I recently heard a well-meaning pastor proclaim this ‘truth’ in a sermon which brought up two initial questions: Is it true? Is it helpful? In my deconstruction process, there is an extreme temptation to just walk away and save myself from all the toxicity of the evangelical world. Trouble is, I believe there is still such a thing as truth and a God to whom I am accountable for trying to help other human beings. (The eternal question is how best to do that.) The bondage to which the evangelical is bound is insidious and mostly unseen. The culture, the language we use is so deep and ingrained that most evangelicals do not see the trap within an engineered view of reality designed to satisfy our desires for comfort and connection. All we must do is feed the machine in exchange for that comfort. For most, the outside world is too painful and scary to risk asking dangerous questions. Our ‘leadership,’ in large part, promotes resentment, stories of Christian persecution against furtive lies of inherent superiority, and fear of the ‘others’ keep us in our proper place in the hierarchy. I cite as evidence sociological studies (The Flag and the Cross, cited below, is recent source of data) which graph our various beliefs. Most evangelicals honestly believe they are being picked on in this country. What is closer to reality is that the evangelical leadership preys upon their flocks. As has been repeated in history time and again, if we believe there is someone under us socially, we’ll stay in line. If hierarchal order is maintained, we are happy. Statements like ‘Without Christ…’ comforts Christians and support their sense of superiority who are persecuted for being such. This is not helpful to the commission.
‘But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves.’ James 1:22
There are innumerable combinations of The Word. These variations promise ‘freedom’ in exchange for submission, and the precepts of the faction are fearfully defended as being utterly clear (despite our natural angst) to those loyal to that faction. Righteousness thus equals loyalty to your own faction and its precepts. The question which arises in my mind amid all the conflict and contradiction between all the things men say God wants, all claiming they are ‘biblical,’ is ‘is it really God’s will that we all be broke up into factions?’ Is this the way to save the ‘lost’ by demanding they become like us so that God’s wrath be stayed against them? The pastor’s statement creates factions—us and them.
There is no verse in the Bible which directly states, ‘without Christ, our hearts are desperately wicked.’ The pastor is extrapolating this from various passages concerning wicked hearts and deliverance from evil being made possible through Christ. Sounds fair enough, right? The faithful who’ve heard this kind of teaching time after time most of the time don’t think much into it. Except that in its utter simplicity, its ‘clearness’ as that asshat Tim would put it, such a statement, if one think deeper on the implications, provides the words to cast a comforting illusion—that those who ‘have Christ’ are intrinsically moral and thus ought to be calling the shots for everyone else since ‘the others’ are intrinsically wicked. This is what the voting patterns, the flow of money, and activism show. ‘Righteous’ laws, that is, laws based upon common perceptions of what is ‘biblical’ are arising all over the country. It is very clear that our Constitution has no basis in biblical law (see Seidel, Andrew L. The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American) yet Christians, who believe they are the ones being persecuted, are using their hard-won political power to enact and enforce religiously based laws upon everyone despite what their religious beliefs may be. (Freedom for me but not for thee.) This is tyranny which gravely hurts (and even kills) people. This encroachment upon freedom alienates and pisses people off. There is nothing patriotic about Christian Nationalism.
The illusions of moral superiority are comforting and useful but there are a whole host of consequences which arise out of casting these spells. I’m going to write here about some of these consequences which are embedded in our history. The Bible does talk about creating illusions to comfort ourselves (Isaiah 30: 9-11; 2 Timothy 4:3.) As I’m going to argue, casting illusions often leads to obvious evil. Let’s go back in time to list just a few examples out of thousands (which the Christian cabal is doing their best to scrub out of the public mind though force of law and intimidation. Nothing new.)
Good ‘ole John Calvin (I’ve read his Institutes,) once he established his little holy dictatorship in Geneva burned Michael Servetus to death for heresy. (Yeah, there was a ‘governing council’ but it is clear who was calling the shots.) Beware of letting even ‘the righteous’ centralize power—they’ll kill you in the name of God. Later, in the good ‘ole Puritan days, some years before the Mathers were dispensing blatantly racist ‘wisdom’ and ‘visions’ were admissible as evidence in court at the witch trials, Captain John Underhill organized a genocide against the Pequot people in 1637. The violence was vicious and indiscriminate. The totality of the destruction was justified by Underhill who said, “sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents […] We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.”
Wise, Steven M. (2009). An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River. UK: Hachette. p. 33. ISBN9780786745395.
After all, Joshua had been oft given the mandate to kill everything in the way of the ‘chosen’ people. The Puritans thought of themselves as chosen. This manner of thought, that Christ was with the righteous ‘chosen,’ as passed down from generation to generation, fed a generalized belief in white supremacy as Christianity was the dominate religion of the whites. (Some theological wrangling had to be figured when both natives and black slaves started to convert.) The affirmation that all hearts are wicked without Christ can be seen as a blank check to justify many things including white rule over ‘the wicked.’ And it often was. This common mindset, along with a host of crimes committed against human beings, led to the white Christian nationalism we have today. As Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L Perry puts it,
“White Christian nationalism designates who is ‘worthy’ of the freedom it cherishes, namely, ‘people like us.’ But for the ‘others’ outside that group, white Christian nationalism grants whites in authority the ‘freedom’ to control such populations, to maintain a certain kind of social order that privileges ‘good people like us’ through violence if necessary.”
Gorski, Philip S. and Perry, Samuel L. (2022). The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. P. 96
But not all ‘Christians,’ either then or today agree with the imperative that the (self-assigned) righteous ought to rule over those the righteous have labeled as ‘wicked.’ People can make ‘biblical’ arguments that God endorses slavery, or abolition, or equality, or patriarchy; that God loves all (Romans 2:11, Acts 10:34, Galatians 3:28, Ephesians 6:9) impartially, or in Jonathan Edward’s view that an angry God is holding the sinner (who, according to the TULIP doctrine, has no real choice in the matter) as a ‘loathsome spider over the flames.’ It seems that even back in the Puritan days, there were Christians who did differ (as I do) with the blanket statement that ‘without Christ, the heart is desperately wicked’ and were forced out of the righteous community for holding disparate beliefs concerning freedom of conscience (and by extension, the full humanity of all.) I’ll list an example…
Roger Williams (1603-1683) was once part of the Puritan community who was exiled (thankfully Calvin wasn’t in charge) for sedition and heresy to later found the First Baptist Church in Rhode Island. Gorski and Perry summarize the essential differences thusly,
“William’s views differed from Mather’s in at least three key respects: First, he drew a sharp line between Christianity and morality: the one did not imply the other. In his observation, the morality of the natives was often superior to that of the Puritans. Second, he drew a sharp line between religious and civil authority, much sharper even than the Puritans, not because he worried about the church corrupting the state but rather the reverse. Third, because he believed that freedom of conscience was absolute, and that it implied freedom of expression. He rejected the collective authority of the Puritan clergy and, even more, their efforts to silence dissent. In sum, Williams believed that people of the most varied backgrounds could still form a civil society together, so long as they separated religion and morality and church and state and did not force anyone’s conscience or silence anyone’s speech. This he called ‘meer civility.’ Sadly, the path of ‘meer civility’ was the road less traveled in William’s day. Killing and converting would become the dominant poles of ‘Indian policy’ in the centuries that followed.”
Gorski, Philip S. and Perry, Samuel L. (2022). The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. P. 52
Although there were exceptions, our collective ethic justified actions which led to the mass acceptance of theft, lies, murder, enslavement, terror campaigns (lynching,) racist laws, incarceration, economic policies, and cultural exclusion in order to keep those not deemed as ‘one of us’ in their place. This continues to this day. We seem to be completely comfortable with forcing people’s consciences through the force of law—for the greater good. We are completely comfortable silencing people’s speech as we continue to enact laws to silence those we regard as being unrighteous. ‘Don’t say gay.’ Our anger and fear of the ‘others’ is constantly being reinforced. Just turn on FoxNews and the chances are good that the captions flashing across the bottom of the screen will say ‘Crisis at the Border!’ (I don’t intentionally watch FoxNews but it’s constantly blaring at the gym.) Tucker Carlson regularly vomits lies about ‘Great Replacement’ theory. (That bunch is just chasing money—fostering fear and anger brings in tons of it.) The whole system is infused with Q fueled lies and insanity, all worshiping at the altar of Trump.
With the victory of Trump, Republicans, to whom conservative Christians remain fiercely loyal as the force which will return America to God, do not even have to be that furtive in their racism and xenophobia anymore. (Articles in this blog have listed numerous examples.) Any government money that doesn’t flow to them (or their heroes) is ‘socialism.’ The latest involves student loan forgiveness. Numerous Republican talking heads are screaming about this when many of them have enjoyed PPP loan forgiveness in amounts far larger than what Biden is offering. The dirty truth is that Biden’s loan forgiveness does not forgive the ‘right’ people. This is right up there with too many of the ‘wrong’ (since outright, direct exclusion was no longer openly acceptable) people were getting a subsidized college education, so the Christian Right through Ronald Reagan started making college a whole lot more expensive (30% increase in one year!) Of course, the result of increasing prices, poorer people were going to have to take out loans to go to college. But through the righteous messaging machine, the debt is their fault since all fault is individual rather than systemic. This provides an easy moral out for those who pull the strings of power in favor of their own. Anne Nelson’s Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right plainly lays out the flow of money through various players to create the righteous new order of doing business.
The Christian Right didn’t get organized as a force until the Federal government started coming after the tax-exempt status of segregation academies which arose after Brown vs. the Board of Education. (Jerry Falwell had one, Liberty University.) Protestants didn’t give a rip about abortion back then—that was a Catholic issue. What is really at issue is the division of power and money. The Republicans, as they are all now cozied up with the Christian Right (the process of infiltration described in Anne Nelson’s book Shadow Network,) are very good at messaging having massive networks, including FoxNews and Salem Communications, to spread their bullshit under the patriotic guise of fighting ‘socialism’ (and promoting ‘family values.’) ‘Socialism’ is fine with the righteous if the money flows to the ‘right’ people. The ‘biblical’ concept of Jubilee only applies to certain people in our ‘capitalist’ (snicker) society. Corporate welfare is A-OK. The Koch’s can freely fuck us all. Societal success is determined by the number of billionaires we can make even richer. There seems to be a collective need for an underclass even when the middle-class, the one’s being taught to wish for all this fuckery, are getting fucked as well. (Here is an analysis of the forgiveness program.)
Beyond all the money flowing from here to there and back (up to the controllers) again, the fact remains that due to declining numbers of white people, those who’ve historically been dominant, the electoral advantages must be further amplified. They’ve learned from January 6th; those mistakes will likely not be repeated. Now that SCOTUS is 6-3, the Right’s program to overcome the numerical disadvantage marches on. Moore vs. Harper is set to be heard this fall. The Trump machine is trying to place ‘Big Lie’ endorsing candidates in numerous Secretary of State positions around the country. It is truly scary to see their success. As I’ve repeatedly made the point, Christians do not care about piety as they’ve made clear in endorsing, and voting for, the worst human being who has ever been in that office. As I’ve said before, Trump will burn the world to the ground to be king of it. I continue to stand on that statement. What the average Trump voter wants is the (perception of) power to maintain their (perception of) dominance, as promised to them by a liar. What is closer to the truth is that we are all being played into endorsing an encroaching fascist oligarchy. Revolving around this whole shit show is a myriad of sycophants who will say and do anything to grasp at any scraps of power which may remain. What is certain is that Trump is too much of a lazy moron to make this fascistic dream happen; the question remains in how to transfer the movement, the namesake, the power, and the revenue generation capability to someone more competent (like Ron DeSantis) without pissing off all the rabid, clown-show Q idiots financing the whole mess. There is precious few in the clergy who are speaking out about the blatant immorality of all this. They dare not if they want to keep their jobs. Those who have spoken out are often exiled. Familiar story? (Look over there! There be some homosexuals and transgender folk—all our problems are their fault, let’s get ‘em!)
Beyond the political use of the statement ‘without Christ, the heart is desperately wicked,’ there is a serious affect upon the church’s witness to the ‘lost.’ The belief in divinely bestowed special preference can set up a certain arrogance within the heart of the believer; and this is not lost to the observing non-believer. I’ve seen this quite clearly as expressed in the doctrine of entire sanctification, which I always thought was bullshit, and with the Pentecostals in their doctrine of the Second Baptism of the Holy Spirit which I thought was bullshit as well. I’ve seen tears shed over this. Seriously. There has so much pain and uncertainty over whether one is truly saved, loved enough, to the degree required to make the cut for the rapture and so be spared the terrors of the anti-Christ and the bowls of God’s Wrath. I was raised in the context of this terror. I can’t tell you how many times I thought, ‘fuck, I missed it,’ when someone I expected wasn’t where I thought they would be. It’s terror, pure and simple (and is an especially shitty fear to place upon kids in order to ‘save’ their souls.)
I fail to see how a God, who on one hand is described as the very definition of Love, can hold the sinner over the flames as one would hold a loathsome spider. In Philippians 2, Paul talks of Jesus forfeiting His divine right to condescend to us—to save us. Jesus claimed to His disciples that if they’ve seen Him they’ve seen the Father. Could not then the Father forfeit His divine right to use his almighty power to send all the sinners to endure eternal conscious torment in the flames because they offended an eternal Being? As many, many Christians believe, if you’ve never heard of the salvific power in Jesus then it really sucks to be you—you are eternally burned by accident of birth. Is this love?
It’s possible that I may be facing such a fate; I hope not. But I think this is highly unlikely since I don’t believe God is an asshole. The very notion of eternal conscious torment offends the idea of true love. Many may bristle at the thought of the likes of Hitler getting away with it. We want justice; but the kind of justice we want is relative, isn’t it? (Mercy for me but not for thee?) What is justice? Philosophers have been wrestling with this for thousands of years. I think what is closer to the truth is that we all are going to ‘get away with it’ in one way or another. Rob Bell has his ideas; I have mine. I doubt people like Hitler or Trump would want to share space with God; so, I think they will be consigned to oblivion. In my view, their sins were nailed to that cross as well. The matter comes down to where we want to reside—God forfeits His divine rights to punish our sin in His love. It’s the only chance we have—His undying, unmerited love. This is what I want to believe. There is our justice, like it or not—accept the gift that benefits you as well. How this propitiation works is beyond me or anyone else to understand. I’m willing (and wanting) to accept this despite all the rotten things done to me in exchange for the forgiveness of all the rotten things I’ve done to others. This requires letting go of justice in the future world. A hard thing to do as it makes a lot of moral grey to contend with as we negotiate and weigh various moral claims to defend ourselves and others against all the liars and predators in the world.
As it seems obvious, we could not be as we are now in the heavenly realms, so too it seems we could not be as we are now in what we call Hell. As Lewis argued, the threat of hell should not be our motivator—else hell be given power that does not belong to it. The threat of hell is fear based. St. John argued that love drives out fear. Yet, fear is what drives our evangelism, our politics, and our need to create divisions between us. Just because one claims to be Christian does not mean that one is a good person (Luke 13: 22-30.) Jesus, Paul, John, Peter, James, Calvin, Luther, and many, many others have said a great number of things about the nature of salvific faith to which numerous ideas, practices, and affirmations have arisen in response. James talked about the necessity of doing (good.) Jesus seemed to focus on the state of the heart (desire.) Paul, seemingly contra James 2, implied in his letter to the Galatians (2:26) that salvation is not by works but through faith in Jesus Christ. What gives?
I’ve made it clear that I don’t embrace the doctrine of inerrancy. (I still believe in the testimony of suffering so my belief in the resurrection remains.) ‘Christian’ values have evolved tremendously over the millennia as Christians have morphed their understanding of scripture for sake of palatability. I’m doing the same. One of the rising humanist values which challenges the fundamentalist patriarchal lens for interpreting the Bible is equality. This is very threatening to the established order—today’s Christian has been conditioned to believe that order is a primary value which must be maintained. The reason I bristle so intently at the teaching that ‘without Christ, the heart is desperately wicked’ is that it gives license to the average Christian to not examine the motives and fruit of their leadership—they are free to just assume that the leadership is being led by the spirit of Christ sparing them to look at all the abundant depravity in the Christian endorsed political activities and process. The faithful can just tune in to the content that Salem Communications provides, attend a service which provide positive affirmations and then comfortably rest assured that God is in charge. Personal responsibility to dig is absolved. Just keep voting Republican and God will handle the rest to affirm ‘family values.’ Easy Peasy.
Jesus talked about good trees producing good fruit. Bad fruit tells a different story. In all the things I talked about above, the evil which comes from believing ‘some are more equal than others,’ and that the ‘righteous’ ought to rule the ‘wicked’ no matter what dishonesty and cheating the system is engaged in, and that we must support the system to ‘make America great again,’ all these listed above are rotten fruit born from a rotten tree. Those you call wicked see this; they see the fear, the dishonesty, the ever angry, hateful authoritarian God, and clearly receive the blatant message that Christians think of themselves as being better than everyone else. In agreeing with ‘them’ I’ve become wicked, and a threat, as well. Christians have pushed out the human context for exampling the love of God. By what the church does, in its devotion to the tenets of Christian nationalism as based in white supremacy, Christians tell the world that they are keepers and dispensers of God’s love. The righteous shall dispense ‘love’ as the righteous see fit. The so-called ‘wicked,’ being also made in the image of God, do not see such an authoritarian program as righteous at all since they’ve not been blinded by the affirmation of the blank check. (That is, the assurance that one is righteous because one claims the Spirit of Christ.) In this Christians have lost their claim (to righteousness.) The whole matter has devolved into competition between one authority and another; one that claims divine sanction via ‘scripture’ and ‘revelation’ and the other which asserts the equal value of every human being. General revelation vs Special revelation. Love is lost in the fog of deception and perception.
It’s right there, in our politics and in our words as the Christian political juggernaut is running the country, and the world, right into the ground. Using the rhetorical device of apophasis, the Right is calling for (further) violence in the streets (if they don’t get what they want) while providing plausible deniability that it didn’t approve of said violence should it happen. The double standard is alive and well. The Black Lives Matter violence after the blatant murder of George Floyd (and many, many other murders and abuses perpetrated against our underclass, openly spurred on by our dear leader) was an affront to everything holy and decent while the violence of the ‘patriots’ who stormed the Capitol on January 6th in an attempt to overthrow the election for their messiah, causing much death, injury, and PTSD to the Law Enforcement officers who stood their ground as POTUS urged the mob on, was acceptable, even valiant, patriotism. Our country is in serious trouble as around half of us, Democrat, Independent, and Republican, believe civil war is in our near future.
This is terrifying. What the Christians are saying to their ‘lost’ neighbors is ‘submit to us or be crushed.’ Where is the love in that? Yet, ‘God is doing mighty things in our church.’ Screw the rest; it is either willful ignorance or a deliberate choice to maintain an illusion. It may be selfishness; it may be cowardice. ‘Without Christ, the heart is desperately wicked’ maintains the illusion of Christian supremacy. I choose to believe we all have good and bad in us to varying degrees. (Though I must admit that I still fail to see anything good in Donald Trump.) I am much more inclined to trust someone who puts the illusion of righteousness aside to embrace me (the rebel) and everyone else as initially having the benefit of the doubt as being equally worthy of love and respect until their actions should show them to be malicious. And even then, there may be hope until they’ve made it clear that either want to rule it all, burn it all down, lie, rape, murder, cheat, steal or all the above. In that case, I believe it is our duty to defend others against these malicious beings. It seems a line must be drawn somewhere.
We are all God’s children. Equally loved. You pull the ‘holy,’ elitist, separatist thing with me, and I’ll likely regard you as being either a con and a predator or a fool. (I admit that I was fooled for decades.) Such creatures make poor witnesses to what is merciful, good, and true. Being LGBTQ+ does not make anyone evil or a threat. Having an abortion doesn’t make someone a murderer responsible for hurricanes and earthquakes. Losing your virginity (a nebulous concept anyway) does not make you any less valuable as a person. But these are some of the black and white teachings of the evangelical world which cause so much suffering and leads to great predation and evil. I cannot in good conscience agree with you even if you say I risk the fires of hell. (Oblivion is more likely.) The authoritarian, patriarchal teachings of those ‘in Christ’ set the stage for horrifying abuses at the hands of those higher up the evangelical food chain. It is clear, many, many people who claim the authority of Christ, as they have the ‘Spirit of Christ,’ are obviously wicked people because they prey upon those they’ve intentionally taught to be weak and undiscerning. These authorities use their ‘God-given’ authority to prey upon others. Therefore, I react strongly against those who teach these destructive things. (I used to barf out this stuff as well. It is not easy to admit I was wrong.) The way forward is scary and is anything but clear.
But the fact remains that in the process of jettisoning all the toxicity of evangelical teaching I’ve never been happier. The moral world is grey with many different factors which figure into a seemingly endless fractious moral equation. The common denominator is the value of each human being regardless of where they come from, who their parents were, who they are attracted to, or what they believe about God or anything else. There is something key about content of character…
All the examples I listed above show that evangelical Christian has no right to claim they are morally superior to anybody. As for me, I think the evangelical church is highly immoral. Yes, there are good people within that body. But they don’t dominate the agenda. They obey.