Christianity

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."  --Anne Lamott

I've written on this topic a little bit before. I really am not sure that I'm a Christian. I haven't studied Christ's teachings much lately. Maybe not ever? Even in seminary when we studied the Bible, I'm not sure that we really studied Christ's teachings. Memorized verses, sure.  But I feel like if you say you are a Christian, meaning a follower of Jesus Christ, then you should actually, you know, follow His teachings. Study them and apply them to daily situations and how to address aspects of life big and small. And I feel like there is very little of that going on. I feel like there is a lot of taking tiny passages out of the Bible, usually out of context, and focusing on those few things, while ignoring everything else. There is definitely room for interpretation, yes. As with most literature, individuals will see different things as they read. And no one is perfect, heaven knows. But I really feel like a lot of Christians shape the Bible to fit what they believe, rather than basing their beliefs off of what the Bible says. 

I was searching for the exact wording of that Anne Lamott quote when I stumbled on an interesting Huffington Post article.  Neal Wooten writes, "Always beware when someone tells you what scripture doesn't mean. That quite often means they don't like what it does mean. Again, it's not easy to follow the rules. If a person wants to be seen as a Christian, however, there are two ways to handle these directives. One way is to truly strive to adhere to them and ask forgiveness for coming up short, or the most frequently used practice: simply find means to get around them."

So let's talk specifics. The parable of the Good Samaritan. I remember from my childhood the take-away from this parable being a generic kind of "be nice to others." But in revisiting it as an adult, I think it's much more than that. It teaches us how we are to treat our neighbors, and neighbors is very clearly not defined as "people like us" or "people we like" in this parable. And Jesus ends by saying that we should go out and be like the Samaritan, meaning that we have a mandate to help everyone, not just those we feel like helping or those whom it's convenient to help.  Or there's the scripture where Jesus says that the righteous have fed him when he was hungry and clothed him and helped him when he was sick, and they said when the heck did we do that, and he said that anytime they've helped those in need, it's like they were helping Christ himself.  So I think, how are we supposed to apply this to life? Does it just mean to do voluntary service for those we like/deem worthy? Or in order to be true Christians, don't we have to take care of the poor, even the ones we're not sure are worthy of our help?  

Martin Luther King, Jr wrote, speaking of this parable, "On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Maybe I don't agree with that.  That's totally fine. But I should have the integrity to really look at whether that's because of a legitimate difference of opinion, after study, about the meaning of the parable. Or whether it's because I really don't like Christ's teachings and don't want to follow them, and therefore am not a Christian. And that's kinda what I've been doing, although not really with any sort of real intensity of study at this point. Just sort of a wandering around the periphary of the topic. One thing I do know, if the so-called Religous Right are truly followers of Christ's teachings, I truly and surely am not one.