Why are Christians Such Pharisees?

It’s the week after Passover and Easter—that, and the political debate over gay marriage, makes it prime time to devote blog space to the sorry state of organized religion in America. Today’s topic: The kidnapping of Christianity by hypocrites, snake-oil salesmen, Pharisees, and Jihadists for Jesus. There are thousands of devout folks in the hinterlands trying hard to live their lives according to their understanding of holy writ, but the public face of Christianity is one of intolerance, bigotry, and right-wing howler monkeys. It is dominated by those quick to quote Scripture, but always selectively, out of context, and devoid of any demonstrable understanding of its deeper message.

First, a story that very few people know: I once entertained thoughts of becoming a theologian. In my feckless youth (Is there any other kind?), I was involved with a youth ministry. It was the 1970s, the tail end of the Jesus Freaks movement, and my experience was mostly a combination of hanging out with lots of semi-hip folks, and trying to help high school kids with problems ranging from loneliness to substance abuse. I became fascinated with religion and belief structures. In college I majored in medieval history, and read Augustine, Anselm, and the Scholastics (with a special affinity for Aquinas). Outside of class, I studied philosophy and theology from a very famous theologian—both at a study center near Pittsburgh, and as a correspondence student (on cassette tapes back then). When evangelicals ring my doorbell and ask if I’ve read the Bible, I can truthfully reply, “Yes—the whole way through. Several times.” But these experiences did not make me a man of the cloth; they left me deeply suspicious of all organized religion.

My first crisis of faith was that I didn’t want to be a minister. I wanted to study religion to have a deeper understanding of it, not try to convert others to things I questioned. I found out that there hadn’t been all that many jobs for a “theologian” since the 17^th century, and jobs in the field had been declining since the 14^th. Most current theologians were connected with specific churches and I couldn’t see that happening for me. Catholicism? Not if I had to swallow papal infallibility. Calvinism struck me as too austere and I couldn’t reconcile predestination with Calvary. Other forms of Protestantism were overly focused on hollow rituals, and non-aligned evangelicalism appeared, for the most part, controlled by hucksters and crazies. Plus, as I said, I wanted to grapple with ideas and doctrines to determine which ones resonated with me.

This led me to my second crisis: I learned enough to realize that those saying they know the Word of God are self-deceived. When the howlers say that their beliefs are correct, I ask, based on what? The Bible is often wielded as if it was a thorny club rather than what I see it to be: meditations on how to live a moral life. The only way one can view the Bible as an absolute guide to anything is see it as the literal Word of God. Good luck with that. It’s child’s play to dismantle such thinking without studying—as I once did—textual criticism to do so. Problems abound, beginning in Genesis, which mentions just three offspring of Adam and Eve: Abel, Cain, and Seth—all males. Patriarchal Hebrews often ignored women in succession lines, but humankind’s third generation, for literalists, can only come through incestuous relations between Eve and her sons, or those sons with unnamed sisters. Does this mean that the Bible condones incest? How does the third generation reconcile with the condemnation of that custom in Leviticus 18:6?

These days I ponder why Christians are so hot to condemn homosexuality. There’s the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1-11 and Judges 19:16-30) and several other rather oblique passages, but just seven references in total, and just three in the New Testament—the one Christians are supposed to follow–all of which largely rehash Leviticus. The same NT passages (I Corinthians 6:9-11, Romans 1:26-27, I Timothy 1:9-11] also all have nasty things to say about fornicators, idolaters, liars, thieves, drunks, “revelers” (ahem!), and other sinful folks. The Bible isn’t comfortable with homosexuality, but the NT uses terms such as degrading, unnatural, shameful, disobedient, unholy, and sinful–not unlawful. Most of the prohibitions refer to men, so I suppose casual lesbianism is a little naughty, but okay. It’s interesting that gay sex was not forbidden by the Ten Commandments, nor was it among the Catholic Church’s seven “deadly” sins, which were drawn up by theologians of far keener minds than those of today’s evangelical moralists. Nowhere does the Bible say, “The holy shall lobby thy governments to discriminate and legislate against sodomites and shall take up the cudgel of piety to bash them physically and metaphorically.”

I wonder why Christians selectively mine OT books such as Leviticus. I don’t see them performing the rituals outlined in that book. I hear no hue and cry when Americans commit other forbidden acts. Ever do any of the following: eat rabbit, pork, or shellfish (Lev. 10]; fail to make a menstruating wife or daughter live in a separate camp for seven days (Lev. 15); or loan or borrow money with added interest rates (Lev. 25]? You too have violated a “commandment” [Lev. 27]. And I’d say, from Leviticus 25, that if you are a capitalist, God condemns your chosen lifestyle! (Or were you born that way and can’t help it?) The Bible rags on homosexuals seven times; it condemns the charging of interest sixteen times.

Don’t get me started on Christians that shout “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” which the Bible cribbed from Hammurabi’s Code, and which Jesus mentions only to say that the faithful must reject it. It’s part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells followers not to resist evildoers, but to “turn the other cheek” to he who strikes you and to offer your coat to he that seeks to take your shirt! It also says that those who lust should cast out their right eye, which makes me wonder why there aren’t more one-eyed preachers given the propensity of today’s evangelicals to get caught with their pants down! Too many modern Christians are akin to the minutiae-oriented Pharisees condemned in Scripture for insisting upon the letter of the law and misunderstanding its spirit.

These are among the reasons why I call myself a (mildly) spiritual humanist, not a Christian. I want no part of smug fools who take what they want from religious texts, leave the rest, and label the culling “truth.” I don’t wish to associate with bigots quick to find fault with others while calling their own shortcomings “righteousness.” And I utterly reject the call to crusade from moralists who quote things they do not understand and implore the masses to chase perdition falsely packaged as paradise. I have too many doubts to tell others what to do. Doubt, Augustine of Hippo, reminds us is the beginning of faith. Note that he said “faith,” not certainty.