.
It's as though the Christians of the Hypocrisy feared that their opponents and detractors would fade from view if they did not keep them stirred up. If the ardor of hedonists, infidels, and evil-doing atheists is not boosted continually by "Christian" apologists and self-appointed oracles, against whom will evangelicals array themselves? What will become of their raison d'être?
Explicit explanations are hard to come by. Fortunately, illustrations are not. There are a plethora of sites that expose implicit "Christian" rationales. They are marvels of temporizing ingenuity.
Below are a few to get you started. Their blogrolls will take you ever deeper into the feudal Christian mentality that ignores the actual sufferings of those of their countrymen who are without health care insurance, incomes, or options other than bankruptcy in the wake of two terms of the ruinous "Christian" icon of Shock & Awe whom they put into the White House — twice.
See how many internal contradictions you can find with even a cursory reading and a passing knowledge of Christian principles and doctrines. Be the first on your block to hit triple digits in under an hour.
- Why Faith? (it's the Why Hypocrisy? that doesn't get answered)
- Christian Apologetics: Life & Doctrine (How many of us debate whether the Sun exists? If there were doubts about the Sun, they could resolved by objective measurement. Not so, apparently, with Christianity.)
- Does God Exist? The Biola Christian Apologetics Program (still more Christian apologetics, the omnipresence of which contradicts ipso facto the very premise they try to demonstrate)
- Eye of Polyphemus: Why I am a Christian — What I believe
(A typical example of a tiresome, self-obsessed neo-Christian genre. Why should anyone care what this born-again blogger believes, other than for the sheer entertainment value of seeing yet another "Christian" make a mockery of Jesus's teachings?)
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